Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou) official photos

Sony Ericsson Satio (Idou) official photosThe 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

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.

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.