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We expected the Xperia arc to be about the same as the Xperia Play but without the gaming controls, and yet its slimness and lightness still came as a surprise. It may be thicker than Samsung’s Galaxy S (Sony Ericsson’s claimed 8.7mm thickness only measures the thinnest part of the phone) but its arced shape feels more comfortable to hold. The curvy design has chrome highlights and the rear of the case transitions from dark blue to a sparkly grey, while the handset feels well made.
The phone is packed with features. You get an 8.1-megapixel camera with an LED flash that can capture 720p video, and it comes with anti-shake and face recognition. Pictures taken with the camera had much less noise than in most other phone cameras, and video was also crisp and colourful. The arc also has a GPS chip, plus Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The battery lasted almost 33 hours in our light usage test, but with moderate use of 3G data, Wi-Fi and GPS you’ll probably need to charge it every night, as with most smartphones.
One of Android’s main problems is a lack of storage; not all apps support installation on an SD card, so it’s wise to opt for a phone with extra internal storage if you like trying out lots of apps. While many Android phones have only around 150MB free for apps, the arc has 380MB left of its 1GB total internal storage, so you won’t be too limited in your use of the Market.
While many newer Android phones, such as LG’s Optimus 2X, have dual-core processors, the arc makes do with a single-core chip. It’s not slow – in the Quadrant benchmarks, the arc scored about the same as the Xperia Play and was faster than Google’s Nexus One, but it trailed behind dual-core devices such as the Motorola Xoom tablet. The interface felt slick and responsive, but we still noticed slowdowns in the Timescape app (which scrolls through your friends’ Facebook and Twitter status updates) and while browsing a spreadsheet in Google Docs.
The handset’s 4.2in screen is responsive, and its 480×854 resolution is crisp and colourful. We’re not sure what Sony’s Bravia Engine screen technology does, but we can say that image quality was great, with vibrant colours and strong contrast. If anything, reds and oranges were too bright. You can set the display to adjust display brightness automatically depending on ambient light levels, but it flickers noticeably as it changes.
Our Vodafone review sample included a few Vodafone apps, such as a Music Store and a link to Vodafone’s 360 social networking service. There are also some preloaded Sony Ericsson apps, such as a trial copy of OfficeSuite that lets you view office and PDF files (an upgrade to editing capability is €7.99), LiveWare manager, which lets you specify the behaviour of Bluetooth accessories, and a music recognition service called TrackID. There’s also the Timescape app mentioned above, which aggregates updates from Twitter and Facebook. It’s not particularly useful, though – for example, you can’t re-tweet directly from the interface.
The star of the show is Android 2.3, with its much-improved text selection and application management. Sony Ericsson has customised the user interface slightly – there’s no link to the Manage Applications setting from the home page’s menu, as on stock Android 2.3, but its improvements to the application tray are useful. The arc’s app tray slides horizontally rather than vertically, and you can sort apps and move them between trays, creating themed groups if you wish.
However, while the software is bang up to date, the arc’s hardware is in danger of becoming outmoded. Most new phones currently being announced have dual-core processors, making them far snappier than the current models. If you must have Android 2.3 now, then the Xperia arc is by no means a bad phone, but it seems expensive considering the more powerful phones just around the corner.
