Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review

There are some positives. The four-row keyboard gives merciful relief from using the awful touchscreen. Its keys are well separated and, aside from the space bar, give a positive yet light click. The phone is an excellent audio and video player, call quality is faultless, and the Vivaz Pro also shoots pretty good HD movies - good for a phone anyway.

It will never match the colour fidelity or performance in low light that you'll get from a compact camera with an HD movie mode, nor that of a Flip Mino HD or Flip Mino Ultra HD, but at 24fps its 720p footage looks smooth and colours are reasonable. The LED light can be turned on to illuminate subjects in low light, which is a bonus.

Its 5-megapixel stills mode is good too, and comes complete with smile-detection, touch focus and electronic image stabilisation. Autofocus is quick and, in good light, most of the snaps we took were sharp and usable. Again, the powerful LED lamp helps to light close-up subjects when the light is tricky, although its angle of illumination is very narrow, resulting in dark corners to flash-lit photos.

Finally, the features list and software bundle isn't bad. In terms of hardware there's Bluetooth with A2DP, 802.11g wireless, A-GPS, 8GB of storage included on the bundled microSD card, a stereo FM tuner and an accelerometer. The phone includes a copy of RoadSync for Microsoft Exchange server support, a 30-day WisePilot trial for turn-by-turn satnav, and a media server app, which allows you to access music on the phone over a local network from PCs and compatible DLNA streamer devices.

No matter how good the camera or how generous the software bundle, however, there's simply no avoiding the fact that the Vivaz Pro is a terrible handset. It feels old-fashioned, a year or more behind the times and, worst of all, it isn't even that cheap. If you're on the look out for a new smartphone, do yourself a favour - avoid this one like the plague.

Author: Jonathan Bray