Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc review

With a recommended retail price of R6,599, can Sony Ericsson’s latest Android smartphone, the Xperia Arc, measure up to the competition?(KODAK KLIC-7001 battery)

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc has a decent spec sheet, with a 4.2” 480×854 Reality display with Mobile Bravia Engine, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon system-on-chip (the same as the HTC Desire HD) with a 1GHz Scorpion processor and Adreno 205 GPU, 512MB RAM, WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth v2.1, and an 8 megapixel camera with LED flash capable of 3264×2448 stills and 720p video.
It comes with Android 2.3.3 with some lightly sprinkled UI customisations.
One problem on the sheet is the 320MB of user-accessible internal storage – it’s about a third of what it needs to be for a serious user.CANON NB-2L battery
All of the above fits into a rather light package of 117g and comes with a recommended retail price of R6,599.

Design and build quality

The back cover is plastic and feels extraordinarily cheap. Every time it was taken off to swap out a SIM or memory card it felt like it was one step closer to snapping in half. PANASONIC VW-VBJ10 battery
The power button on the top left is quite sunken and was hard to find and extremely hard to press. On the top right side is the HDMI port covered by a flap.
The notification LED is on the right side all the way at the top, which meant that most of the time I didn’t see it blinking for a notification. Below that you’ll find the microUSB port, volume rocker and the camera button on the bottom right edge. OLYMPUS LI-40B battery
The camera button, like the power button, was hard to press without accidentally jarring the phone (and thus messing up the shot). Thankfully, the camera software also allowed for touchscreen capture.
On the left side is the 3.5mm headphone jack. It’s an odd side to put it on as headphones will now add some extra girth to the phone. This is somewhat mitigated by the bundled headphones having an angled connector, but their sound quality was downright terrible. Sony NP-BD1 charger
You can use other headphones, and we certainly tried to. Unfortunately, if they have a microphone and button the Xperia Arc will probably not recognise them and will output sound via the speaker, instead of just using the earphones and ignoring microphone and button.
The hardware buttons in front (from left to right: back, home and menu) are big and easy to press, but their icons aren’t lit. Instead, the space between buttons is lit.
Of course we have to mention the actual ‘Arc’ – it curves the wrong way. Human hands don’t curve that way when holding something.CANON BP-511 battery

Display and responsiveness

The quality of the screen is generally quite average, holding very little in comparison to Super AMOLED and Retina displays. However, when viewing images or video, the Mobile Bravia Engine kicks in and spices things up quite nicely.SONY Cyber-shot DSC-W350 Battery
Responsiveness was generally quite good for general use, browsing, and gaming, though up/down swipes translated to left/right swipes often enough for us to have to mention it.
Sony Ericsson’s keyboard was also fairly below average in terms of responsiveness. Mistypes, to our dismay, occurred frequently, which is strange considering how great the stock Android 2.3 keyboard is on the Nexus S.

Camera

The 8.1 megapixel camera takes excellent photos. Pictures are detailed and colours are vibrant.
It should be noted that final images are post-processed, which means that they aren’t necessarily as “real” as you might like them to be. A nice option would be to disable this feature. SONY NP-F330 battery

Xperia Arc image quality example

Video capture is not as fantastic, but it’s a decent enough option if you’re in a pinch.

Though it’s probably nothing to be too concerned about, the camera app did crash once during our brief time with the Xperia arc. CANON IXUS 85 is battery

Sound and call quality

Call quality was good on both ends without any needless fidgeting.
The speaker on the back is good to listen to a quick clip.

Camera Battery life

Battery life was fairly good. Heavy data use, along with some gaming and picture taking resulted in it lasting just over a day.
With lighter use, the Xperia Arc made it through two days with just enough left to make it to the charger.

Software

The interface is very similar to stock Android, with some notable exceptions.
The bottom dock supports a total of four elements – shortcuts or folders –  along with the standard app drawer icon. CASIO NP-20 battery
The app drawer is a horizontal side-swiping affair and apps can be reordered in any way you’d like. It features quick options including alphabetical, most used and recently installed.
Standard widgets have been re-skinned to fit in with the semi-transparent blue/white theme.
Sony Ericsson has also bundled a number of applications with the Xperia Arc.
TrackID identifies music by listening to a short segment. It’s fairly good, though outshone by competitors like SoundHound and Shazam.JVC GR-D70EK charger
Media Server allows you to turn the device into a media server (obviously) that can then be accessed by other devices connected to the same local network.
LiveWire Manager lets you set default actions for when you connect headphones, headsets and chargers, helping you shave off seconds between plugging in headphones and launching the music app.
Finally, we come to the Timescape application and widget. Timescape fetches your Facebook, Twitter and SMS feeds and merges it all into one central location. Each item is represented by a card and these can be scrolled through. NIKON EN-EL12 battery
It’s a great idea and the scrolling action has some very slick transition animations, but for someone with busy feeds it becomes nigh unmanageable.
The cards also have a background that’s really just a blown-up image of the user’s profile picture which results in an ugly mess that detracts from the overall experience.

Conclusion

If the Xperia Arc was released a few months ago, depending on its price, it would have been a decent competitor to high-end Android phones. Unfortunately, it’s coming out now and it has to face the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S2 and very soon, the HTC Sensation. SONY NP-BN1 Battery
It’s really hard to recommend the Sony Ericsson Xperia arc considering all of the above along with the RRP of R6,599, the latter being just R100 shy of the RRP for the Galaxy S2.
If you were considering the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc for your next upgrade, consider the Samsung Galaxy S2 or wait and see how the HTC Sensation fares. I’d even recommend the Samsung Nexus S and the HTC Desire HD over the Xperia Arc.
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