The Satio, called the Idou for a while, is Sony Ericsson’s new offering. A photophone, touch-orientated and multimedia, the Satio, with a 12 Mpixel photo sensor, sets its stall out as the ideal phone for those who are out and about a lot and looking for entertainment on the run. It’s also the first Sony-Ericsson to function in Symbian S60. Is it the little genius that we’ve been told it is? Answer in this test.

Listen up however: the model sent us by the manufacturer a few weeks ago was a prototype. The definitive version will reach us in mid-October, a couple of weeks before the phone goes on sale.

One thing jumps to your attention straight away: it’s big! This is partly due to the inelegant photo sensor cover.

Although most operations can be carried out via the 16/9 touch screen, there are some physical buttons. And they’re pretty useful, natural to use. The three small buttons situated under the screen are very handy. Like all multimedia phones with any self respect, one button accessing multmedia content is easily accessible on the side of the device. When it comes to the finish, no complaints: it’s solid and robust.


Although the 3.5 inch screen (360x640 pixels) has nice contrast, it lacks a touch of brightness. It’s not however up to the standards of the AMOLED screens that are used on the most recent Samsung models.

Simple menus with an effective touch interface

As soon as you turn it on (start-up 26 seconds, more or less average for current phones) you are agreeably surprised by the sobre, well thought-out Satio interface – remember, it wasn’t even finalised at the time of the test. Nice to look at, it offers pretty intuitive navigation between the menus – the very bare home screen allows you to access 5 thumbnails at the top of the page. The Symbian S60 OS interface, that we’ve seen a lot of from Nokia and sometimes from Samsung, has been given very particular attention by Sony Ericsson. None of those aging Nokia icons…


In terms of fluidity of navigation – a very important point – the Satio is not exemplary. The model we were lent suffered slowdowns and the device regularly seemed to be struggling. Once again however, it should be remembered we weren’t testing the definitive version.

Extra points for the terminal search function, that for example, helps finding a message.

Too many expensive pixels?

The Satio’s photo functions are quite advanced (image stabilizer, geotagging, face detection and so on), which is to be expected on such a high-end product (to be expected at not far off 500 pounds) that is going to be sold as a photophone. All the same, although results are good and brightness sufficient, in a dark room or at night, things take quite a dip. This in spite of the xenon flash! In general, the shots suffer from a slight veil that dims the colours. We will certainly be redoing the photo tests with the definitive version.

Compared with the W995 (an 8 Mpixel), you get more detail but the blacks aren’t as deep. Opposite the very good Nokia N86 (8 Mpixels), the Nokia does a lot better. At the risk of repeating ourselves: don’t succumb to the sirens vaunting quality based on the number of megapixels. Not enough on their own.

For the rest…

Video recording is of decent quality for this type of device, the audio is pretty well rendered. And watching video is a pleasant experience on the Satio.


The audio on this phone is rather good, with the Satio better than average in its class. Again the interface is well set up and nice to use.