Sony Ericsson Vivaz
The Vivaz is a stylish little handset with some great potential. Of course Sony Ericson have a little bit of a poor reputation right now but all they need is a couple of good handsets to turn that around. They seem to have avoided the touch screen market up until recently but now they’re here they seem to be unleashing a host of touch screen phones.
So how does the Vivaz fair. It’s got a great feature set, MP3, 720p video recording, Wisepilot navigation and much more.
Construction and Build:
The Vivaz is a lovely piece of kit. It’s rather light weight and very compact. The screen is a very decent size considering how small the phone is and the curves make the Vivaz seem a lot slimmer than it really is. All in all this is a very nice one hand friendly phone.
Down the right hand side you’ll find not only a dedicated camera shutter key but also video controls. The volume keys double up as zoom controls which add to the overall feel that this is a very camera focused phone.
The lock key can be found at the top of the handset and is within easy reach considering how compact this phone is.
US & OS
There’s not a massive amount to talk about when it comes to the Vivaz and it’s UI. If you’ve used the Satio then you’re probably going to be used to the Vivaz already. It offers a friendly user experience and is rather simple to navigate.
You can swipe through your home screens and customise these as you like. The kinetic scrolling comes in very nicely whiles doing this.
The internet browser is pretty impressive. The screen manages the browser menu’s and web page image remarkably well and there is very little space lost. The display is very clear and allows for a great browsing experience. There are a couple of issues with the browser however. The accelerometer seems to struggle and reacts sluggishly when the phone is tilted to landscape. Also the images are very clear on web pages but the text itself looks very dull and bland which takes away from the polished experience.
For those who are texting fans then this is a very nice phone to use. You’ll find threaded text available on this handset which is great for keeping track of those lengthy conversations. The qwerty keyboard is lovely to use in landscape. However to use the qwerty in portrait becomes terribly fiddly and pretty much impossible for those who have big fingers. The handwriting input is a nice feature but in reality is also very fiddly and difficult to use.
Camera:
Now we can get down to what makes the Vivaz really stand out. The camera can’t really be faulted. For still shots you have a great range of camera functions and the auto focus combined with LED flash works very well. You can capture some great looking shots and once again the hard key support comes in very handy.
So how does the video look? Brilliant! The HD video capture is absolutely superb. The video capture really works well and the zoom whiles in video also works well with very little loss of quality. There is absolutely no view finder lag either which is a real relief. To be honest the Vivaz offers one of the best experiences available for video capture on a mobile phone!
The one issue that has me a little concerned is that when switching between still camera and video the Vivaz seems to make a grinding and clicking sound. Normally I wouldn’t worry but this is Sony Ericson so there’s a huge chance that the phone will just explode and they’ll all end up recalled. Me? Doubt Sony Ericson? Never!
Media:
The phone has a decent media set up. The MP3 and video can all be located in one location and navigation of this looks very smart with the Sony Ericson theme. All in all it’s a good experience.
The phone has some impressive volume on it and the audio is clear. The screen is fairly impressive to, although it’s a little on the small size so not great for video.
Conclusion:
Admittedly this is quite a nice phone and for any video fanatics out there this is definitely worth looking at. The over all quality of the Vivaz is top notch and the performance is above average. My only concern is the noise it makes when switching between shooting modes on the camera. It just sounds far too much like a robot in disguise and we all know what Sony Ericson are like. My opinion is give it a month and see what user faults develop!
Advantages:
- 3.2" 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
- 8 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, face and smile detection, geotagging and touch focus
- HD 720p video recording @ 24fps with continuous auto focus
- Symbian OS 9.4 S60 5th, topped with a custom-brewed homescreen and media menu
- 720 MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator
- Quad-band GSM support
- 3G with HSDPA 10.2Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps support
- Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
- microSD card slot (up to 16GB, 8GB card in the box)
- Built-in accelerometer
- Turn-to-mute
- TV out
- Stereo FM Radio
- microUSB and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
- Web browser has full Flash support
- Preinstalled Wisepilot navigation software
- Office document viewer
- Decent audio quality
Disadvantages
- No camera lens protection
- No auto mode for the flash/video light
- LED flash not powerful enough
- The S60 5th edition UI isn't to the best in class standards
- No proximity sensor sensor to lock the screen during a call
- No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
- No smart or voice dialing
- No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
- No stereo speakers
- No digital compass (magnetometer)
- Videocalling uses only the main camera (no secondary one)