Sony Ericsson Satio Still Wowing The Critics

The Sony Ericsson Satio is a smartphone by Sony Ericsson that was announced at the Mobile World Congress on 15 February 2009 as the Idou.

The whole premise of the phone is based around multimedia, and especially high quality playback of music and video, as well as photography. The handset houses a camera on the back, behind a slider, and it features a xenon flash. The entire front of the phone is dominated by a large 3.5-inch screen, with a 16:9 ratio (360 x 640) TFT resistive touchscreen. On a technical note, the Satio comes loaded with the Symbian operating system, and uses the PlayNow Sony Ericsson mobile content platform, which is part of the company’s new Entertainment Unlimited service.

The handset also has good connectivity, with Wi-Fi enabled and a GPS chip for navigation and location based services. However, one of the nicest multimedia features of the device is that is supports full Flash for video playback. Users of the phone can take their pick from a whole host of apps and widgets, and the Wikipedia Reader Widget is one of the finest currently available. Satio users can use the application to read Wikipedia pages in a format appropriate for smaller screens, and the little program runs like a dream on the Satio.

The image quality is indeed very good, as you’d expect from a smartphone with a 16:9 screen ratio. The price of the Satio is also extremely reasonable at the moment. Customers can take the smartphone away free on most contracts, and the Pay As You Go price seems to be, on average, around £120, which is good value for the features that the Satio packs.

Such devices prove that Sony Ericsson still have the ability to make affordable, high end, handsets. If you're lucky enough to live in Europe you can pick one up from dialaphone.co.uk.