Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc deals & review

The Xperia Arc is the latest flagship Android smartphone from Sony Ericsson and is available on virtually all UK networks including O2, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Talk Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Three. Whilst being one of the slimmest smartphones on offer at just 8.7mm in thickness some of the hardware features on the Arc are overshadowed by rivals released at a similar time. With Gingerbread Android the Arc could have benefitted from a dual core processor, and in some places the interface does show a slight lag where its dual core counterparts experience no difficulty. The stated thickness of 8.7mm is also measured at the thinnest point, with each end of the Arc being a slightly thicker 10mm.

However, the Arc has a lot to offer in terms of web browsing and entertainment. The Arc sports a great 4.2" LCD screen that provides 16:9 widescreen viewing, so you can watch movies without any annoying black bars spoiling the experience. The Arc also includes good music support with many simple yet highly useful tweaks to its interface and media player.

The Arc follows in a long line of Sony Ericsson Xperia Android phones with the most noticeable predecessor being the Xperia X10. The Arc has a similar physical appearance to the X10 although the curved design of the back battery casing is quite unique. The X10 was unfortunate in that it was released with an archaic version of Google Android but with the Arc, Sony Ericsson has packed in the very latest version, Gingerbread.

The Arc is an excellent all-round Android smartphone that is great for entertainment and web browsing.

The Xperia Arc is a stylish looking phone and has a unique physical design that makes it stand out from the usual touchscreen crowd. It is also one of the slimmest smartphones available at present, slimmer than the iPhone 4 and only slightly thicker than the Galaxy S2. The phone is slim at the middle and then thickens out at the top and bottom of the battery cover forming an arc, which is where the phone derives its name from.

As well as being a good looking design it also makes the phone quite comfortable to hold, with the uniformly thin Galaxy S2 being a little less comfortable to hold in one hand. Others have criticised the concave battery cover as being less comfortable, but I actually think it makes it more so if you are holding the phone at the base. It is also good for two handed use in landscape as the larger ends fit well into the hands.

The battery cover gives off a nice appearance, although it does get covered in a lot of greasy fingerprints with extended use. There is a nice looking chrome band that runs around the edge of the phone.

The battery cover is fairly easy to remove. It is thin like the battery covers found on most touchscreen phones but unlike the cover on the Galaxy S2 you don't feel like you are about to snap it when taking it off. It is also much simpler to take off, and can be removed within a matter of seconds with minimal kafuffle making it much easier to change the battery, SIM card or SD card.

Below the screen are three physical buttons including the back button, home button and menu button. These are not touch buttons as are found on many other Android phones but thin metallic buttons protruding from the phone's body. I am personally not a big fan of these buttons as I find them to be a little too thin to press. They look pretty and fit in with the overall design of the Arc, but seem to be a case of form over function.

Although the buttons light up, the icons showing their functions do not, so if you are unfamiliar with the phone and trying to operate it in the dark you may experience some difficulty. Other buttons include a small round power button on the top, a volume rocker on the side and a poorly positioned camera button on the bottom right. The power button is quite small and can be a bit awkward to press properly although the benefit of this is that you are not likely to accidently turn your phone off.

The Arc is a good looking phone, one of the better looking phones on the market, and also feels well-proportioned to actually be used as a phone and not just a touchscreen entertainment device. The downside is that many of the buttons are badly positioned or not so easy to use.

The Arc uses a 4.2" LED backlit LCD screen, which while on the larger end of the scale diagonally does not result in the Arc being an oversized phone as its screen is also quite tall and thin compared to other more squared phone displays. Although the screen is only marginally smaller than that of the Galaxy S2 there is a noticeable difference in the overall size of the phone, with the Xperia Arc being more comfortably "phone shaped".

The Xperia Arc has a screen resolution of 480 x 854, which is about 54 pixels of extra length compared to standard WVGA touchscreens. This slightly wider (in landscape) design means that the Arc is able to display true widescreen videos without even a hint of a black bar.

The screen uses around 16 million colours and is colourful and vibrant, although perhaps not as vibrant as Super AMOLED screens. The benefit of the Arc's LCD screen is that it performs much better in daylight, particularly with glaring sunlight, compared to AMOLED screens. In short I would say this was a good performer all around. AMOLED may be better indoors but the Arc's screen is good across the board. In all honesty you only really notice the difference between LCD and Super AMOLED Plus when holding the two screens side by side.

There are also many people who will point out that the LCD screen does not have as wide viewing angles as Super AMOLED Plus and so images become fainter the further you diverge from looking at the screen head on. However, I can't really think of many people who like viewing their phone screen at very oblique angles, so in all practical terms outside of a phone review this is fairly irrelevant.

The screen uses the Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine that was developed for top of the line Sony televisions, and you are given the option of turning this on and off in the phone's settings. Personally, I cannot really see much of a difference between it being on and off. BRAVIA supposedly adds real time enhancements to photos and videos, including those captured from the Arc's camera. This includes sharpening images, improving colour contrast and things like that.

The Arc has an 8 megapixel camera that includes 720p video recording. The camera includes an Exmor R sensor, which is one of Sony's latest developments from its camera division. The Exmor will sort out inconsistencies from moving camera footage and can provide decent photo quality in poor lighting conditions. Although this does produce a clearer image in dark environments than non-Exmor cameras there is still some graininess to the shot. The simple answer would be to just use the LED flash and video light that are included. The Arc doesn't include a front facing camera but this is no great loss as I am sure not many people actually use such a feature. There is quite a delay between pressing the camera button (screen) and the actual capturing of the image. This is fine for posed images but with a full 1 or 2 seconds delay while it zooms and prepares the flash you might miss those impromptu shots. The autofocus also seems a little overactive, constantly focusing and refocusing on anything it sees even slightly moving.

The physical camera button is positioned in an odd place at the bottom right of the phone. This is well suited when using the camera in landscape orientation but couldn't be in a more awkward place in portrait. This positioning almost forces you to use two hands for taking photos when a more thought out positioning could have allowed single handed photography.

However, this is compensated for by touchscreen controls and you can take photographs simply by tapping the screen, making the button position less of an issue. After a little fiddling around with this button I reached the conclusion that it must have been placed there to allow you to take a picture by squeezing your palm (when holding the phone in your right hand). Even so, this is still not entirely easy to do.

When browsing through your images the Arc for some reason feels the need to display an overly pixelated version before rendering the correct image. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of this is other than to perhaps increase scrolling speeds through your photo albums. In all actuality though, it seems to decrease scrolling speeds more than anything. Perhaps this is to provide the Arc with a chance to apply its photo enhancements, although it still happens when BRAVIA is switched off.

With the preinstalled YouTube app you can record 720p videos with the phone's camera and then directly upload them to your account straight from the Arc. The Arc includes an HDMI port so that you can connect it to a TV and stream video content for enjoyment on a larger screen. This can also be achieved with DLNA Wi-Fi, and using Wi-Fi you can set up the Arc as a media server. Through doing this you can connect other devices to the Arc to access media content such as music, videos and pictures. The phone only has 320MB internal storage but comes with space for a 32GB SD card, with an 8GB card included.

Sony is a company with a long standing in the portable entertainment industry, dating back to the Walkman in the late 70s, and this has always been reflected in their Sony Ericsson phones. The Arc is no exception and comes with some great features on board. This includes TrackID, a standard feature on Sony Ericsson phones (although one that can be replicated on other phones with Shazzam). With TrackID you can record a clip of music to find out within seconds the name of the artist and the song.

The Xperia Arc also provides you with fast access to your media from the home menu, with a little pop up menu giving you the option of going to your photos, music or the radio. The media player is fairly standard, although it does include a button to find media content related to the artist you are listening to. This primarily seems to take you to a list of YouTube videos of the artist or band you are enjoying. This is a nice little shortcut for people who are really into their music.

Another feature I liked on the Arc is the LiveWare Manager. With this you can configure the phone to load certain applications when you insert other devices like headphones or the battery charger. This allows you to automatically load the music player, radio or even YouTube as soon as you insert the headphones. This may seem like a pretty simple feature but it is one that is time saving and will be appreciated by people who use their phone a lot for entertainment reasons. 01492870899

The Xperia Arc was released at the same time as the first wave of dual core phones and is itself sadly limited to the older generation of single core 1Ghz chips. After playing around with dual core phones this can be noticeable in some areas, particularly when turning the phone on which can take some time. The Gingerbread version of Android in use on the Arc is arguably more demanding than earlier versions found on older 1Ghz phones. However, general performance is pretty good.

The memory on the Arc is 512MB which is also a fair bit lower than the 768MB or 1GB that are now becoming more commonplace on high end devices. Although the Arc may not be as nippy as some other Android phones it still performs well for most things including video, web browsing and games. There can occasionally be some lag between switching screens but for everyday purposes the phone performs well.

The Xperia Arc uses a Lithium Polymer 1500 mAh battery. This provides a decent amount of battery life. Like most smartphones of the same ilk this will run down quicker with more intensive things like heavy music and video use and games or apps from Android Market. I have been using this as a test phone, and so have not been using it all the time but I have found the battery to run down quite quickly even when you are not doing anything. In real world situations you will probably be charging this at night anyway and so this won't be an issue. But if you find yourself without a charger for an extended period of time it may cause some annoyance.

I did experience some confusion when first trying to charge the phone (after it had almost completely run out of battery) as I did not find it obvious whether the phone was charging or not. Many other phones will pop up a message, at least momentarily, stating that the phone is now charging. With the Arc I was left in some confusion as to what was happening. On closer inspection, the status bar icon does display a little lightning bolt when charging although this information is not really prominent enough.

There is one minor problem I have encountered when using the Arc. I have found that when transferring the phone to my left hand and trying to operate it with one hand, part of my palm covers the back button and prevents me from scrolling between menus. Oddly, I didn't tend to get this problem in my right hand as it seems that I hold the phone slightly differently in each hand. Repositioning the phone so that I am holding it in a similar manner to my right hand fixes the problem, but I have persistently noticed this happening when trying to operate the phone with just my left hand. I have not experienced a similar problem on other phones (which feature less protruding buttons).

This is a moot point perhaps, as I am right handed anyway. When using my dominant hand the Arc is pretty easy to play around with, and it feels comfortable to hold and operate in a single hand. Typing messages is easy and the onscreen keyboard is one of the simpler (and more accurate) ones that I have used. It also includes predictive word suggestions that can help speed the process up. With others I find myself using the backspace button a great deal more when typing messages.

The Arc uses Sony Ericsson's skin for Android which is visually appealing. There are five homescreen panels that you can easily add widgets and shortcuts to by holding down your finger in one place. With a pinch to zoom gesture you can see all of the widgets contained on all of the panels. This feature is actually growing on me as it provides quicker access to all of your homescreen widgets, and it is one of the main things I like about the Sony Ericsson interface.

In the applications folder you can also move app icons around and place them into folders, and the Arc was the first phone to introduce this functionality. This has since been introduced on some other handsets like the Galaxy S2, although is not available on older Android phones.

Sony Ericsson has toned down the interface that they used on the earlier Xperia X10, and so now you are left with a fairly faithful Android layout. Timescape had taken a prominent role on earlier Sony Ericsson Android phones but after complaints about sluggishness it has been reduced to a mere widget on the home screen. This still appears to cause a slight judder when flicking between panels, although Timescape can now be completely removed from the Arc should you wish to do so.

Timescape can allow you to search through messages, tweets and Facebook updates with ease by scrolling through your contacts on each service. This can also be presented together in chronological order so that you can see all of your messages, missed calls, tweets and wall posts in the order that they occurred without the need for loading up separate apps. Similar services are offered by other manufacturers, like Motorola's MotoBlur and Samsung's Social Hub.

Timescape presents these events in the form of cards that can be scrolled through from start to finish. I did find it personally a little tricky to slide through the individual cards accurately, often going a little too far and having to scroll back. This interface could perhaps do with a little tweaking for usability.

The Xperia Arc is Sony Ericsson's current flagship Android device and it has a lot to boast about. It is one of the thinnest smartphones going and its curved shape makes it more interesting than the usual crowd in terms of its look and feel. Some hardware features like the processor are a little behind the times compared to other devices of the same range. The Arc does benefit from great entertainment features and a decent camera. Unfortunately, the Arc’s battery life is a little disappointing, which is a shame considering the entertainment value of this phone.

The biggest downside I found with the Arc is its physical buttons, which are either awkwardly shaped or badly positioned. With a touchscreen phone this is perhaps not so much of an issue as the screen will be your primary method of interaction. It does strike me though that many of these buttons have been designed more for aesthetic reasons than functional ones.

The Arc offers a large screen for entertainment and web browsing and is a good sized handset. While being at the larger end of the market in terms of screen size the overall phone seems much more comfortably sized in all its proportions. The more elongated design means that it feels more like a phone than a miniature tablet and also gives it the benefit of true widescreen video playback.

Sony Ericsson Xperia Play - Similar physically and with a similar interface, although it comes with a sliding control pad and better gaming features. Like the Xperia Arc, but for the more game-centric younger generation.

HTC Sensation - Similar all-round Android touchscreen, but with faster processing power on board. The Sensation has a slightly larger screen, faster processor and a better camera including 1080p and instant capture.

Samsung Galaxy S2 - Like the Arc is a very slim Android phone, but comes with more power and arguably better visuals through its screen. The S2 also offers more power and performance.

Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 - Although it is getting on a bit now with some features starting to show their age, it does share a lot of similar features physically and in terms of software, including Timescape, and is available at a lower price than the newer Arc.

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc had previously made a pre-release appearance as the Anzu in various leaked photos, but Sony Ericsson confirmed at the 2011 CES in Las Vegas that the phone takes the name of the Xperia Arc in reference to its curved casing. From the front the Xperia Arc looks similar to other Xperia handsets such as the Xperia X10, and also comes with Sony Ericsson´s Timescape interface on top of Google Android. The Xperia Arc features the latest Android Gingerbread version.

Aside from its unique physical appearance the Xperia Arc is quite noteworthy for its display. The 4.2" capacitive screen has been labelled as Reality Display by Sony Ericsson, which is a fairly boastful moniker. However, the Xperia Arc does come with many features that make the screen something of interest and certainly more attention grabbing than most touchscreens on the market. The Xperia Arc features Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine which provides real time picture enhancements. These enhancements include noise reduction and improvements to sharpness and colour contrast that do make a significant difference to picture and video quality.

The Arc´s camera is also pretty impressive. At 8 megapixels it features a Sony Exmor R sensor that is normally reserved for the Japanese company´s top range of cameras. Other features on board include face and smile detection, geo-tagging and an LED flash. A secondary camera is included on the front of the Xperia Arc which can be put to good use making video calls. The camera features 720p HD video recording and with an HDMI port videos can be watched directly through your TV.

The Xperia Arc´s appeal is not limited to its camera and screen as it also comes with superb web, messaging and entertainment features included. There is 32GB of internal storage available through microSD, YouTube support and social networking integration for Facebook and Twitter. The Arc also comes with TrackID, an FM radio and support for most Google services.