Sony Ericsson Vivaz review
RM 590 - 605
AP: RM 560 - 575
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Review by: Loh Ving Sung
At A Glance:
In the box
- Sony Ericsson Vivaz
- USB Power Adaptor
- USB Charger
- Sony Ericsson Headphone
- Manual
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the company’s latest smartphone, jammed packed with high-end features, all the while being lightweight and sporting an 8.1 megapixel camera. The Vivaz is continuing the breakaway from conventional classification of Sony Ericson’s alphabet names.
Design
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz sports a candybar, and a 3.2 inch TFT resistive screen, sporting 16M colours. The phone itself has a curved design, designed to mimic the human hand’s grip. The phone we have on hand has a silver plastic case. The phone looks good, with three buttons- call button, end call button and the main menu button below the 3.2 inch screen.
The Vivaz is a light phone, coming in at 97g, and is great to hold and even easier to pocket.
The right spine has quite a number of buttons, a volume rocker, a quick video camera button and a quick camera button. On the left spine, there’s the 3.5mm headphone jack and a microUSB port. The top button turns the phone on and off and allows removal of the microSD card safely. The button also set the phone’s audio profile and locks/unlocks the phone.
Open up the back cover and the microSD slot is located on the top part of the phone. The bottom has the battery pack, remove that and you’ll see the SIM slot. The device has 75MB worth of internal memory, microSD supports up to 16GB, with an 8GB card included.
Sony Ericsson claims up to 440 hours and talk time of up to 5 hours 20 min. The phone battery lasted well during our multimedia and gaming test.
Features
The Vivaz runs on the Symbian 60 5th Edition, and is a hands-on device, as the OS has been here for a while now. There is a custom home screen by Sony Ericsson, and is quite busy with an upper tab with 5 buttons- there’s a favourite contact key, Twitter, active homescreen, photo gallery and shortcut keys accessing the entirety of the phone.
At the bottom, user’s can bring up an additional menu, by pressing the end call button. The menu accesses the phone dialler, multimedia gallery, the messages and the Google search button. The home menu has 4x3 grid, and there a good amount of functionality - Playnow, Internet, Media, Camera, Messaging, Location services, Contacts, and Settings.
The UI is pretty decent, and controlling the phone is a good experience. The Vivaz’s accelerometer supports home menu, messaging, pictures, videos and webpages. Sony Ericsson Vivaz uses the S60 5th edition touch browser, with a Sony Ericsson homepage. The browser supports tap to zoom, and has an additional zoom bar.
The phone also has an onboard A-GPS, Wisepilot turn-by-turn navigation and Google Maps. PIM functionality is extensive, from Quickoffice, a countdown timer, alarm, notes, tasks and an organiser. Social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter are included, as are YouTube and Picasa.
The integrated multimedia player is simple to use, our multimedia library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. The music player allows quick playlists. The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option.
Connectivity
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz has several connectivity options ranging from quad-band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz), 10.2 Mbps HSDPA, EDGE/GPRS, Bluetooth v2.0 and Wi-Fi.
Camera
The Vivaz has an 8.1 megapixel camera and has features like LED flash and autofocus. The picture quality can be affected badly when shooting indoors as the pictures have a yellowish tinge. With better lighting, the camera does shoot some crisp photos. The macro shots were clear as well.
The Vivaz offers a good range of tweaking options, such as the ISO and white balance, and self timer. Also, the Vivaz is rather slow when auto focusing, so taking quick photos will not be possible.
The video camera shoots at 720 pixels and 24fps, and it has continuous autofocus and video light
Games
The Vivaz has two games, SSX and Rally Master Pro. SSX is a snowboarding game, where you choose an avatar and make your way down a mountain and perform tricks at the same time. Rally Master Pro is a driving game, time yourself against opponents.
The games are entertaining, and the use of the accelerometer does make for a visceral experience.
Verdict
Sony Ericsson Vivaz is packed high-end features and a wide-array of application. At RM 1,799, the Vivaz is recommended to those looking for their 1st smartphone, as this device has will cater to your every whim, but the experience isn’t fine tuned.
The phone has plenty of positives, however, the aforementioned multitude of features, and the resistive screen gave us a surprise, being quite intuitive and easy to use. But heavy Internet and application users might crave more from the Vivaz. Tags : Sony Ericsson Vivaz
At A Glance:
|
In the box
- Sony Ericsson Vivaz
- USB Power Adaptor
- USB Charger
- Sony Ericsson Headphone
- Manual
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the company’s latest smartphone, jammed packed with high-end features, all the while being lightweight and sporting an 8.1 megapixel camera. The Vivaz is continuing the breakaway from conventional classification of Sony Ericson’s alphabet names.
Design
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz sports a candybar, and a 3.2 inch TFT resistive screen, sporting 16M colours. The phone itself has a curved design, designed to mimic the human hand’s grip. The phone we have on hand has a silver plastic case. The phone looks good, with three buttons- call button, end call button and the main menu button below the 3.2 inch screen.
The Vivaz is a light phone, coming in at 97g, and is great to hold and even easier to pocket.
The right spine has quite a number of buttons, a volume rocker, a quick video camera button and a quick camera button. On the left spine, there’s the 3.5mm headphone jack and a microUSB port. The top button turns the phone on and off and allows removal of the microSD card safely. The button also set the phone’s audio profile and locks/unlocks the phone.
Open up the back cover and the microSD slot is located on the top part of the phone. The bottom has the battery pack, remove that and you’ll see the SIM slot. The device has 75MB worth of internal memory, microSD supports up to 16GB, with an 8GB card included.
Sony Ericsson claims up to 440 hours and talk time of up to 5 hours 20 min. The phone battery lasted well during our multimedia and gaming test.
Features
The Vivaz runs on the Symbian 60 5th Edition, and is a hands-on device, as the OS has been here for a while now. There is a custom home screen by Sony Ericsson, and is quite busy with an upper tab with 5 buttons- there’s a favourite contact key, Twitter, active homescreen, photo gallery and shortcut keys accessing the entirety of the phone.
At the bottom, user’s can bring up an additional menu, by pressing the end call button. The menu accesses the phone dialler, multimedia gallery, the messages and the Google search button. The home menu has 4x3 grid, and there a good amount of functionality - Playnow, Internet, Media, Camera, Messaging, Location services, Contacts, and Settings.
The UI is pretty decent, and controlling the phone is a good experience. The Vivaz’s accelerometer supports home menu, messaging, pictures, videos and webpages. Sony Ericsson Vivaz uses the S60 5th edition touch browser, with a Sony Ericsson homepage. The browser supports tap to zoom, and has an additional zoom bar.
The phone also has an onboard A-GPS, Wisepilot turn-by-turn navigation and Google Maps. PIM functionality is extensive, from Quickoffice, a countdown timer, alarm, notes, tasks and an organiser. Social networking apps like Facebook and Twitter are included, as are YouTube and Picasa.
The integrated multimedia player is simple to use, our multimedia library is automatically sorted by artist, album, genre and composer and searching tracks by gradual typing is available. The music player allows quick playlists. The process of adding tracks to the library is as simple as choosing the refresh option.
Connectivity
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz has several connectivity options ranging from quad-band GSM connectivity (850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz), 10.2 Mbps HSDPA, EDGE/GPRS, Bluetooth v2.0 and Wi-Fi.
Camera
The Vivaz has an 8.1 megapixel camera and has features like LED flash and autofocus. The picture quality can be affected badly when shooting indoors as the pictures have a yellowish tinge. With better lighting, the camera does shoot some crisp photos. The macro shots were clear as well.
The Vivaz offers a good range of tweaking options, such as the ISO and white balance, and self timer. Also, the Vivaz is rather slow when auto focusing, so taking quick photos will not be possible.
The video camera shoots at 720 pixels and 24fps, and it has continuous autofocus and video light
Games
The Vivaz has two games, SSX and Rally Master Pro. SSX is a snowboarding game, where you choose an avatar and make your way down a mountain and perform tricks at the same time. Rally Master Pro is a driving game, time yourself against opponents.
The games are entertaining, and the use of the accelerometer does make for a visceral experience.
Verdict
Sony Ericsson Vivaz is packed high-end features and a wide-array of application. At RM 1,799, the Vivaz is recommended to those looking for their 1st smartphone, as this device has will cater to your every whim, but the experience isn’t fine tuned.
The phone has plenty of positives, however, the aforementioned multitude of features, and the resistive screen gave us a surprise, being quite intuitive and easy to use. But heavy Internet and application users might crave more from the Vivaz. Tags : Sony Ericsson Vivaz