Since we have received very good feedback on the design and colors of Vivaz, I asked my colleague Maiko Ishida who is the product planner for Vivaz, to share her story of the work behind the design.

The Vivaz Light Pink will be available in selected markets end of this quarter.

Daniel

So, should you go for a pure touch phone or one with a full slide-out qwerty keyboard? Well, I guess the choice is up to you and it is a matter of taste. I use Vivaz pro as my personal phone mainly because I feel that a physical keyboard is superior for handling my work and private emails and I’ve been addicted to having decent camera functionality ever since the first Cyber-shot phone. I’m a frequent user of Facebook but I’m more of a follower on Twitter than a contributor. When it comes to blogging, besides being active in the discussions with you on this blog, I mostly have blogs in time periods, usually for certain projects or travels.
We believe that there are as many types of ”messaging lifestyles” as there are users.

BTW, did you know that you can use the headset as a microphone when you are recording video on Vivaz and Vivaz pro? As I needed a slightly longer cable for this video sequence, I got a €14,90 clip-on mic from a discount electronic store. As you can hear in the video it does a great job given that I’m sitting in the middle of the open landscape at the Sony Ericsson office.

Daniel

As you understand, Emil is not the guy that sits still for very many seconds (guess similar to an extreme skier) which you obviously realize from how fast he talks as well as from the fast video cuts.

Just for your information, the first part and last part in his living room is not recorded with Vivaz so you know.

Happy Easter for those who celebrate!!
Daniel

Some fellow marketeers in the world started to create cool videos in cooperation with famous movie makers – challenging them to use the Sony Ericsson Vivaz for their shoots.

There will hopefully be more of these coming but first out are my friends in Norway who challenged Norwegian ski film maker Filip Christensen to hit the slopes with the Vivaz as his video tool of the day:

Remember to choose “view on YouTube” and make sure to choose 720p to experience the full quality.

I will have to admit that he seems to manage to hold is Vivaz more steadily while skiing than I do standing still, quite amazing

For you out there shooting your own cool clips – please feel free to share your YouTube uploads among the comments!

For most markets there is now an free application called “Equalizer” available on PlayNow in the music category under applications. This equalizer will give you the following different options: Off, Classical, Jazz, Dance, Party, Pop, Rock, Spoken Word, Loudness, Mega Bass and Treble Boost. As I understood it it will equalize all music played in the phone, also the setting it makes is global and stay there if the Equalizer application is closed and also even stays after rebooting the phone. There are two important notes though: First of all this application needs the latest update to work on Satio (on Vivaz it works on the launch SW of course) and also since it’s a separate application it needs to be started separately when you want to start using it i.e. it’s not included under options in e.g. the music player. When an equalizer setting has been chosen it should stay even if the application is closed or the phone rebooted.

I’m well aware that it would have been even better to have a fully integrated equalizer and I’m sorry that we don’t have that. Still I hope that this solution will work for those of you that really feel that an equalizer has been missed a lot.

Here are some screenshots and a short video I shot to show you how it works. (Sorry for the shaky video – I didn’t have my tripod in the office today so I had to navigate the Satio with one hand while filming with a Vivaz with the other hand)

Please note that the scene with all the snow was a bit tricky for exposure so for some of the clips I pumped up the exposure one step manually.

First some pics shot by me and my friend Josef (first two from X10 and the rest from Vivaz):

 And then some video clips, all show in 720p HD with Vivaz:

As last time I’d like to remind about the fact that kit content differs between markets and service providers so there might be more things in the kit that will be available on your market.

Here he is  – Fredrik Ågren

- Who are you?

My name is Fredrik Ågren and I am the software architect for video support on Sony Ericsson phones based on Symbian OS. I have been working with software platforms for mobile phones since 2000 and first joined Sony Ericsson as a consultant for the P800 model back in 2002. Through the years I have been involved in many of our platforms and products. Most recently I have focused hard on introducing HD video support in the newly launched Vivaz model.

- What was your responsibility when it came to the Sony Ericsson Vivaz

My responsibility in general is to lead the requirement analysis regarding video related features for upcoming models and identify feasible implementations. This means a great deal of interaction with our R&D sites around the world and also close contact with our suppliers which of course is great fun. When Vivaz was still in the analysis phase I worked pretty much full time on leading the HD support analysis. As the feature moved from prototyping into the implementation phase, I’ve also been leading other improvement work for Vivaz, for instance related to video streaming and video telephony.

- How good is Vivaz really when it comes to capturing HD-video, can you share things like average fps and things from analysis you’ve done?

The HD support on Vivaz is great. Vivaz can record HD video at 24 frames per second and we’ve focused quite hard on the picture quality as well. However, it is not a trivial task to secure such heavy processing all the time in a pre-emptive multitasking environment where the phone functionality always has the highest priority. One cool thing though is that we have equipped Vivaz with golden sample CPUs. These are special units from the production line that can run at significantly higher clock speeds when required. This provides the customer a sufficient margin for an always great HD experience with Vivaz.

- What was the biggest challenge in the development?

Sony Ericsson work with high standards so the most challenging part was not to deliver the basic functionality as such but to deliver it with the overall quality our brand requires and to make that happen in time for the product launch. There are many factors affecting the overall end user experience such as frame rate, bit rate, camera startup time, power consumption and the ability to maintain performance while multitasking. We have investigated HD support in previous models but Vivaz is the first opportunity we have had where we could deliver this feature all the way.

- What was most fun?

Most fun for me has been the international cooperation to get this support in place. For a long time we have worked closely with colleagues in Japan and China, so in the end this is really an international feature from Sony Ericsson. I have gained a lot of experience in foreign social and professional working culture and made good personal friends along the way as well.

- Any surprises along the way?

Yes, for sure things happen that you have not anticipated. Still I have worked with projects like this for such a long time so I try to keep that in mind. One example is the cost of getting our golden sample CPUs which in the early days was so high that it was not really an option for us. Still, we continued to focus on optimizations in software so that when the units eventually came at a more reasonable cost, we really had a great platform to work with. This was the time I realized we were actually looking at what would become an HD video enabled product. We work in a highly variable hardware, software and business case environment, so limiting factors one week may not be significant the next. One needs to have a long term goal focus with a short term agile mindset to take advantage of that.

 - What kind of videos do you shoot yourself?

I especially use Vivaz for those spur of the moment situations when my two daughters Agnes (3) and Linnea (5) do funny stuff. Sony Ericsson has the slogan “Never miss a shot” and that is definitely valid for video as well. When the kids are all grown up, that’s when I will truly appreciate these clips.

As always I’d like to point out that all these are shot with prototype versions of Vivaz with pre-release SW so there might also be further fine-tuning and improvements done before launch. To watch the videos in best quality click the “Watch on Youtube” link and make sure to choose 720p as viewing resolution!

Those who know me wouldn’t have a hard time guessing what kind of videos I’ve shot, of course Stella is in them For this first post with samples I’ve chosen a video interview I made with her after a terrifyingly speedy race in the Stockholm snow. My video is also uploaded directly from my Vivaz over wi-fi.  The second and third videos are shot by Daniel, one outside our office in Lund and the other one at a rock concert he enjoyed a few days ago. The grand finale is a clip from our israelian colleagues who, just as they did with Satio, have mounted a Vivaz to an RC-plane and shot some great landscape scenes. I don’t think this is in HD on YouTube though but it’s still a very cool clip

I’ll shoot more videos to share soon and already know a bit of what you’d like me to test but please feel free to remind me in the comments section as to what kind of set up you’d like to see!

The Twitter app is a good example of an application developed in Flash Lite™ 3.0 that Rikard mentioned in his previous post. Developers are able to develop their own panel application by using Flash Lite. For more information you can check out the developers web at http://developer.sonyericsson.com/site/global/newsandevents/latestnews/newsjan10/p_vivaz.jsp.

Daniel