Sony Ericsson Satio > Reviews (21)

I got the Sony Ericsson Satio in early winter 2009; it has a 12 megapixel camera, which is probably the only useful feature of this phone. Even that feature is limited to the photo camera, and doesn't extend to the video camera.

The Sony Ericsson Satio is a Symbian phone; this means it has a very limited application support. Therefore, it's extremely difficult to find a decent set of applications for this phone. The operating system version is S60v5, so I tried many applications that are supposed to support this operating system version, out of which only a handful of applications worked. In rough figures the amount of applications that I've tried on this phone would come to about 800, out of which less than 30 applications work.

Alternative reader is the only PDF and DJVU reader, which are managed to install successfully on this phone. Quick office trial version came with the phone, but I never used that. I also installed documents to go, which is a free application to view office documents. This can be used to view word processor documents, spread sheets, and slideshows. It can also be used to view plain text files. An application called SMS preview came pre-installed with the phone, I rarely use this application; nevertheless it's a useful application to have.

The form came pre-installed with two games; one is Labyrinth, which is a game where you tilt the phone to move a little ball through a maze, while trying to make sure it doesn't drop through one of the holes. The other game is Sudoku, which is quite self-explanatory.

I haven't installed any games on this phone, because I couldn't find games compatible this specific phone. I have however installed a few other applications, which I think are quite useful. These applications include egg timer, which is the only count down timer I found for this phone that actually works. Secondly, an application called random, which is simply a random number generator. And finally, I installed SisEditor, which is useful for installing applications that have an expired or missing certificate. I found this very useful for installing alternative reader.

I've haven't found any mobile security software, which works properly on this phone. Therefore, I never use this form for browsing or surfing the net. I have tried installing several mobile security applications, such as Kaspersky mobile security. Just like the rest, this failed to install. I contacted several mobile security software companies, via their message boards and e-mail services, most of them told me that there are other customers will also experiencing the same problems with the Sony Ericsson Satio. They advised me to change the phone, rather than looking for a mobile security application.

Sony Ericsson – now known as Sony, refused to provide any further updates for this phone, despite the fact that many of its users have been requesting firmware updates for a number of features. Some of these features I have already listed above, I briefly mentioned the video camera.

Many users requested a firmware update, which would enable the video camera to record 720p videos. I wrote a rather lengthy request via their contact service, requesting the above features to be updated, along with several others, which would include a firmware update that would enable the user to record phone calls. I also pointed out that I have to restart the phone every few hours, so that the standard phone call service works. This is because, the phone call feature often freezes or rejects incoming and outgoing phone calls, and the only way to make a phone call – is to restart the phone, sometimes this includes taking the battery out and putting it back in again.

It would appear that phone with so many bad features, might have no useful features at all. This phone does actually have some very good features, especially when it comes to multimedia.

The video and audio player features are the strengths of this phone, due to the high quality of playback. Although this phone doesn't support many multimedia formats, it plays those that it does support at a fairly high playback quality compared to a lot of phones of its time, which I have tested.

I also like its multilingual support feature, which means this phone can correctly display text of languages that aren't installed on the phone. This includes languages using complex scripts, symbols, and special characters.

Weighing the good and the bad aspects of this phone, I'd never recommend it to anyone. The simple reason is that most of the important features, which we look for in phones today – have either malfunctioned in this phone, or are missing altogether.