Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review

Take one Vivaz, add a keyboard and suddenly, you're a pro

The definitive Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review
The definitive Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro review

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Battery life on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro is pretty good, especially when you consider the phone only has a 1200mAh battery.

However, we'd put this down to the fact we're so annoyed by most of the functions on the phone that it doesn't make us want to play with it all the time.

If you don't have push email enabled and don't leave Wi-Fi running all the time you can easily get two days' use out of the Vivaz Pro.

Sony ericsson vivaz pro review

However, internet browsing seems to suck it down badly, and while it's good that you don't need to carry a charger with you at all times (and you can swap out the battery) we would have liked to see a little more juice in there to make this into a real long-running beast.

Connectivity

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro supports all types of connection, and threw in a couple of nice surprises for us as well.

The main one being Wi-Fi – for once on a Symbian phone it constantly sniffed for the networks you need when you go back into your home networks – no need to tell it to connect all the time.

Sony ericsson vivaz pro review

This is a real plus given the amount of data the Vivaz Pro sucks down, and means browsing gets a lot (and noticeably) speedier.

The Bluetooth is also good as well – we used a Jabra Clipper headset to connect up and it worked each time, finding the unit whenever Bluetooth was activated and in range.

HSPDA was fast enough, although not quick enough to keep up with the thirsty internet browser, although it can buzz up to 10.2Mbps.

However, 3G connection struggled at times, and constantly kept having to ask which method of connecting you preferred. The one we had already said 17 times should have been a clue but clearly wasn't.

Sony ericsson vivaz pro review

Also aGPS is on board as well, which is supposed to work well with both the mapping applications.

While it connected up OK to WisePilot, it struggled horrendously to find us when using Google Maps – not only would the map not download, but the blue dot kept jumping all over the place – which is useless when you're lost.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.