Sony Ericsson have a good record when it comes to producing camera phones. The Satio was a good example of how mobile handsets are beginning to cause looks of consternation from the producers of low end cameras and now its predecessor, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, has cheap camcorders in its sights, too.

Sporting an 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording, the  Vivaz has a lot going for it in terms of camera power, but how about the rest of it? Is it another case of good camera/bad phone, or have Sony Ericsson finally cracked it and brought you the best of both worlds?

Using Symbian S60 as its user interface, being home to a 3.2″ touchscreen and featuring a whole plethora of features, entertainment and social networking capabilities sounds promising enough on paper, but with an outright pricetag of over £300, how do things pan out off the page and in real life? Let’s take a closer look….

GOOD LOOKS……

First impressions are good; the Vivaz is a sharp looking beast, despite a slight over-use of plastic. Sony Ericsson have broken their usual design mould and given the Vivaz a curved back, which makes the handset fit very comfortably in the palm of your hand and there’s a light, airy feel to proceedings, too, with the phone weighing in at less than 100 grams.

Buttons are sparse, which adds a certain amount of smoothness to the Vivaz. On the front you’ll find a Menu button, flanked by Call Receive and End buttons, while the back is home to the camera lens. The physical camera controls are on the left hand side and Sony Ericsson have added in a nice touch by providing you with dedicated stills and video camera, whilst on the bottom left, you’ll find a rocker button which doubles as controls for zoom and volume.

There’s a micro-USB slot on the left hand side and beside it, the first hint of a problem. Possibly because of the sleek and tapered design, Sony Ericsson have decided to install a 3.5mm headphone jack on the side. This is not a good move and almost seems like an afterthought; “Bugger! We’ve forgotten about the headphones!”. It also ruins much of the point of being so lightweight, as portability is nullified as soon as you plug in your earphones – unless you’ve got huge pockets.

50/50 TOUCHSCREEN

The 3.2″ touchscreen takes up most of the front of the device. The touchscreen is resistive, rather than the capacitive screens that most contemporary handsets such as the HTC Desire and iPhone have, and although you get a decent amount of response the majority of the time, there were several occasions that we were sent to the wrong menu – particularly when using a finger, as opposed to the included stylus.

That said,  the LCD display is bright and sharp – the 360 x 640 pixel resolution easily kicks the iPhone into touch in terms of definition (although the iPhone 4 is likely to change that) – either in terms of graphics or multimedia playback. Colours were realistic and enticing, but it really was a shame the experience led to the aforementioned reliability issues of the resistive touchscreen interface.

SOFTWARE

You can configure up to 5 homescreens on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz from a choice of 7. These include a contact screen, a camera screen, direct access to Twitter and various other styles and shortcuts, whilst the main menu button will take you straight to your messages, phone book and media player, amongst other things.

However, we would advise spending some time organising icons from the menu screens to appear as shortcuts on one of your homescreens – there are just too many options in some of them and it could potentially take an age an half to get where you want.

Another bug-bear is the connectivity. Every time you use your browser to go online, you are asked if your preferred connection is Wi-Fi or 3G. That’s every time you want to go online which, as you can imagine, gets rather tiresome incredibly quickly.

The user interface will definitely take some getting used to and the Vivaz is certainly not as slick to use as, say, an Android-based phone. But, despite this, once you know what you’re doing all of the processes will seem easier, apps will become more accessible and your experience will definitely improve.

FEATURES

Sony Ericsson may not produce the best all-round phones in the world, but there are areas that they repeatedly excel in. Firstly, let’s take a look at the camera. For a long while, manufacturers have been increasing the megapixel count as if that is the key technology that will make us all into David Baileys. This, of course, is a lie.

So, it is nice to see Sony Ericsson pull things back to a more restrained 8.1MP for the Vivaz – you really don’t need any more than that for a mobile phone – and you will quickly notice that still image quality on it is far superior to the vast majority of camera phones on the market. Shots under normal-to-bright lights are sharp and show off some realistic colours, and you get some nice effects to play with, too. The HD recording also works well in the right light and with an 8MB memory card included, you should have plenty of space for a decent shoot.

However, in more testing conditions, things aren’t so great. There’s a fair amount of fuzz in darker photos or moving subjects and it’s pretty obvious that the Vivaz could really do with a decent Xenon flash. This is also a bit of a problem with regards to the camcorder setting – the LED light does a sterling job in video mode, but there’s a disappointing amount of background noise in the images for a 720p HD recorder. All in all; much better than most smartphones, good for a camera phone and better than some low-end cameras. However, the Vivaz costs considerably more.

Secondly, let’s take a look at the media player. As Sony Ericsson is responsible for the Walkman, you would expect them to deliver the goods in terms of audio quality and it’s no surprise that they have done this in spades. Sound quality is typically good and improved 10-fold by a good pair of headphones that you can easily slot into the 3.5mm jack.

In terms of the media player’s interface, it’s very easy to move yourself around and highly user-friendly. Organising artists, playlists and song titles is very easy to do and the same applies for when you want to switch modes to viewing photos or watching movies. Video playback was very good; lots of definition to get excited about, good colours and some decent moving images makes an all-round excellent viewing experience  – although the smaller screen is perhaps more suited to short clips rather than the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

PERFORMANCE

As a camera and media player, the Vivaz works well. It’s a shame then, that Sony Ericsson haven’t quite managed to nail the phone aspect yet. The interface is fairly slick and allows for quick recall of names, past calls and new contact entry, although there’s no syncing options for social networking sites.

Call quality was fine from the perspective of the other end of the line, but from the actual handset, things weren’t great at all. It was very hard to hear much from the receiving caller when outside on a busy street and although things cleared up in the peace and quiet, the sound level could only be classed as reasonable.

As usual with any phone offering 3G, the battery life will be fairly short. Expect to be charging up every night as a minimum – and if you’re a “power-user”, a heck of a lot more.

AT THE END OF THE DAY……

….there’s a fair amount going for the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, but not quite enough for a whole-hearted recommendation. If you want a basic-perfoming phone with a good media player, a decent camera and some HD recording action, then the Vivaz could be worth a look. There aren’t too many smartphones, or even camera phones, with better cameras on board – but there are plenty with better phones, better interfaces and better web access. Things would be much improved if the Vivaz was a bit more reliable – we often found it going to screens we didn’t want to – and a lot sharper – it just didn’t have that “zip” that is becoming more and more apparent in contemporary handsets.

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