Sony Ericsson Satio,12.1 Megapixel Multimedia Phone - Latest Review
SONY ERICSSON announced its flagship 12.1 megapixel camera phone way back in
February at
Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where many of the year's new handsets were unveiled for the first time. The mobile was
then known as Iduo, though at the end of May the c
ompany renamed it as Sony Ericsson Satio.
On first impressions the handset has
an almost Bakelite phone appearance, from those house phones of yesteryear with its
matte black finish and solid build. It feels a
good weight in the hand - just right for a
digital camera that happens to be a
mobile phone at the same time, as let's face it, that's what it really is.
Its
3.5-inch 640x360 resolution resistive touchscreen has a clean and sharp viewing quality, while being
fairly responsive to the touch on most occasions. There were some instances where the phone got lag or a gesture not actioned by the touchscreen. I believe this may
have been down to the OS, rather than the
touch display being unresponsive. Selecting menu options and typing on the virtual keyboard were best performed with the
top of the finger rather than the very tip, as anything else was a bit hit and miss on the Satio.
The
Symbian S60 5th Edition mobile operating system runs this phone, which
isn't the best version of that OS we've seen on a handset. It's
rather clumsy, lacking in frills and is a very basic interpretation of that
Nokia owned software platform.
It is almost as if
Sony Ericsson ran out of money in developing the phone when it threw the whole budget into the camera, then
barely developed the OS as a result. It's a harsh criticism, but one we feel we have to make after regularly using
Nokia's S60 5th Edition phones, such as the N97 and X6. Despite those mobiles running the same platform, their
GUI is 100 per cent better, far friendlier, more feature laden and easier to use as compared to the Satio's deployed version.
The
phone's GUI has clearly been influenced by Google's Android, as it has a few different screens alongside the
home screens used for housing the most frequently used functions such as contacts, messaging and the
viewing of pictures.
Pressing the green call button on the Satio only produces a list of
missed calls, dialled calls and recent calls. You can only access the dialler from an icon on the main home screen.
Web browsing on the phone wasn't the easiest of tasks. A very precise touch is needed to select links on web pages, which got struggled with on this phone from time to time. Every time the browser is launched there's a
pop up message to select the phone's carrier for surfing or using WiFi. This becomes very tedious as time wears on.
There were
some disappointing hardware choices made by Sony Ericsson in the Satio, where it included its own
proprietary socket for the phone's charging and data needs. This is an odd choice as we would have thought
Sony Ericsson would have moved on from this unpopular choice of socket by now.
It will become an
EU mandate to use microUSB on mobile phones next year, making this decision an even more unpopular choice.
Adding salt to the wound is the lack of a 3.5mm audio jack, where the only audio output possibility for the handset is through that very bulky proprietary socket. That's an even more curious decision, as it
added its music feature from its Sony Walkman phones, making it a
camera and music phone all in one.
The camera aspect of the phone, or the
whole the reason many will buy the phone, is rather good at 12.1 megapixels. In most cases photos taken
were clear and sharp, although a steady hand is needed when taking a shot, as even the
slightest unsteadiness shows up much more clearly on the larger image.
With the
average size of a 12.1MP image being close to 3MB, the
8GB bundled in microSD card comes in handy as the phone has only
128MB of onboard memory. There are good features surrounding the
image taking capabilities of the camera phone, not ones
really aimed at the professional photographer but more
aimed at the casual snapper.
These include
autofocus, red-eye reduction, face detection, smile detection and best picture quality. These are all just
minor tools to use, rather than anything too taxing or advanced for the average punter.
Sony Ericsson has also included 16X digital zoom and a Xenon Flash that aids in producing decent images, although the
zoom didn't produce the better quality we've come to expect from a higher megapixel camera.The images taken with the Satio seem a bit hit and miss in terms of quality.
There are some anomalous aspects to the picture taking ability of the Satio, most of which we can live with but we would be remiss not to mention the foibles we uncovered. The
massive 12.1 megapixel camera can only capture images in 4:3 ratio,
not a widescreen 16:9 ratio despite the phone's own screen dimensions being that ratio.
To
capture a 16:9 image you have to drop the resolution to 10 megapixels, which really isn't that much of a bother, but to those who are
used to a widescreen format it will be an issue. Taking another shot directly after already taking one isn't the Satio's forte, as there's a
huge delay before another attempt at capturing an image is possible.
Video was a bit of a letdown on the Satio, both in
capturing and in playback. The handset is only capable of video recording at
a VGA resolution, where we really expected something more.
Perhaps not full 1080p, but
somewhere beneath just to show the full potential of the camera phone and what it could offer.
Video playback has
no support for DivX/XviD or any AVI, only R
ealmedia and mp4 file extensions. It was a shock to see
those codecs passed by in the handset, as the box even
includes a video out cable that other
handset companies such as HTC sell separately.
The
Satio 1000mAh battery was put to the test over a day's use, where
you can still manage to get 8 hours of calls from the phone before the handset dies, all while
taking 12.1 megapixel photo shots here and there, which
really didn't make as huge an impact on the battery as one would have thought.
Conclusion
There’s
no doubt the Satio is a good sign of change at Sony Ericsson and perhaps a glimpse at what’s to come, not
only from Sony Ericsson but all the manufacturers. But there’s
no such thing as being perfect, and that’s definitely not something
I’d call the Satio either. It’s still got a lot of stuff that annoys me and features that are missing, but it’s still a
very good mix of features.
The camera is undoubtedly one of the
prime features of the Satio and I reckon many people would buy or consider buying the phone purely because of the camera.
Another
positive side of the Satio is its media functionality, which is without a doubt among the best of its class.
Sony Ericsson’s Media application works brilliantly, and although it lacks a few features (which will hopefully be added in future firmware revisions!),
I would
reckon it makes up for it on speed and user friendliness. Another reason to
get the Satio could be its web features. While the
web browser isn’t excellent, it’s still a very
good browser that’s capable of doing just about everything you need it to do.
When it comes to the
cons of the Satio, there really
isn’t a lot that cannot be improved or fixed with
software updates. Sure,
you can’t reduce the size of the device or add a 3.5 mm jack with a software update, but it’s possible to
improve performance, add more preloaded applications (such as the Facebook application!), add features (such as an equalizer in the music player) and so forth. If you can live with a
few compromises, I’m sure Satio will be a perfect match.
And of course the
price of this Sony Ericsson Satio is between the
range of RM2249 - RM2400 while the
AP version is price between RM1870-RM2000.
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