Sony Ericsson Vivaz Shoots HD Video (Also Takes Calls and Stuff) [Smartphones]

The Sony Ericsson Vivaz, formerly known as the Kurara, is a smartphone with enough optical muscle to challenge any high end pocket camcorder.
We'll ignore the Symbian S60 OS for a moment (pretending that Android wouldn't be so, so much more tempting), and point out the Vivaz's 8.1MP camera with perks like face detection, that's also completely capable of shooting 720P videos and uploading them to services like YouTube or playing them back through TV-out.
Otherwise, the Vivaz has the typical smartphone amenities, including a 3.2-inch (360 x 640) touchscreen, EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA 7.2 Mbit/s/HSUPA, Wi-Fi, GPS and MicroSD support. Look for the Vivaz soon, running somewhere between $670 and $750 in select markets.
[Gizmodo via Sony Ericsson via phoneArena]

Nokia Gives Us a Glimpse of the New Symbian UI

The folks at Nokia are working hard on the new Symbian^4 platform, and now we can see a part of their progress, at least where the UI part is concerned. Granted, this is just a proposal for Orbit and Direct UI, but it shows Nokia’s commitment to rectify all the issues that current implementations of Symbian undoubtedly have, especially when compared with the iPhone OS or Android.
In a nutshell, the new visuals seem to be better suited for a finger-controlled touch-phone, with a toolbar at the bottom of the screen, floating dialogs and drop-down menus from the top navigation bar.
It’s all distant future, though, as we won’t see Symbian^4 based phones at least until the first half of 2011, but one can’t deny the UI looks better than what we see on current Symbian phones.






[Mashable]