Mobile News

Sony Ericsson Satio, initially announced as Idou, we liked right away, when the company presented the handset in February. Ever since than we wanted to get our hands on Satio and get to know it in depth - is it convenient to use, is its camera really good for a 12 MP snapper? Well, recently we received the phone in our editor's office and here we go with the review.

Yes, the built-in 12 MP camera in Satio is definitely the accent in this phone. It promises to be great even only by the specifications, which include auto- and touchfocus, face and smile detection, geotagging, macro and night modes and others. The image stabilization is one of the main advantages of Satio's camera, but most of all I love the xenon flash, which brightens even the darkest room and allows you to take photos no matter of the ambient
conditions.

In general I'm more than satisfied of this cameraphone. It proves handsets with cameras are getting more and more extras and are becoming bigger and bigger danger for the compact digital cameras. Satio does great in Macro, Portrait and Night mode. Just a little unconvincing were its Landscape photos, because of the detail lack. However, the handset deserves a lot of credits for its convenient camera button, which reacts just great and makes taking photos a pleasant thing. The camera lens cover is also a smart supplement.

A really important thing for the easy use of the camera is Satio's large display. The handset comes with 3.5" touch-sensitive screen, which provides up to 16M colours and has high-resolution of 360x640 pixel. It displays images in details and has great colour representation.

Except for the camera, Satio brings FM radio and a great MP3 player, which offers nice functionality, but lacks the 3.5 mm jack for standard headsets. There's still the other option - to connect the phone with Bluetooth headsets via the A2DP profile, but do you have such? It would have been nice if Satio had the MH100 model in the package - just like the Aino, but there is just the conventional headgear mainly meant for handsfree calls. The internal memory of only 128 MB is not enough for a lot of your multimedia stuff, but there's an 8 GB microSD card in the package, so you are ready to go!

The large touchscreen of Satio is also pretty convenient for browsing your favourite websites. It displays a big part of the page, which means you don't have to scroll like crazy every time you lead a page. The fast speeds are guaranteed by the HSDPA and HSUPA 3G standards, as well as by the Wi-Fi module, which you could use when having a hot-spot nearby.

Sony Ericsson Satio is a smartphone - it runs Symbian S60, 5th edition, which is known from the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music. It allows you to download a lot of new applications, adding new extras to your device and making it even more advanced.

In conclusion, Sony Ericsson Satio is maybe the best cameraphone out there. With its 12 MP it is hard to be rivaled by other mobile phones, but it still has some downsides of course. The audiophiles won't be happy because the 3.5 mm jack is lacking and if the music is your main object, than go for Sony Ericsson Aino. The price of EUR 500 however is just right for one of the first launched 12 MP cameraphones on the market.