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Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro Symbian smartphone

Out of touch?

Better news comes with the camera. Despite the resolution drop, it can still record video in 720p HD. Picture quality is good, delivering sharp images with generally accurate colours and an impressive amount of detail. It doesn't have those tasty Cyber-shot extras like BestPic or face tagging but it does have panorama and macro modes, smile and face detection, as well as touch focus, where you touch the screen to establish where you want the point of focus to be.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro

The camera isn't bad - in spite of a resolution drop

Videos look great on the 16:9, 360 x 640, 16m-colour screen and while there are a couple of options for stretching films to fill the widescreen dimensions, fast forward relies on a touch bar which the insensitivity of the screen - am I labouring this point here? - makes difficult to move accurately. You can watch MPEG 4, WMV and 3GP formats, but no DivX or XviD.

The music player looks similar to SE's very capable Walkman series of old, though without the SensMe mood and tempo search facility. The supplied headphones certainly aren't Walkman spec either, and instead provide a distinctly 'shut in', tinny and bass-light sound that cries out to be upgraded through the 3.5mm jack or stereo Bluetooth connection.

There's 70MB of memory on board for your media backed up with an 8GB Micro SD card, though you can add up to 32GB this way. There's also a USB converter for the Micro SD card, if you don't want to go through the MediaGo syncing experience that comes up automatically if you plug the phone into your PC.

Verdict

This could have been a lovely phone, but it has the feel of a 'me too' handset that never really had much love and attention devoted to it. The Symbian OS still doesn't feel as though it's been properly developed for touchscreen phones, with several odd quirks that count against its usability. The resistive screen is the major disappointment, though, and its lack of sensitivity meant that using the phone was generally too frustrating to recommend, despite its quality camera, stylish looks and decent keyboard. ®

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Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro

Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro Symbian smartphone

The Vivaz cameraphone gains a slide-out keyboard - but fails to lose the poor touchscreen.
Price: Sim-free: £340 RRP

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