Sony Ericsson Satio review

This review of the Sony Ericsson Satio is the story of a love that almost was, but could never be. We trembled at the Satio's spectacular photo quality and zippy shutter speed, and then recoiled at its disappointing resistive touchscreen and complicated Symbian user interface. Our hearts melted over its excellent music quality, and then froze at the sight of its proprietary headphone jack. O Satio, Satio! Wherefore art thou, Satio?

The Satio is available for free on a £35-per-month, 18-month contract, or you can pick it up for £500 SIM-free.

Shutter love bug
With the Satio, Sony Ericsson promised that it would take its excellent Cyber-shot camera phones and Walkman music phones, smash them up, and rebuild them into a super phone, the like of which has barely been dreamt possible.

Close-up photos, taken in bright sunlight using the Satio's default 9-megapixel setting, are clear and vivid (click image to enlarge)

One aspect of the phone that doesn't disappoint is its camera. This 12.1-megapixel monster takes the best shots we've seen from a camera phone, nearly beating our inexpensive compact camera at its own game. We found the Satio couldn't quite capture the detail of reflections and textures that we saw in our compact's photos, but it does a fantastic job of capturing a clear, clean image. Colours are slightly over-saturated, but otherwise accurate.

The Satio's default camera setting captures wide-format, 16:9, 9-megapixel images. At this setting, we were very impressed by the phone's speed. Sliding the plastic lens cover quickly starts the camera, and there's very little delay between pressing the shutter button and taking a photo. At the camera's full, 12.1-megapixel resolution, we found that there was a slight delay as the camera wrote the larger image file to the memory card. The 12.1-megapixel setting improves the clarity of the image, though, so it's worth using if you're planning to crop your photo tightly.

Photos taken with the 12.1-megapixel setting are sharp, delivering accurate colour, even when using the flash in a dark room (click image to enlarge)

The Satio has an LED photo light and a xenon flash. We were very impressed by the natural-looking illumination of the flash. Our photos in dark conditions looked almost as clear and bright as our well-lit shots. The camera also recharges quickly, so you can take photos briskly one after another. That's a significant advantage over the Samsung Pixon12 M8910's slow-charging camera, for example.

Don't talk to us about 3.5mm headphone jacks
We can't say enough good things about the Satio's camera, and we were similarly happy with its music quality. Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones rarely let us down, and the Satio pumps out great tunes.