Sony Ericsson Satio

Launch price £TBA

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Stuff says

The Satio might just be the best camphone in the world, though it seems to lack the iPhone's touchscreen pizazz

• WATCH

PREVIEW

Sony Ericsson has done it again and made itself the talk of Mobile World Congress 2009 with a touchscreen handset.

But rather than aiming at the business crowd as the Xperia X1 did in 2008, its new 12.1MP Satio has its eyes on the mobile entertainment scene currently catered for by Apple’s iPhone.

XMB on board
Previously called the 'Idou', the Satio rocks a 3.5in touchscreen and will have an XMB menu system (like the one seen on the PS3), which sounds like a great combination to us.

Slightly more mysterious is the operating system that will sit under this. We know it will be the new, open source version of Series 60, from Symbian’s Alliance project, though official details on this are thin on the ground. There should at least be thousands of apps to download, a la the iPhone.

Compact replacement?
What’s more certain is that it’ll be the world’s first 12MP camphone. It’ll come with Xenon flash, though there’s disappointingly no news of optical zoom nor a 3.5mm headphone jack (as seen on the new W995).

Though we’d rather see camphones improve their picture-taking chops rather than cram yet more megapixels onto the sensor, we’re optimistic about the Satio’s snapping potential given the C905’s victory in our recent camphones test.

Thankfully we won’t have to wait too long for the Satio as it's due in October 2009 – sat tuned for a full review before then.