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Musicplayer, Mediaviewer, Camera

As mentioned before, the musicplayer, mediaviewer and the camera module are completely customized by Sony Ericsson. The Musicplayer has pretty much the look, fell & functionality of the well-known Walkman-Player in Sony Ericsson's feature phones. It runs amazingly smooth which makes it fun to use. The sound quality is decent, the built in loudspeakers produce a clear sound and a good sound level. Unfortunately, there seems to be no equalizer - a little surprising. However, this might be added in the final version of the firmware.

The Mediaviewer displays pictures, camera snapshots and videos in a fluid manner. Here, the large display can play to its strength, be it for pictures as well as for videos. Probably more a gimmick than of real use is the built in picture editor which lets the user add effects, rotate, zoom etc.

Definitely the most hyped feature of the Satio is its whopping 12MP camera. Without starting an indepth discussion about the sense of having a 12MP sensor in a mobile phone with its very limited optical possibilities, the camera is probably the highlight of this phone. Next to the gimmicky features such as smile detection, there are a couple of functions that are of a good use. The Best Pic feature (take 9 pictures in a fast sequence) increases the chance of capturing a photo were everyone on the picture has his or her eyes open - or to capture that very moment were something happens within fractions of a second. Also useful: touch focus - simply point to the area which you want to be focused, and the phone focuses on that point. Finally, the panorama function has been updated with a very interesting feature: each of the 3 single pictures are taken automatically once the overlapping parts match - an indicator shows the user in real time in which direction the camera has to be pointed! Probabply due to the necessary processing power for matching the pictures, panorama photos can only be taken at 3MP size. Two sample panorama photos can be found in below camera sample gallery.

By clicking on the thumbnails below you an see the pictures in different scenarios in their original resolution - either in 12MP (4:3 ratio), 9MP (16:9 ratio) or the above mentioned panorama photos, consisting of up to three 3MP photos. We took those pictures in every-day situations over a longer period of time and therefore believe they represent a good sample usage of a mobile phone camera.

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Conclusion

Satio's underlying Symbian S60 5th Edition OS makes it look and feel clumsy, almost old-fashioned sometimes in terms of usability and intuitiv handling. The parts were Sony Ericsson added its own custom UI (Mediaviewer, Mediaplayer, Camera UI and the 5 standby panels) are very pleasant to use and feel more like a modern way of using a touchscreen phone. The entertainment functions are high class - starting with the excellent 12MP camera with Xenon flash that definitely can replace a dedicated digital camera for snapshot, the very good music player, the mediaviewer which takes full advantage of the big 3.5 inches screen. A capacitive, transflective display clearly would have increased the usability though.