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: Fusing comm with entertainment

Sony Ericsson ‘SATIO’

Price: Rs 35,950

SPECS

3.5 inch TFT touch screen

12.1-mega pixel camera

8GB microSD card

SONY Ericsson created ripples of sort in the cellphone academia last week when they launched three phones (Aino, Satio and Yari) at a go. But Satio took the centre stage on the might of its powerful multimedia capability and a whopping 12.1-mega pixel camera.

At first look, Satio seems to be an amalgam of a Sony Walkman and a Sony Cybershot camera with a touch-screen phone sandwiched in between.

Sporting a 3.5 inch (16:9 aspect ratio) TFT touch screen, just three buttons on the fascia, the Satio looks elegant. On the flip side, with a heavy vault like sliding lid covering the 12.1-mega pixel camera lens and Xenon flash, it looks intimidating.

Despite its looks and size (112 x 55 x 13 mm) Satio is surprisingly light in weight (mere 126 gram) and comfortable to hold as a phone as well as a camera.

Though the touch screen is responsive and intuitive but it suffers with a slight time lag, a slight pause in between transition unlike the fluidity of iPhone’s touch interface.

Satio’s interface is built around Symbian S60 5th edition, for connectivity it has Bluetooth, modem, PictBridge, TV out, USB, WiFi, and supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 - UMTS/HSPA 850/900/1900/2100 networks.

Despite its multimedia DNA from Walkman, the absences of in-built stereophonic speakers and/or 3.5 mm audio socket is deplorable. And same is true for its headstone 12.1-mega pixel camera; it is deprived of an optical zoom.

But with the high quality lens on the 12.1-mega pixel camera, touch focusing (focusing on a specific object) face detection, sports mode, macro-mode options and bundled applications, one can still click some good pictures and share them directly on social networking sites. I tried and got some surprisingly good shots, especially in ambient light indoors. The Xenon flash is powerful enough to illuminate subjects within talking distance. Not to forget, you can also shoots excellent videos at 30fps (VGA 640 x 360).

Browsing Web with WiFi connectivity, the Satio excelled and I could open HTML pages and download big files with ease. Yet another point where the Sony Ericsson engineers slipped again is the battery. It has a stingy 1000mAh Li-Polymer battery pack, certainly not enough juice to run the feature-rich Satio for many hours. But then it has a 8GB microSD card bundled in, if that is any consolation.