Review: Sony Ericsson Vivaz
Camera
The first interesting thing about the camera is that pressing the camera button when the phone is locked will automatically unlock it and launch the camera application. That saves a step when you're in a hurry to catch a shot. It never went off accidentally during my tests. It's still not all that fast to launch, though.
The Vivaz's camera offers plenty of options for controlling its behavior. The display has six different software buttons that let users fine-tune the camera. White balance can be adjusted, as can brightness, focusing mode (auto, portrait, macro, infinity), shooting mode (normal, panoramic, smile detection, etc.), scenes, and of course items such as resolution. It also offers an image stabilizer, effects, different shutter sounds, and a timer.
The Vivaz focus quickly and takes pictures quickly. The good-quality shutter button helps a lot to control the focus and shutter. After the image is taken, the Vivaz offers it up for review. A quick press to the camera key returns you to image-taking mode. There is also a software button that does the same thing.
It still feels like you're taking pictures with a phone and not a real camera, but the Vivaz's camera features are the most straight-forward and least-confusing parts of the phone.
Gallery
The gallery displays images in a simple grid. Pressing any of the images opens it up to fill the screen. You can swipe from side-to-side to pan through your image library. Press the image quickly, and some tools appear to let you take some actions. These include sending the image via email/MMS/Bluetooth, deleting it, or editing it.
The editing features are neat. The tools allow you to make adjustments to the exposure level, white balance, color saturation and sharpness. It also can be used to crop and rotate images, as well as add text boxes, clip art, text bubbles, and so on.
The gallery can also be used to set images as wallpapers and assign them to contacts. The one problem with both the camera and the gallery is, again, the responsiveness of the display. Making all these adjustments and editing images can be painful due to the inconsistent behavior of the touch display. Having to press things twice is not fun when you're scrambling to get a shot.
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Sony Ericsson Vivaz
