Sony Ericsson announced its intention to bring together its music-centred Walkman and camera-focused Cybershot ranges earlier this year and now we have them in the rather sleek shape of the Satio. Not content with that, it also runs on the new Symbian 9.4 OS with S60 5th Edition UI and incorporates a 12-megapixel (count 'em!) camera, WiFi, HSDPA 3G and GPS – just about everything you could ask for really…

Handset

To do the 12-megapixel camera justice there's an outsize lens which protrudes at the back, bulking out part of the rear of the Satio to 112mm x 55mm x 17/13mm and 126g. Its sleek, tapered, sliding cover goes a long way to lessening the effects though, and it feels surprisingly lightweight in the hand. The 3.5in touchscreen on the front has three slivers of buttons beneath it (call start and stop plus menu). Around the sides are a large camera shutter button, stills/video toggle button, gallery button, volume rocker and a screen lock slider. There's also Sony Ericsson's tow-point power plug and a microSD plug hidden under an outsize grommet.

Screen

The 3.5in resistive touchscreen has 16 million colours and 640 x 360-pixel resolution. It looks terrifically sharp and detailed, but it's resistive, rather than capacitive, which is often a recipe for frustration, and so it is with the Satio. It's by no means the worst offender we've come across, and it's fine at discerning the difference between our pushes and presses in the large, thumb-friendly top sections of the menus. But when you get a bit deeper into the OS, it became increasingly tricky to accurately press the smaller menu options. Internet browsing too soon became a chore. Perhaps we should have guessed since the phone comes with a stylus which can be attached by a lanyard – never a good sign.

Operating system

The Symbian S60 has five home pages which correspond to the menu strip at the top of the screen – contacts, internet bookmarks, general (with shortcuts to phone, media, messages and Google), gallery and shortcuts. But unlike Android, the iPhone or Samsung's TouchWiz, there are no fancy widgets that you can move around to personalise the screens.

And while a lack of widgets might not make the OS seem old-fashioned on its own, the general lag it tended to exhibit when moving between menus and apps certainly did. On a high-end phone like this, that really shouldn't have to happen. 

Browser

The Symbian browser is okay but doesn't quite measure up to the iPhone or HTC's devices. It's quick to render pages, which is encouraging, but the way it jumps away from the webpage you're viewing when you want to use the keyboard may be practical (more room for the QWERTY keyboard on the screen) but it's disorientating – we'd prefer a keyboard that was smaller, but more accurate in the hand than the virtually unusable mini keyboard on offer.

Zooming isn't quite straightforward as you'll need to open up the zoom bar, and it doesn't always react accurately to the touch. Similarly, you can view multiple pages but the option is buried in the menu. A bit more refinement is necessary before this can cut it with the better mobile browsers.

Camera

The 12.1-megapixel camera offers quite simply the best results we've yet seen from a camphone. Edges were sharp, and colour balance generally accurate (though perhaps just an eensy bit bright with its default 9-megapixel setting (the full 12 megapixels uses more memory, takes longer to save, and is only available in 4:3 resolution). Sliding the shutter open has the camera ready to go in just over two seconds (very fast for such a high-spec device) and even though it has autofocus, you can take a snap in under three seconds.

You're spoilt for options too, since the Satio can offer touch focus, where you tap the screen to focus on a particular point, BestPic, which takes seven shots in quick succession both before and after you press the shutter. There's also smile detection, panorama, macro mode, a text-shooting mode, and a real Xenon flash, very much a rarity on camphones these days.

Video quality isn't quite up to the still standard, but it records in VGA quality at 30 frames per second which is considerably better than most.

Media

Movies look terrific on that luxurious screen, beautifully sharp and clear in full widescreen mode. Music quality didn't disappoint either, with the supplied headphones delivering a clear, full sound. But again, it's the usability that let's the Satio down – there's no 3.5mm jack plug to add your own headphones (though there is an adaptor for the SE power plug) and we were surprised there was no graphic equaliser to allow you to tailor the sound to your personal taste. It does have TrackID though, which allows you to identify mystery tracks on the built-in FM radio.

Battery

Battery life wasn't great on the Satio, and it delivered just a little over a day of moderate to heavy use, but if you hammer it, and you may well be tempted, considering all the features on board, you'll be struggling to make it through the day.

On paper, the Sony Ericsson Satio sounds like a terrific option, bringing together the best of Sony Ericsson's audio and camera-centric phones in one package. There's certainly plenty to play with, but in practice it's severely let down by its awkward usability, with the chief culprit being the insensitive touchscreen, though it's not helped by an aging OS and sluggish processor. The Satio has some very good features, but overall we're disappointed because we'd expected so much more.