Whilst the last 6 months may not have been as successful as they planned Sony Ericsson have been producing some very good phones recently such as the Satio and Vivaz, both of which we have had the pleasure of having a look at here at Zath, and both of which have impressed. So it was the turn of the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 to take the role of the flagship phone and yet again we’ve had a chance to have a good look at it.

Ever since the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 was announced and more recently as has been proclaimed across the country by the relatively prolific advertising campaign the X10 does have a lot going from it right from the off — the 4” screen, the Android operating system (including apps) and 1Ghz Snapdragon processor spring to mind — but will it be able to succeed its predecessors?
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Earlier this year Sony Ericsson gave us news of the second instalment of their new family of ‘communication entertainment’ phones, namely the Sony Ericsson ‘Vivaz’ announcement, and over the last few weeks here at Zath we’ve been having a play around with it to see whether or not it is a worthy successor to the very impressive (but unfortunately not as successful) Sony Ericsson Satio.

Direct translated from Portuguese ‘Vivaz’ means spirited or lively, something that presumably has been the main ethos behind the design of this phone, and something that should show through. So let’s have a look at how it fares:

Design

The first thing that you notice about the Sony Ericsson Vivaz (especially when sat next to the relatively blocky Satio) is that it is a very slim, elegant phone with a smooth rounded finish across the whole phone which makes it very nice to look at – the model tested came in ‘Moon Silver’ which was very attractive even if the dark blue sides did remind one a little of Acrylic.
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Pretty much since the mouse and keyboard were put into mainstream use people have been looking for alternative ways for input that would be more flexible, efficient or fun. As of yet they’ve all pretty much failed (head tracker anyone?) but perhaps the latest idea will slowly start to slip into general use, the touchscreen interface – and here it is implemented in the Sony Vaio L Series.

Now they have been around for quite a while, but as we look at the Sony Vaio L series we’ll not only look at the machine by itself but also at the use of the touchscreen and how practical it actually is.

But firstly: the Vaio L Series. It works on the same principle as the Apple iMac in the way that it’s an ‘all in one’ PC, with a 24” screen surrounded by a glossy black frame which has an integrated ‘U’ shaped bottom and stand on the back both of which come in the standard silver colour that you can expect to see along with anything black!
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In the latter end of 2009 Sony Ericsson released the latest ‘flagship’ phone which was shown to the world with much gusto and promise, helped by a fairly universal advertising campaign (the one with the brightly coloured space hoppers) and it certainly looked like it could be very successful not only over the Christmas spending spree, but into the new year as well.

So over the seasonally-cold holidays I’ve had the pleasure (or not as the case may be) of putting the new Sony Ericsson Satio through its paces and seeing whether the real thing matches up to the promised article and whether there’s a world beating phone there — not just a pretty face and a world beating camera.
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In October we saw the release of the latest addition to the relatively successful ‘Chocolate’ range with the LG Chocolate BL40 which, with its good looks (most notably the ‘super-widescreen’) and wide array of features, promised and then proved to be very popular thus setting itself up well as a rival to the other smartphones out at the time.

Seeing how high spec the LG Chocolate (BL40) was it made perfect sense for LG to stretch the range further and release a lower end version which they duly have done with the LG Chocolate (BL20) — essentially a viciously cut down smaller sister of the BL40.
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