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Today the Sony Ericsson Vivaz aka 'Kurara' got official - read on to see some exclusive live pictures, first hand impressions and a comprehensive 5 minutes video demonstrating the Symbian OS powered smartphone in action.

The Satio was Sony Ericssons first Symbian OS 5th Edition powered smartphone. The Vivaz now joins the family with a slightly updated version of the Symbian OS. New features include the possibility to change the standby-panels. It looks like any flash content can be set as a panel (not sure at this time what the restrictions are). Pre-installed comes a Twitter panel, which is a little bit clumsy to use since the user name and password has to be entered every time the phone is restarted. This seems to be a limitation of the flash implementation though.

Another novelty is the dedicated video capture button, next to the camera button. It opens the video interface, which provides the pretty well known camera UI with its settings. The 8MP camera captures videos in HD resolution (720p). Our prototype unfortunately had a problem with the camera module, therefore we can't provide you with any cam/video samples for the time being.

Hardware-wise, the Vivaz makes a very solid impression. Although the touchscreen is still using resistive technology, the sensitivity is pretty impressing. It almost feels like a capacitive screen, not to compare with e.g. Satio's touchscreen.

All the above discussed and more can be seen in our hands on video:

And here is our extensive Vivaz live picture gallery, enjoy!