Sony Ericsson Satio preview

Mike Jennings

The phone we previously called the Idou has been renamed Satio. We got our hands on the phone, so here are our impressions ahead of the review

Published on May 29, 2009

The Satio is Sony Ericsson’s next flagship device, and it claims it to be the ‘ultimate multimedia experience'. After checking out its feature list, we’re hard-pressed to disagree.

It sports a large 3.5-inch wide touchscreen and a 12.1-megapixel camera. These highlights joined by Bluetooth, WiFi and HSDPA connectivity and a bundled 8GB microSD card. The touchscreen felt responsive, making the menus joyfully easy to navigate.

Although the Satio uses a Symbian OS, the interface is still reminiscent of Sony Ericsson’s proprietary offering. The Satio comes with Youtube, Facebook and Picasa apps built in, while Sony hinted at future integration with other social networking sites, such as Twitter.

As well as testing the new interface, we were also given a chance to watch some video on the new screen, which has a resolution of 640x360, and came away impressed. It was sharp, bright and vivid. The media interface also bore plenty of resemblance to the XMB bar seen on PS3 and PSP, and Sony Ericsson claims that it’s looking to integrate this type of navigation into more products in the future.

While it’s not stacked with smartphone features, the Satio could well be one of the best consumer phones ever released by Sony Ericsson. A 12.1mp camera, the highly responsive touchscreen, an absolute bucketload of media features and more connectivity than you could shake a stick at certainly make it a tempting package- albeit one that could cost a pretty penny when it’s released in the Autumn.

Preview adapted from a preview by Mike Jennings at PC PRO

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