Mobile Computing News

Photo: Sony Ericsson

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the latest offering in mobile phones from the Japanese-Swedish mobile phone maker. Considered by some to be a continuation of the Sony Ericsson Satio, the new mobile’s main selling point is in its ability to capture video in full HD.

Design

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz feels great to hold thanks to the phone’s hand moulding ergonomic design. And weighing only 97 grams, it feels rather light, but hasn’t lost any capabilities. The mobile device is not the widest, measuring in at 12.5mm at its widest point. The removable plastic cover at the back is rather disappointing and not expected on what is considered to be a flagship phone.

Features

The Vivaz has a rather unresponsive 3.2-inch 640×360 touch screen, although the picture quality is very high. It runs on Symbian S60 5^th Edition, which is rather basic and the only added thrill being integrated social networking. The Sony Ericsson phone is powered by a Texas Interments OMAP3630 720 MHz ARM Cortex A8 chip, which seems underused with such a basic UI.

Photo: Sony Ericsson

With a small internal memory of 75MB, the HD video camera mobile also comes with an 8GB microSD card providing more than adequate space to save all those HD videos. However, if the storage card does run out space, data can be transferred onto a PC using the microUSB port, which also charges the device when connected. The phone also has a 3.5mm audio jack and comes with in-ear headphones with microphone for use as a hands-free kit.

The selling point – HD video capture

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz comes with an 8.1megapixel camera which is not out of the ordinary, but the catch is its HD video recording capability. The Sony Ericsson phone takes good still pictures, but even more amazing videos thanks to its HD capabilities. The phone captures video at 24 frames per second, with a resolution of 1280×720p which puts the camera phone in a class of its own for now. Video recording is however quite slow, but for the end result the lag is worth it. Recording in HD does take its toll on the phone’s battery life and frequent recharging is needed for HD video capture.

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz currently retails at £334.95 and with the Vivaz Pro’s release already in the works, we’ll have to wait and see how well it does against it’s the new Vivaz and other touchscreen phones like the iPhone.