Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou) preview: First look

Sony Ericsson Satio (a.k.a. Idou) is perched at the top of the touchscreen food chain with an ominous grin. Currently rivaled only by the Samsung Omnia HD and in a way by the non-smart Samsung Pixon12, the 12 megapixel predator readily bares its teeth of incredible multimedia, powerful processing and of course perfect connectivity. There isn't much more to look for in a smartphone except how its potential translates to real-life performance.

Sony Ericsson Satio official photos

The Satio sure is an exciting package but at this point it still needs to live up to its very own spec sheet. This quick preview tries to give you an idea about how the Satio behaves under pressure and warn of glitches (if any) that remain hidden on paper.

Now we are pretty certain you all know them by heart but before we continue let's have a look at the main features of the Sony Ericsson Satio.

Sony Ericsson Satio at a glance:

• General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100 MHz, GPRS/EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, HSUPA 3.6 Mbps
• Form factor: Touchscreen bar
• Dimensions: 112 x 55 x 13.3 mm
• Display: 3.5" 16M-color TFT resistive touchscreen, 640 x 360 pixels
• Memory: 100MB integrated memory, hot-swappable microSD card slot (up to 16GB), 256 MB RAM
• OS: Symbian OS
• Camera: 12 megapixel autofocus camera with xenon flash and video LED flash, geotagging, face and smile detection, Smile Shot, Smart contrast and VGA video recording at 30 fps
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, USB v2.0, GPS receiver with A-GPS
• Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, FM radio with RDS
• Battery: 1000 mAh battery

Sony Ericsson Satio at ours

Now, as we mentioned, the Sony Ericsson Satio currently has a single strong rival. The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a few megapixels short in the still camera department but makes up with stunning HD video recoding.

The Omnia HD is supposed to hit the market as early as this month and the Sony Ericsson Satio release date is still to be confirmed. The autumn sounds like a good guess for the Satio availability, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Sony Ericsson Satio views

Whatever that date may be, one thing's for sure - there's still plenty of time left until the Satio actually makes it to the shelves so new contenders are likely to emerge.

In the meantime Sony Ericsson gave the Sony Ericsson Satio its name (we preferred Idou, really) and announced that they have dropped the Symbian foundation future OS plans and will be offering the Satio with the regular touch-enabled Symbian S60 5th edition that's already used on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia N97.

Sony Ericsson have done a lot customizing of the OS giving it a distinct SE feel - and we definitely like every ounce of character they put in it. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, join us on the next page where we embark on exploring Sony Ericsson design and ergonomics.