Sony Ericsson Vivaz review: Viv A-to-Z

Vivaz can snap some nice shots

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz packs an 8-megapixel camera and is capable of taking photos of up to 3264 x 2448 pixels. It also sports a LED flash, but its serves video better than the still images.

The Vivaz camera interface is reasonably comfortable with the viewfinder occupying only the central part of the screen when you select regular 4:3 aspect ratio. When shooting in 16:9 aspect ratio, however, the whole display is put to use from side to side.

On the right side of the viewfinder there are five shortcuts. Those cover Scenes, Shoot mode, Focus settings, Exposure compensation and Auto mode. When you select Auto mode the handset takes care of applying the most appropriate scene settings for your photos.

Camera interface

The settings menu gives you another set of customizable options. Those include self-timer, white balance, flash on/off, effects, image stabilizer and picture size. You can also choose whether you'll see a preview of every taken snapshot and if the image orientation should be recorded in the EXIF info. The camcorder part of the camera supports a very similar set of customizable settings except the image stabilization.

A high-end cameraphone, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz naturally comes with image geo-tagging too. There is also face and smile-detection, as well as panorama mode and Touch capture. In fact, its options resemble the Satio features.

As the name suggests, Touch capture allows you to focus on any particular subject in the frame by simply tapping on it in the viewfinder. The Vivaz will automatically focus on it and take the shot.

We like the idea of two separate shutter keys too - for taking photos and capturing videos. The only disadvantage is the slight risk of hitting the wrong one and missing an interesting moment.

Image quality

Sony Ericsson Vivaz produces splendid photos. The colors are vibrant and rich (too bad we don't have the weather to prove it), the amount of resolved detail is very good and the noise levels are low.

There is no over sharpening or purple fringing. Had the amount of resolved detail and contrast been just a tad more, we surely would've called it the ultimate camera on a phone.

Here go the Sony Ericsson Vivaz samples.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz camera samples

Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Vivaz. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz resolution chart photo • 100% crops