I have got you a video (at the bottom of the post) from Daniel at Sony Ericsson Global Marketing who has shot a video of the Pro version of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz which now sports a slide out qwerty keyboard. The video has also been shot on another Vivaz Pro to illustrate the quality you can get. Daniel claims that there is only 2mm difference in thickness between the devices but the way the video has been shot, it looks like it’s a lot more!


Personally I am not fond of the design of the keyboard, being made out of that single plastic membrane, although the keys are raised, I much prefer the individual keys you see on phones like the Nokia N900, and even on phones like the N97 (original and mini), where it is one single plastic but the design means it looks and feels like individual keys. The strange thing is, if you look around the internet, other people seem to have the same phone but the keys look better then the ones on this video, maybe this is one of the earlier prototypes or Sony Ericsson just ran out of money and decided to put a cheaper keyboard into this!

You can see a comparison of the Vivaz pro and the N97 mini keyboard below, the images are proportional to each other. Not too sure how well placed the Ctrl key is in the middle, but we’ll just have to see the reaction from the first few users. Noticed the globe key above the up arrow, which I’m assuming is the internet button.