Review: Sony-Ericsson Vivaz

The Sony-Ericsson Vivaz is a great all-round phone with a lot going for it, but it's not without flaw.

Summary:

The phone's tools, features and connectivity options are almost all you could want. It is stable and performs quickly, apart from a slightly sluggish startup time.

The camera's selling point is the HD video and 8mp camera. Unfortunately, the image sensor and lens are too small for 8mp of resolution and quality suffers. Video is large, but of average quality and the frame rate is a little slow, but good for everyday uses.

I found the TFT touchscreen difficult to use accurately with fingers or the stylus, this touchscreen is more of a press-screen. I think I prefer a capacitive touchscreen.

The human interface is, to me, the most important part and if it's uncomfortable, it doesn't matter how many bells and whistles it has.

Price is still to be confirmed.

My rating: 7/10.

Opinions:

It looks to be aimed at the multi-media enthusiast, as user-generated web content skyrockets in popularity.

I found the TFT resistive touchscreen a bit too resistant to taps and control using the included stylus was difficult at times, as it gripped the screen too much. The stylus wasnt easy to hold and became slippery quickly. I had better luck using a ball-point pen. Control was even harder when using a finger.

The device feels comfortable to hold, is well-proportioned, light and the curves are ergonomic. It's defnitely an eye-catching device if that's a factor for you and there are a few choices for faceplate colours.

The 3.2-inch, 640x360-pixel, 16:9-ratio screen does a great job of playing video and the resolution means images and menus look really nice.

The rear cover has no release button - only a groove where you pry it off with fingernails or a small tool, making memory or SIM card swaps difficult in a pinch.

It lacks a QWERTY keyboard and I found text input annoying with the stylus, but achievable with effort. It does have a fun and (maybe) useful handwriting recognition feature, which is surprisingly accurate and intuitive.

The built in support for Twitter, Facebook, Google Maps and Youtube is a cool addition, and very much a redeeming feature for the phone.

Video:

The 720p HD video recording is fair but resolution isn't everything. I'll take quality over quantity any day. At 24fps, the footage is a little jumpy when panning but is still good enough for everyday uses. The MP4-format videos can be uploaded straight to YouTube from the phone, which is handy.

It comes with 75MB of internal storage - a bit low for a handset which takes 720p video and 8mp photos - but the handset does include an 8gb microSD card to offset this. I would have preferred more built in memory.

Photos:

Photos taken are reasonable quality. Autofocus is good for a phone, but sharpness and definition is lacking at full pixels. This goes to show that the number of megapixels isn't the most important factor, but the sensor and lens.

Unfortunately, there is no optical zoom, only 4x digital, which simply enlarges the centre of the image, compromising overall quality.

Photos are in jpeg format at 3264x2448 pixels and are compressed quite a lot. My photos came out at an average of just over 1MB.

Sample image:

Below is an image taken with default settings, image stabliser on, including an inset image of the actual pixels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional features:

It has a huge range of features including MP3 ringtones, FM radio, face detection, assisted GPS and Microsoft Office documents viewer.

Geotagging is supported and the phone has clients for Twitter, Facebook and Google Maps.

There are dedicated buttons on the side for video and photo recording, which enables you to have the device ready to film or shoot quickly.

The 3.5mm stereo output is great for audio playback and the included earbud headphones are of reasonable quality and integrate a microphone, but no in-cord resistor for volume control.

The device supports GSM and UMTS at a broad range of frequencies for roaming, as well as WLAN and Bluetooth.

It has an accelerometer, which is quite accurate, as demonstrated by a cool simulated-liquid feature which could effectively tell you if you were, say, upside down after being buried in an avalanche.

The operating system is Symbian S60 Edition 5 and it has a 720 MHz processor.

The micro-USB port is used for both data transfer and charging.

Conclusion and verdict:

Chock full of features, some gimmicky, but a solid, stylish phone with good web-features. Just don't expect mind-blowing images and video just because the resolution is a bit higher.

Look interesting? What do you think of Sony-Ericsson phones? Are phone companies focussing too much on megapixel increase, instead of quality? Ever owned an SE phone?

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