The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the company’s latest touchscreen handset, and proof that it’s not giving up on all singing multimedia phones yet in favour of smartphones. Should it though? Read on and we’ll tell all in our full Sony Ericsson Vivaz review…

If you’ve ever used a Sony Ericsson Satio before, you’ll be right at home with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. It runs the same operating system and aims to juggle all your tunes and videos in the same way: the main difference is that it drops the screen size and camera resolution, from an absurd 12.1 megapixels down to 8.1.

Cutting off the excess fat of the Satio is a very smart move however, and we wonder why Sony Ericsson didn’t do it before. Instead of a phone the size of a compact camera, with none of the power, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is a well crafted, slim handset with lovely curves and a surprisingly smudge free, smooth plastic back.

Like the Satio (and also the Nokia X6), the Sony Ericson Vivaz uses Symbian for its software, for better or worse. On the plus side, you’ve got access to a big back catalogue of apps, but Symbian is showing its age these days, and we noticed plenty of long, black screens switching between landscape and portrait modes. The lack of auto-correct on the keyboard for typing is also a pain, meaning typing – accurately – is a much slower process than on other touchscreen phones.

Sony Ericsson does try to stamp its own identity on Symbian however, and we’ve got to give it credit for trying: instead of a bland homescreen, you get five different profile pages. You can set them to play animations, act as shortcuts or even show a stream of all your Twitter banter, and it helps to make your phone that bit more personalised.

Switching around between the five panels works well, but unfortunately, on two different Sony Ericsson Vivaz models we tested, we simply could not get the Twitter app to work – or Google Maps for that matter – although web surfing worked fine. Hopefully Sony Ericsson will have ironed out the kinks before release however.

As a camera, it’s not admittedly as impressive as we’ve come to expect from Sony Ericsson. The shots it takes aren’t especially sharp, and the 720p HD video recording, one of the big selling points, just adds in extra noise. But as a media player the Sony Ericsson Vivaz excels.

Sound quality is good, video format support is strong, and movies look superb on the widescreen 3.2-inch screen, and if you’ve ever used any Sony gadget, you’ll be right at home with the XrossMediaBar layout. The 3.5mm audio port is the only let down on this front, placed as it is on the side of the phone, and not the top, but we can let that slide, especially when Sony Ericsson has finally seen the light and adopted the microSD format for storage, meaning you’ll be able to stick the card from your current phone in and go, whatever the make.

Battery life and sound quality on calls are par for the course on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz: it packs enough juice to get you through a day comfortably with Wi-Fi left on and plenty of apps running, but it’s nothing extraordinary.

That said, we’re still taken with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. If you’re a fan of the company’s blowers, there’s absolutely no reason to pick the Satio over this. The only question is, do you want a Sony Ericsson with extra smarts, but more bulk? If so, wait for the Xperia X10, but otherwise, you’ll come away pleased with this.

Verdict
Sony Ericsson’s best built phone in a while, but one with all of Symbian’s usual failings

Love
Great, slim size and feel to the phone

Hate
Connection issues, groggy Symbian

The spec
Screen: 3.2-inches 640×360
Connectivity: 3G, GPRS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, TV-Out, DLNA
Camera: 8.1 megapixel
Battery life: talk time: 13 hours Standby time: 430 hours
Storage: 75MB, expandable to 16GB via microSD
Size/weight: 107 x 52 x 12.5 mm/ 97g