Preview: Sony Ericsson Vivaz

Written on 2/15/2010 11:35:00 AM by poison_ivy

Sony Ericsson's smartphones have failed to wow me these past couple of months. I didn't even bother to write about their Aino and Satio line because--well, honestly, they're expensive and they don't really have anything new to offer. Add the fact that some retailers are pulling out stock because of "software issues". Anyways, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the next mobile phone that the Japanese-Finnish company will be releasing, and hopefully, if all goes well, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz will be available on Orange come March.

Design

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz sports a 3.2 inches resistive touchscreen with three buttons at the bottom front: the call button, menu, and the end button. Unlike most smartphones, the 3.5mm headset jack isn't located on top, instead, it's on the left side together with the microUSB port. On the right is the volume rocker with the video and camera button.



With the Vivaz's features, you can't help but compare it with the Samsung i8910 HD. Design-wise the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is much lighter and slimmer than the latter.

Features

It seems that Sony Ericsson is lacking in the innovation department so they took the Samsung i8910 HD's features and put it on a different hardware but hopefully, SE improved on some things. So why do I keep comparing the Sony Ericsson Vivaz with the i8910 HD? Well let's see, both mobile phones runs Symbian S60 OS, both have 8 megapixel camera, both is capable of recording 720p videos, both have WiFi, 3G HSDPA, GPS, TV-Out, microSD slots, and FM radios. The differences are: that the Samsung i8910 HD has an 8GB internal storage, both run different UI on top of Symbian, Samsung with their TouchWiz, and Sony Ericsson with their own homescreen interface, i8910 HD has a 3.7 inch capacitive AMOLED screen while Vivaz only has 3.2 inch resistive touchscreen, and the CPU (Samsung runs 600MHz ARM cortex, Sony Ericsson has 720MHz).



Anyways, the initial review from GSMArena seems to be fairing well with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. 720p video recording puts it on top plus initial image quality test shows that the Sony Ericsson Vivaz can be a very good camera phone. Things are looking good for the Sony Ericsson Vivaz.

Outlook

While things may seem great for the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, the fact is, like the Sony Ericsson Xperia X2, it comes a bit too late. The Samsung i8910 HD has been in the market for almost a year now. In fact, I think that Samsung and Orange, the exlusive distributor of the Samsung i8910 HD in the UK, is slowly phasing this phone out. Knowing Sony Ericsson's pricing scheme, the Vivaz will likely be expensive at initial launch and with some stock of the i8910 HD still in the market, you can bet that you can find a much cheaper option with the latter if you're looking for a great camera phone. Also, the Samsung Wave will probably be available at the same time as the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, it has a lower camera resolution but it has Samsung's Bada OS and capacitive touchscreen and if it's priced lower or similar to the Vivaz, well, it would be hard for the Vivaz to get a solid footing in the mobile phone market.

Posted in mobile world congress, MWC, MWC 2010, Sony Ericsson, Sony Ericsson new phones, sony ericsson vivaz |