The Sony Ericsson Vivaz smartphone has yielded to make way for its qwerty keyboard-toting sibling - the Vivaz Pro.
Boasting the ability to shoot video with HD quality - a feature which not many smartphones can claim - it's curvy, small and light, and fits perfectly in the hand.
The design is great, though it does take a while to get the back cover off to insert a SIM card and the battery. After that, it's good to go. The fact that the power and keypad lock button is on the back means you may switch it off accidentally should you be in a tight spot.
The touch-screen is amazing. It feels as natural as it looks and the stylus, although a tad annoying when swinging from the bottom of the phone, makes life much easier when you need to type in a hurry. It can be used as a decent mirror, but that's as good as the screen gets outdoors in direct sunlight, barely visible even to frame pictures. But the main feature - and a let-down feature at that - is the slide-out qwerty keyboard.
Not too long ago, slide-out keyboard phones were tailored more to the business user, and were, frankly, ugly. Sony Ericsson has done outstanding engineering to keep it pretty, thin and rounded. But the plastic construction and the fact that the buttons are almost seamless with the keyboard face makes typing difficult. Nails or large fingers are a no-no. That's why it has the 'nail-friendly' touch-screen, making the Pro pointless.
The other boasting points - the HD video camera and stills camera - are disappointing, to say the least. The 5MP camera and LED flash is enough to entice the average smartphone user, but it's grainy and really does not seem like HD.
Uploading the pics and videos to PC, the quality isn't what is expected after all that horn-blowing. The 8GB microSD card did help take an entire weekend's worth of photos and videos, though. The 70MB phone memory, however, is not really sufficient when you have apps and lots of contacts.
Having the microUSB port and 3.5mm audio jack on the side helps with when you need to use the phone while charging or listening to music, as the cords don't get in the way. The speaker is at the back, and at the bottom left side we have the microphone and the small protrusion aimed to steady the grip when pressing the two camera buttons on the right side. But the camera buttons are sensitive to the slightest touch and you may find yourself recording video in the middle of typing a message.
The operating system is Symbian S60, identical to Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic, and is equally slow. Sure, it's user-friendly at first glance, but the icons mean you have to read the manual cover-to-cover; not good when you're on-the-go. Symbian's pitfall is that it's user-friendly but doesn't give you much to play around with. The default settings are the only settings, and personalising it makes it slower.
Overall, it's not really impressive. Design-wise, it's great. As a whole, it's nothing to shout about.
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