If you’ve approved out the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, you’ll accept a acceptable abstraction of what to apprehend from the software on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro. There are bristles homescreens, which can be set to appearance animations, airheaded or alike your Twitter beck – a nice touch, and the operating system’s one accessible affairs point added than multimedia support.
Hit the card button and you’ll see that recognisable card awning blaze up – you’re on Symbian home turf. Hold bottomward the card button for an age and you can about-face amid apps, jump assimilate the web and you can install added apps, and dive into the media area and you’ll additionally be appropriate at home with Sony’s XrossMediaBar appearance layout.
Of course, we’re aloof as acclimated to Symbian’s failings by now too, and that Symbian and Sony Ericsson amid them haven’t anchored them absolutely sticks in the throat. Prodding icons and the onscreen keyboard is a assignment (although that’s in allotment to do with the awning – added on that in the body area of our Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review) and angry the awning can generally aloof atramentous out the phone, abrogation you apprehensive for several abnormal if it’s aloof crashed. Go angle an iPhone or new Android buzz and see what happens: aqueous action and no pause. That’s the new standard, and Symbian doesn’t appear abutting to it.
Of course, these are problems we had with Symbian S60 on the aboriginal Vivaz. What gets our dupe now is that they’re still present, and fabricated alike added accessible by the attendance of a keyboard: you’ll be angry the buzz into mural approach added generally to type, and bafflingly, the homescreens generally break advisedly in account approach back you do. Pull the QWERTY keyboard out afore you accessible up your email, and you’ll absolutely accept to cross at 90 degrees. You can’t alike punch in a cardinal application the keyboard in mural mode.
It’s an alarming oversight, and one that altogether sums up Symbian’s atrocious, dried UI in general. We actively achievement Symbian 3 improves this, but we additionally achievement that this is Sony Ericsson’s aftermost Symbian buzz regardless, now that it’s confused on to Android with some success.
One affair Symbian S60 still has activity for it about is media support. The airheaded ability attending ugly, but videos are still a contentment to watch on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro’s 3.2-inch, 640×360 screen, and back it’s blessed to comedy AVI clips alongside MP4 files, it’s absolutely beneath careful than iPhones and best Android phones (Samsung and LG handsets excepted). It’ll alike beck photos and music over DLNA – that you can ascendancy music advance from the homescreen on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is additionally commendable.
While Symbian S60 ability still be accessible on the array ability compared to Android, its flaws are added accessible than anytime on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, and they far outweigh the allowances of charging your buzz every added night rather than every night. We’ve looked aloft it analogously attentive for its media support, but this is the aftermost time: Android is accepting its being calm on this front, and we don’t appetite to see Symbian S60 afresh in its accepted form. Sony Ericsson, you’ve been warned.
