The New Sony Ericsson Satio Reviewed

By Author: Bonny Kominek
Total Articles: 50
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While cameras have been included with mobile phones for almost a decade now, very few of these cameras have been capable of competing with standalone digital cameras on their own terms.

If you happen to own a company that makes digital cameras, you might want to look away now, because Sony Ericsson have unveiled a new phone, the Satio, that includes a camera that is every bit as good as most standalone digital cameras.

The camera inside the Satio has a resolution of over 12 mega pixels, and offers such features as video recording, auto focus, touch focus, face detection, image stabiliser, red eye reduction, a Xenon flash and video light, and a 12x digital zoom.

The phone looks slick and feels professional, with a jet black finish, a mirrored screen, and a sturdy construction. It is cosmetically similar to its predecessor, the Sony Ericsson C905, although inside the casing, it is a very different beast.

The image quality is on the whole superb, with good contrast and sharp detail, and video records and plays smoothly. The sound recording quality is not quite up to the same standard as the video, but ...
... it is not bad by mobile phone standards.

The Satio works well as a media player, and the quality of the sound playback is excellent, using as it does the same technology employed in Sony Walkman MP3 players. If you want more than a few songs or video clips though, you will need to invest in an SD card, as there is only 128MB of memory on board.

The Satio is compatible with the new Play Now online entertainment interface, which bears an uncanny resemblance to Apples iTunes. Here, you can purchase music, videos, games, ringtones, themes, and wallpapers with ease.

This is the first Sony Ericsson phone to use the popular open source Symbian operating system, also used by Nokia and several other manufacturers. While there are not as many apps available for the system as there are for the iPhone or phones using the Google Android OS, there are still thousands to choose from. Bonny Kominek, an expert in communications technology, they have been testing the new Sony Ericsson Satio with Vodafone UK. See online.vodafone.co.uk for a host of mobile phone deals.