Multimedia

The Satio has been equipped with just about all the multimedia functions Sony Ericsson has to offer, photo slideshows, photo editing (add effects and cliparts to photos you’ve taken), the music player is very much like that of Walkman series phones. While playing videos on the Satio’s widescreen was probaby one of the most enjoyable. Supported video features include YouTube, BBC iPlayer (for those of you in the UK) or videos within the phone’s memory. The Satio has a rather ‘hidden’ separate speaker at the top for music and video playback as well as to act as the ringer, though it did start to crack at high volume, this feature was certainly one which we welcomed.

Messaging

Texting using the Satio during our review turned out to be much more stressful than we had anticipated. Not only were we not used to having to pick up the stylus again (having been using iPhones and HTCs for sometime) the UI became clunky and jerky when new message menu was tapped. It wasn’t because the messaging UI had inadequate features, it felt more like as though it had too much to handle.

For example, switching from portrait mode to landscape mode would trigger the on-screen QWERTY to change in orientation but this was incredibly jerky and at one point in transition the entire screen would become blank – not smooth at all! Once it got there however, the next problem was the on-screen keys were definitely not designed for fingertips. Therefore, our advice would be, if using a stylus annoys you, you better think twice when considering the Satio unless texting isn’t very important to you.

12 Megapixel Camera

The Satio’s camera is in our opinion by far one of its most important feature. The 12 MP camera is able to take pictures of up to 4000 x 3000 pixels. The camera interface is simple to use and not overcrowded with icons. It boasts various shooting modes, our favourites being smile detection, panorama, touch capture which is very convenient when you want to center your focus on a person or landmark. One minor difference between the Satio’s touch capture and what we typically consider when talking about touch focus is that the Satio captures images immediately as soon as you tap the spot on the screen where you want to focus. For those abit more keen on photography, the Satio also gives you the ability to adjust its exposure. Also equipped is Xenon flash and LED flash for capturing video in low light conditions. There is no major lag when taking photos which is inconsistent with the Satio’s UI. There’s a bunch of tools for editing your photos and videos, from red-eye reduction to adding cool effects. The only major disappointment in terms of the Satio’s camera is that it doesn’t do HD, just VGA @ 30 fps, this allows you to capture videos in fast or slow motion and upload clips straight to YouTube or to a blog. If you’ve seen the photo gallery we uploaded earlier last week, you’ll have barely noticed that it was taken using a mobile phone and not a digital camera. The photo quality is without a doubt very pleasing and impressive. We reckon the noise level of the photos will be noticeable should you zoom in however this is hardly something to complain about. Click here to see the Satio camera sample photo gallery if you haven’t already…

Battery Life

We found ourselves having to re-charge the Satio approximately every two to three days. Despite not using it on a constant basis (rather, leaving it on standby alot of the time), we found it difficult to achieve a better battery life even when we had all connectivities switched off and screen brightness adjusted to 50%. It seemed to be constantly consuming at a higher rate than my iPhone! Luckily the Satio isn’t like the iPhone where the battery is built-in, yet still, we thought the relatively short battery life was unacceptable.

Other Features

Other features which we haven’t fully covered in our review include the following:

Calendar

File Manager

The Satio has awell designed file manager / browser with comprehensive features such as assigning passwords to lock memory card access or fold access.

Applications

Applications which come built in the Satio include…

Conclusion

In this brief review, we have highlighted the main features which we liked and felt could be made better in the Satio. While Sony Ericsson had intended the Satio to be a powerful entertainment smartphone, our review has found that there were areas where the Satio failed to live up to this expectation. Overall, we felt the concept, the idea and the shed load of features was excellent however, when it came to practicality, it could not fully execute all of these without a few minor twitches here and there. Retailing sim-free online at around £330, if you don’t really care about texting and how efficiently the touchscreen functions and just want a phone with a decent camera and the capability to deliver entertainment. Then we think the Sony Ericsson Satio should still be considered on your shopping list.

Pros

• Well designed exterior keys
• Good quality widescreen display
• Packed with multimedia features
• Impressive photos and high quality camera

Cons

• Bulky design
• Slow to start up and jerky user interface
• Unresponsive resistive touchscreen
• Lack of 3.5mm audio jack
• Poor battery life
• No HD video capture

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