Sony Ericsson Vivaz

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is Sony Ericsson's first product announcement of 2010, and something that Sony Ericsson must hope will put a miserable 2009 behind them.

This is a touchscreen phone that manages to avoid the dreaded black slabby look by going with a curved design that Sony Ericsson says includes their "human curvature" design philosophy.. whatever that is. It looks attractive anyway, and overall the Vivaz is certainly very distinctive.

The Vivaz runs the Symbian operating system, a bit of a surprise as Sony Ericsson's recent commitment to Symbian has been patchy, but the latest versions of Symbian are well suited to this type of device.

There's a 3.2" 360 x 640 pixel touchscreen display dominating the front of the Vivaz, on the back is prominent 8.1 megapixel camera with autofocus, geotagging and a photo light. One interesting feature with the camera on the Vivaz is the video capture capabilities, Sony Ericsson say that it is capable of 720p HD recording, that is at least 1280 x 720 pixels at 25 frames per second. This is very impressive, although we have not yet seen any sample video captures from the Vivaz.

GPS is built in, and the Vivaz comes with a trial version of the Wisepilot navigation system. The large 3.2" touchscreen display should lend itself well to this type of application, but you will probably want a vehicle mount if using it in-car.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has WiFi and 3.5G HSPA high-speed data support. Inside is some sort of processor clocked at 720 MHz coupled with 75MB of available RAM, which should mean that Symbian applications run quickly. Talktime on 3G is quoted as being over 5 hours with up to 18 days standby time.

The Vivaz supports microSD memory cards, and a useful 8GB card is included in the standard sales package. Of course the Vivaz also has Bluetooth, and there's a 3.5mm audio socket too and the Vivaz has a TV out capability to play back those HD videos you captured. At just 97 grams, the Vivaz is surprisingly lightweight for a device like this.

The OS is Symbian S60 5th Edition, and it comes with applications to integrate with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube plus a document viewer and a couple of games. Symbian isn't really that sexy as an OS, but it should work well on this type of smartphone.

Sony Ericsson say that the Vivaz should be available during Q1 2010 in "Moon Silver", "Cosmic Black", "Galaxy Blue" and "Venus Ruby" colour combinations. There's no guidance on pricing, but we think that this should be a bit cheaper than the XPERIA X2.

The Vivaz is certainly a fresh design with a compelling feature set, and if Sony Ericsson can convince customers that they have beaten the reliability issues that have dogged them recently, then this phone could go on to be a success.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz at a glance

Available:
Q1 2010

Network:
GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 +
UMTS 900 / 2100 or 850 / 1900 / 2100

Data:
GPRS + EDGE + UMTS (3G) + HSPA + WiFi

Screen:
3.2" 360 x 640 pixels, 16m colours

Camera:
8 megapixels

Size:
PDA-style device
107 x 52 x 13mm / 97 grams

Bluetooth:
Yes

Memory card:
MicroSD

Infra-red:
No

Polyphonic:
Yes

Java:
Yes

GPS:
Yes

OS:
Symbian S60 5th Edition

Battery life:
5 hours talk / 18 days standby (3G)
13 hours talk / 18 days standby (GSM)