Sony Ericsson has finally launched the Satio, the phone it showed off back in February under the guise of Idou, packing the best of all its brands into one phone. But can the sheer range of gadgetry and a new OS be enough to lure customers back to the brand?Not content with being leaders in cameraphone and multimedia technology, Sony Ericsson has decided to put the two Walkman and Cybershot brands together in the new Satio. This means an industry-leading camera, a full range of multimedia playback options and it's based on Symbian S60 5th edition to boot.
The overall feel of the handset is odd. Thanks to the sheer range of camera-related gadgetry on board the rear of the phone has a massive camera section bolted to the back, which makes it a little chunky.
But weirdly the phone didn't feel heavy at all – in fact we thought the battery needed to be put in, it was so light, but the power pack was snugly under the cover, so this is pretty impressive.
The Satio feels OK in the hand – it's not snug, but the 3.5-inch touchscreen (although sadly resistive rather than capacitive) is well positioned, and most of the functions are within a thumb's reach.
The front of the phone is very minimal – it's got a call, hang up and menu key, and that's about it. We would have quite liked to see a cancel/back button too, but that obviously wasn't on Sony Ericsson's agenda with the new Symbian OS it's packing.
In the box
The Satio is being tipped as a multimedia device, and to that end the box is filled with audio and visual goodies. We've already pointed out how very, very disappointed we are there's no 3.5mm headphone jack on the Satio, but Sony Ericsson has tried to temper that problem with a variety of headphone options in the box.
The connector also comes with a music controller, which works pretty well for both media and as a hands free unit. The bundled buds are of a slightly better quality than the usual pin-thick ones Sony Ericsson puts in the box, but we quickly changed these to some better options.
Key features
-3.5" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
-12 megapixel state-of-the-art autofocus camera
-LED and xenon flash, active lens cover
-VGA@30fps video recording
-Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI, spiced up with a home-brewed homescreen and media menu
-ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator and 256 MB of RAM
-Quad-band GSM support
-3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 3.6 Mbps support
-Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
-microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
-Built-in accelerometer
-TV out
-Stereo FM Radio
-USB and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
-Web browser has full Flash support
-Preinstalled Wisepilot navigation software
-Office document viewer
Main disadvantages
-Xenon flash is not adequately powerful
-The S60 5th edition UI isn't to the best in class standards
-No 3.5mm audio jack or a standard USB port
-No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
-No smart or voice dialing
-Playing flash videos in the browser easily depletes the available RAM
-No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
-No stereo speakers
-No digital compass (magnetometer)