| Sony Ericsson may be financially limping at the | | | | remains active even when held against the ears in a |
| moment but that has not derailed its claim to having | | | | call. But its data input facility for virtual on screen |
| some of the best mobile phones in the market. | | | | alphanumeric and QWERTY keys is very responsive |
| With the Satio firmly up in the totem pole and the | | | | even without a stylus – something we don’t |
| upcoming Android Xperia X10, it is starting the year | | | | expect from a resistive touchscreen. |
| with its first set of product announcements that | | | | - Its most remarkable feature is its 8 megapixel |
| include a Symbian S60 5th edition smartphone – | | | | autofocus and touch-focus camera with LED flash |
| the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. | | | | and video light. It has face and smile detection and |
| Running on the same PowerVR Series 5 (SGX) | | | | geo-tagging from its A-GPS receiver – enough to |
| graphics engine used by Satio but clocked at 720 | | | | put the Vivaz at the top of camera smartphones. |
| MHz instead of 600 MHz, the new handset offers the | | | | But it gets better with a full 720p video recording at |
| one feature the Satio doesn’t have – a high | | | | Blu-Ray quality 24 fps frame rates. This makes it a |
| definition 720p video recording. Admittedly, HD | | | | direct rival to the Samsung Omnia HD with the same |
| playback suffers a bit without DivX and Xvid video | | | | HD recording capability and Symbian OS. |
| format support, though that can be addressed with a | | | | - Multimedia takes of from Sony’s Walkman |
| 3rd party app installation. | | | | heritage with playback features that support the |
| Feature Richness with Some Left Out | | | | popular image, video and audio file formats except |
| - The Vivaz is a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G | | | | DivX and Xvid. It has the usual stereo FM receiver |
| and a dual band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA on 3G. | | | | with RDS, a 3.5mm headphone jack and TV-out |
| Hotspot surfing is supported with a WiFi 802.11b/g | | | | (VGA resolution) ports. |
| with DLNA and you get the usual local data | | | | - Its 1200 mAh Lithium-polymer battery when fully |
| connectivity options Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and | | | | charged deliver one of the longest talk times in its |
| microUSB 2.0. There’s A-GPS with Google Maps | | | | class at a remarkable 13 hours and a standby time of |
| and the WisePilot navigation systems that allows | | | | 18 days. |
| SatNav features like voiced turn-by-turn direction. | | | | - Software-wise, the Vivaz has the usual Java apps |
| - Its expansive wide aspect 3.2-inch resistive | | | | social networking like Facebook and Twitter as well |
| touchscreen supports 640 x 360 resolution and 16 | | | | as media sharing sites like YouTube and Picasa. |
| million colors. There’s an accelerometer sensor | | | | There’s a PDF and MS office document viewer, |
| for auto-rotate viewing. Unfortunately it has no | | | | handwriting recognition, Push email and a WAP 2. |
| proximity sensors so its touchscreen sensitivity | | | | |