Hands on: Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou) review

The new flagship phone with the best camera ever

The Sony Ericsson Satio – nee Idou

Sony Ericsson Satio: first impressions

Sony Ericsson might be flagging in terms of sales worldwide, but that hasn’t stopped it rebooting its OS and strategy, and bringing out a slew of new handsets to fit in, and the Satio is the pick of the bunch.

Some of you might remember the Satio from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, where it went by the name Idou. Well, although we don’t know why it had a name change, it still is exactly the same handset we were wowed by back then.

The first thing you notice about this phone is that it wants you to play with it, and to that end Sony Ericsson has added in some nifty features to get you started. The second you want to go on the internet, it asks you to download your 3G settings and connect to Wi-Fi. Open your contacts, and you’ll be asked to shower the phone with your SIM numbers.

It’s the little things like this that make you feel quickly at home with the phone, and add to that a simple yet effective layout, and you can’t help but warm to the quirkily-named Satio.

The home screen has been given a complete makeover, with icons at the bottom and the top of the screen designed to give you easy access to all the major functions of the phone.

For instance, the top of the screen houses things like a clock, your photo gallery, contacts, favourites, all of which are scrollable by either tapping them or scrolling the screen left and right.

And at the bottom, the media functions are held, with search also added in for good measure, allowing you to search both the internet and the phone itself for content, in a similar vein to the iPhone’s forthcoming 3.0 Spotlight.

The Touchscreen

The touchscreen itself is by far and away the best Sony Ericsson has managed to put together. Sony Ericsson, when demonstrating the phone to us, was very effusive on how it reckons this is one of the best around, and it certainly rubs shoulders with the iPhone and Palm Pre on responsiveness, accuracy and sensitivity.

However, wandering around the phone, through menus and starting and ending programs quickly caused the phone to judder in the manner some Nokia lovers might be familiar with, which makes sense given it’s based on the Nokia-owned Symbian system.

Users shouldn’t think this is the kind of lag-fest we’ve been treated to from the likes of the N96 though, as for the most part it sails through menus and the like, although it will be interesting to see how it fares when filled to the brim with content.

We should probably also have a look at the major talking point, which is the 12.1MP camera. Not only does it take earth-shattering, gob-smacking pictures (as you’d expect from a snapper by the best cameraphone manufacturer with the best sensor) but it also packs things out nicely on the hardware and feature side too.

We’re talking a handy slide-cover for the lens, Xenon flash for good pictures, auto-focus, smile detection, video light… the list just goes on and on.

And not only that, but together with the large and responsive touchscreen, taking and setting up photos is a veritable breeze. We were able to rattle off a good few without breaking sweat, exploring the variety of options easily and to good effect (although we weren’t able to transfer the results to PC… but believe us, they’re very good, both with and without flash).

However, the price you pay for strapping a 12MP camera to a phone is the added bulk you have to put up with. It’s not in the same chubby league as the C905, and it has a better camera, but the unsightly bulge at the top housing the lens might not be everyone’s cup of tea. If you appreciate what you’re getting for the trade-off though, and want a decent camera on your phone, then you’ll quickly get used to the added width.

Given the phone’s propensity for media, it’s a shame that it doesn’t come with more inbuilt memory than 128MB. While Sony Ericsson has bundled an 8GB microSD card in the box (which is thoroughly more than enough for some people) you can’t help but wish there was a little something under the hood for the more permanent files should you be one of those that loves to hot swap.

Internet and Messaging

The internet browser is apparently very good… we weren’t able to put our 3G settings on the phone, and the Wi-Fi in the area wasn’t working, so we’ll just have to take the word of those that have played with it that the phone and the internet sync together like Kits and Kats.

The messaging function was a really odd sensation, not because it did anything vastly different, but because it was decked out in 80’s orange and black, with sharp-edged buttons making it feel like pressing the wrong combination would call forth the A-Team or something. However, it was nice to see something different, and texting was OK, if not spectacularly easy.

The phone wouldn’t flip between alphanumeric and QWERTY modes though, which may have been a problem with the settings, but we had to manually move between the two modes and we can only hope this was a teething trouble. There was not autocorrect key on the QWERTY modes either, like those seen on the iPhone or the HTC recent range. It wasn’t a real problem, as the accuracy was fairly good, but it just felt a little ‘and us’ on the touchscreen stakes.

Media on the phone, with a near HD resolution (640 x 360) which isn’t a s good as the likes of the HTC Touch Diamond 2 (VGA, 640 x 480) but is still dazzlingly clear and colour rich.

Video was simple, with the normal set up keys being plopped in the right places, and the music system was similar, giving you a picture of the song being played in the centre with easy to use keys letting you navigate through.

The music player, which can run in the background, will also tack itself onto the front screen as a kind of widget as well, meaning you can alter the tracks without needing to pore through menus.

But, and this is a big But, there’s a big omission on the Satio. There’s no 3.5mm jack, which on a flagship handset that puts so much stock into entertainment is hard to believe. Yes, it managed to get a 12.1MP camera in a 13.3mm frame, but come on, most people would rather have added a bit more width and had the option to use their own headphones.

In fact, in order to sidestep this issue, you’ll probably want to invest in some Bluetooth cans to hide the frustration every time you snap or lose another headphone adaptor for your phone.

Overall impressions of the phone are it’s a resounding step in the right direction for the ailing Sony Ericsson, and this is the phone that many felt the Xperia X1 should have been modelled on.

While it doesn’t quite scale the dizzying heights of the iPhone or the Palm Pre, it shouldn’t be looked at as a competitor. Instead, marvel at the fact SE has managed to stuff so many features into a comparatively thin frame, put an excellent touchscreen on the front and firmly laid a challenge down to the likes of Samsung, LG and Nokia, all of whom have been knocking out the media / camera phones for years as well.

There are a whole host of features and nuances in the phone, such as interactive commenting on uploaded photos, that we haven’t managed to cover here, so check back to see our full, in-depth review coming very soon where we’ll lift the lid on Sony Ericsson’s new darling.

Price you can find on O2, here and also here, use Voucher code to get discount.

Source: techradar

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