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Sony Ericsson Satio review: Shooter by vocation

Gsmarena have posted a review of the Sony Ericsson Satio. Here are the phone's main features, main disadvantages and their final impression.

Key features:
3.5" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
12 megapixel state-of-the-art autofocus camera
LED and xenon flash, active lens cover
VGA@30fps video recording
Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI, spiced up with a home-brewed homescreen and media menu
ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator and 256 MB of RAM
Quad-band GSM support
3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 3.6 Mbps support
Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
microSD card slot with microSDHC support
Built-in accelerometer
TV out
Stereo FM Radio with RDS
USB and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
Web browser has full Flash support
Preinstalled Wisepilot navigation software
Office document viewer

Main disadvantages:
Xenon flash is not adequately powerful
VGA@30fps video is no longer top of the line
The S60 5th edition UI isn't to the best in class standards
No 3.5mm audio jack or a standard USB port
No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
No smart or voice dialing
Playing flash videos in the browser easily depletes the available RAM
No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
No stereo speakers
No digital compass (magnetometer)

Sony Ericsson need a winner right now and the Satio is the phone carrying the torch. It's equipped with a 12-megapixel camera, which puts it in an elite club. It failed to become the founding member of the club - that title goes to the Samsung Pixon12 - but the Satio offers a level of extra versatility available only on smartphones.

Let's look away from the camera for a moment though - we paid it plenty of attention in our 12-megapixel shootout. The smartphone capabilities do deserve praise as well.

The Satio runs on the same "engine" as the iPhone 3GS, Omnia HD, Palm Pre and Nokia N900 - an ARM Cortex A8 CPU running at 600MHz along with a PowerVR SGX graphics accelerator. Symbian OS is known to run merrily on much lower-clocked CPUs and with more horsepower it multitasks like a champ. It also sports a brand new look, which certainly helps.

But all that platform talk renders the obvious competitor of the Satio a bit obscure. Yes, the Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is currently the archrival but the 12-megapixel camera is the only ground where these two phones face off. Yes, the Pixon12 offers GPS voice-guided navigation and Wi-Fi, a WVGA AMOLED screen and smooth and silky TouchWiz - but it's not as versatile and flexible as the Satio's smartness. The Pixon12 beat the Satio in a pretty close game but it was the cameraphone that lost, not the smartphone.

When the Samsung M8920, the worldwide version of the Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M, finally comes out, pressure on the Satio will grow. The M8920 won't be a smartphone either but optical zoom will sure tip the scales. Until then, have a look at our preview of the W880 to get a taste of what's coming next year.

Going down a notch in the camera department, we find a whole bunch of 8-megapixel options.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a ready and willing candidate. Its camera is probably as impressive, but in another way - the still unmatched 720p video recording. The bigger (and AMOLED) screen is worth noting too.

In fact, the real promise is in the recent stir-up at the high end of the Sony Ericsson portfolio. We guess, phones like the Satio and the much-awaited Rachael give credence to the company's efforts for a comeback. The Sony Ericsson top dogs really need to pull their ranks together to stand up to the competition.

The Sony Ericsson Satio lost the race for the first 12MP cameraphone on the market, but maybe it's not too late to win the race for widespread adoption. There's certainly a great deal of hype around it and the phone manages to live up to a lot of it. Of course it will be up to the mid-range reinforcements to follow Satio, Aino and Rachael to claw back some of the market share the company has lost over the last couple of years. But things may as well be looking brighter already with Satio leading the way.

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