Sony Ericsson Satio get ready to be blown away by its 12-megapixel camera

According to Nick Vautier, managing director of Sony Ericsson's UK division, the quad-band (850/900/1800/1900) smartphone, which measures 112mm x 55mm x 13.3 mm (LxWxD) and weighs a mere 126 gm, is a "game changer" and will "help return the company to profitability."

But what is so hot about Satio?

Well, to begin with, Satio is a quadband GSM-based smartphone that boasts of a 3.5-inch touchscreen with 360x640 pixel resolution display, is powered by ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz processor and PowerVR SGX graphics (just like iPhone 3GS and Nokia N900) and runs on the latest Symbian Series 60 (5th edition) OS.

Other features include: 128 onboard flash memory, microSD card slot (expandable up to 32GB; Satio ships with 8GB card), USB port, FM Stereo, HTML browser, accelerometer, support for multiple audio and video formats, Java support and Li-Po 1000mAh battery that promises enough power to keep Satio juiced up to 11 hours (talk time) and 360 hours (standby time).

Satio is also road-ready for mobile internet use, thanks to its 3G, GPRS, EDGE, WLAN, and Bluetooth (2.0 with A2DP) support.

The GPS (with A-GPS support) feature and pre-installed Google Maps also promises a wonderful mapping/navigation experience with Satio.

However, the most amazing feature of Satio, which could leave other smartphones salivating, is perhaps its camera.

Unlike most smartphones whose cameras seem rather subdued, the Satio boasts of a powerful 12-megapixel camera (4000x3000 pixels) with autofocus, xenon flash and a secondary video LED flash.

Satio can also capture excellent quality video (@30fps) and I could go on rambling about its features but the most important ones are touch focus, geo-tagging and face & smile detection.

However, Satio has its quirks too.

For instance, its touchscreen is resistive and not capacitive. In other words, forget about multi-touch features like pinch to zoom.