Sony Ericsson Satio with a 12.1 MP camera!

For:

Awesome 12.1 mega pixel camera with lots of editing options, records video too. The phone includes support for Bluetooth, full e-mail, Wi-Fi and 3G. Walkman style music player added

Against:

Proprietary port for headset and USB connector, Web browser navigation interface could have been better.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Sony Ericsson Satio is 2.16 inches wide, 0.52 mm deep, 4.4 inches high and weighs 4.44 oz. The phone is based on WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM technology and supports WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900 band. The handset has a candy bar design. Some features include vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, call timer, call conference capability, voice recorder, caller ID, and speakerphone. Wireless interface options include IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth. The gadget is based on Symbian OS. Messaging services include SMS, mobile e-mail, internet browser, JAVA applications, HSDPA, XHTML browser and RSS feeds.

The camera has a 12.1 megapixel lens with 16x digital zoom. Camera features include Picture stabilizer, face detection, geo-tagging. Organizer offerings include alarm clock, calendar, reminder, calculator, countdown timer and stopwatch. The screen has a 640 x 360 pixels resolution with 16.7 million (24 bit) color support. Supported audio formats include MP3 and AAC. Included accessories are Media manager, 8 GB memory card, USB cord, battery charger and battery. The phone has 660 minute talk time.

Razzle Dazzle:

Sony Ericsson Satio is rectangular in shape and the outer shell is made up of black along with silver accents. On the front, there is a huge 3.5 inch display and beneath this, you have three buttons (menu, end and talk). On the back, there is a protective cover for the camera and this adds to the phone’s weight. It also doesn’t let the device lay flat on the surface.

Inside Dope:

This phone was presented as a concept in Mobile World Congress and we are glad it has turned in to a reality now. This device is offered unlocked and it is billed as an entertainment cell phone. The 12.1 megapixel camera is really powerful and we have never seen such advanced photo editing options on any other camera phone. The standard music player is also there for listening to music. In terms of design, this phone has a lot in common with other high end smartphones. We were stunned by the camera options but the picture quality was quite inconsistent. Also, another disappointing feature is that the gadget has a proprietary port for headphones and power adapter. We would have liked a standard 3.5 mm headphone jack for plugging in any standard headphones. This is an excellent multimedia phone but the high price tag of $649 is certainly a turn off. True, you get a lot of camera options but a digi-cam gives you all this for relatively low price. Hence, we won’t recommend purchasing this phone.

Display

Sony Ericsson Satio comes with a resistive touch screen and not a capacitive one so you will have to apply a bit more pressure while using it. We are used to the iPhone’s capacitive touch screen and hence we quickly got frustrated by this. We had to press harder even for basic features like dialing or selecting an item from the menu. Fortunately, there is a stylus included which will make things a bit better.

Sony Ericsson Satio’s screen has a 360×640 pixel resolution. Images look very nice and the text too is easy to read. The phone comes with built in accelerometer which automatically switches to landscape mode when you tilt the device. There are three choices for keyboard – full sized QWERTY keyboard, alphanumeric keypad and handwriting recognition. The display is quite difficult to view in sunlight.

Email and PIM features

Sony Ericsson Satio has support for IMAP/POP3 email and also Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (tasks, calendar, contacts, and email) via DataViz’s RoadSync app. The handset is based on Symbian 9.4.  PIM features on the phone include calculator, unit converter, alarm clock, notepad, calendar, Facebook app, PDF reader, and QuickOffice Suite. The latter lets you just view the documents. For editing them, you will have to buy the Premium Edition.

Entertainment

Sony Ericsson Satio comes with a built in Walkman player which lets you view your track collection by albums, artists, playlists, audiobooks, track, recordings and podcast. There are shuffle and repeat modes along with on the fly creation. But we would have liked an equalizer too. Apart from all this, you get TrackID music recognition service, FM radio, and Playnow. The latter lets you download games, ringtones, music, wallpaper/themes on the device. Supported formats for the video player include ASF, 3GP, WMV and MPEG4. For storing your music and video, the phone has 68 MB of internal memory and it can be expanded to 16 GB through microSD cards.

Camera

12.1 megapixel camera on the Sony Ericsson Satio is the biggest attraction of this Sony Ericsson Satio. It has plenty of editing options. Some of the goodies include LED and Xenon flash, 16x digital zoom, autofocus, five shooting modes (including BestPic and panorama), smile and face detection, exposure settings, image stabilization and red-eye reduction. The camera also lets you record video at 30 fps. Sony Ericsson Satio has a good picture quality but a lot depends on the light. Flash was too overwhelming and sometimes it blew out our indoor shots. We tried clicking with the flash turned off but the images now turned hazy.

Call quality

Sony Ericsson Satio has a decent call quality. On our side, there was a slight hiss but this didn’t bother us much while talking. Our friends said that the call quality was pretty good. One guy said that there was a bit of echo but other than that, there were no complaints. Speaker phone calls too were good but in louder environments, the volume was a bit low.

Verdict:

This phone has a lot of multimedia power especially for the camera but the price is really high. You are better off buying a digicam instead