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Once in a while a truly wonderful mobile phone comes along that it can’t help but jolt the market starting to grow tired of so-so gadgets and wanabees.  The first ever official product announcement from the struggling Japanese mobile phone maverick Sony Ericsson promises to be one.

If its initial pictures and tech specs are to be believed, the new Sony Ericsson Vivaz, formerly known as the Kurara prior to being launched, has everything to bring back the glory days of the once mighty Sony Ericsson name.

First the stand-out features

The Vivaz does not have the Satio’s unchallenged position as the top camera phone to beat with its 12 megapixel camera, but only an 8-megapixel snapper.  With autofocus and touchfocus, face and smile detection, LED flash and geo-tagging, this is often enough to qualify a mobile phone as among the top notch camera phone.

But the Vivaz goes further.  It has a 720p high definition video recording at a Blu-Ray quality 24 fps frame that the Satio can only approximate at a mere VGA resolution at 30 fps.  Other comparisons are tempting especially with the Samsung i890 Omnia HD which is also a Symbian phone with 720p video recording which makes the two direct bitter rivals to the top.

Display HD in all its glory requires a large capable screen.  In the Vivaz, you get a 3.2-inch wide-VGA touchscreen display with 16 million colors typical of Symbian smartphones.  It’s nearly as large as the 3.5 inch display on the Satio and also enjoys a gravity accelerometer for auto-rotate viewing with the handset tilt.

Unfortunately it has no proximity sensors so its touchscreen sensitivity remains active even when held against the ears in a call.  But its data input facility for virtual on screen alphanumeric and QWERTY keys is very responsive even without a stylus – something we don’t expect from a resistive touchscreen.

The Vivaz is powered by 720 MHz PowerVR SGX graphics processor found on the Satio which has a lower 600 MHz clock speed.  This would account for the CPU-intensive 720p HF video processing that the Satio doesn’t have.

Outstanding Features

The Vivaz is a 3G phone on a dual band UMTS with HSDPA at 10.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 2 Mbps data connectivity. It is also a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G.  There’s WiFi 802.11b/g with DLNA for hotspot surfing as well as Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0 for local data synching.

There’s A- GPS with Google Maps and WisePilot navigation system that allows a voiced turn-by-turn road direction like any GPS SatNav gadgets.  It has the usual stereo FM receiver, 3.5mm headphone jack and TV-out (VGA resolution) ports.

Its 1200 mAh Lithium-polymer batter provides one of the longest talk times in its class at a remarkable 13 hours and a standby time of 18 days.  Software-wise, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz has the usual Java-based apps for social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as media sharing like YouTube and Picasa.  It also has PDF and MS office document viewer, Push email and a WAP 2.0 NetFront web browser.

Samsung launches the Omnia Pro B7610, also dubbed the Samsung Louvre, with a rumored retail price in the €500 price point. It runs on the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional platform and sporting a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard. This looks like the Korean mobile phone maker’s flagship gambit into the full-featured business smartphone markets to take on HTC and Blackberry products.

Special features

The new Omnia Pro goes beyond your typical business and messaging smartphone with leading edge imaging and multimedia features that makes many so called entertainment phones look Jurassic by comparison.

Much like some Nokia Smartphones out there, the new Omnia Pro comes with two user interfaces: one you can customize for your business profile and another for your personal private profile.  It has a dedicated key to instantly switch between the two. Its 3.5-inch screen may look ordinary, but it’s one of the few capacitive touchscreens using the AMOLED display technology.  It sports a WVGA resolution at 800 by 480 and supports 24-bit 16 million colours. It has a 5.1 megapixel autofocus camera with LED Flash. Video graphics accelerator is standard and supported by an 800nhz processor for a truly impressive multimedia experience. There’s an extremely generous 1GB of internal memory that can be expanded to accommodate 32Gb on its microSD expansion slot. Music and video files gets DLNA support and a TV out facility for wireless and wired connection to suitable Samsung TVs, respectively.

Other Competitive Features

It has the industry standard 3.5mm audio out jack. Internet surfing and downloading gets high-speed support with 3G/HSDPA/HSUPA high-speed data connectivity. Local high speed data connectivity is supported with Bluetooth 2.0, Wi-Fi/WLAN support Standard stereo FM radio with RDS is built-in There’s a Digital compass with A-GPS support Powered by a standards Lithium-Ion 1500 mA battery, you get 8 hours of talk time on FSM and up to 18 days in standby mode.

The Verdict

Samsung is positioning the Omnia Pro to answer Sony Ericsson’s anticipated Windows mobile phones that enables 3D graphics for a higher price point unlocked.  The suffix “Pro” latches on the market perception of an office QWERTY gadget using Windows-derived platform for a more seamless integration with office and home desktop PCs.  The Samsung Omnia Pro or Louvre B7610 is one such product to take the trend on its own terms with a very capable QWERTY slider.