Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is a smartphone that sells itself on great design. The physical differences between the Arc and its competitors are noticeable from the first time you look at it – it’s sleek and sexy, with a concave backplate that fits nicely in the palm of your hand. The curve of it also makes the phone sit more firmly in your hand, thus making it harder to drop. I should know; I tested it by tossing different phones around in my hands to see how easy it would be to drop them.

The shell is made from plastic, not glass or aluminium, but it doesn’t feel at all cheap.

The Arc is longer than the average smartphone, in part to compensate for how thin it is, but also to accommodate its huge 4.2-inch screen. It really is enormous, and at a resolution of 854 x 480, I could barely see any pixelated text, and singling out individual pixels was impossible. The colours are also very bright, making the screen look great overall.

Aside from the design, the Arc has handy extra features. Thanks to Android 2.3 it can function as a 3G Wi-Fi hotspot, allowing you to connect your laptop, tablet or even other smartphones to the internet via the Arc’s data connection. Even better is the HDMI output, coupled with the phone’s ability to function as a media server. You can film video in HD on the Arc, and use either the HDMI output or Sony Ericsson’s media server app, coupled with a Wi-Fi or 3G connection, to share video and other media content with compatible devices. The phone has a 1GHz Qualcomm processor and 512MB of RAM that avoids lag and keep sound and picture in sync when playing video directly on your TV. Apart from the 320MB of onboard storage, you can add a microSD card for up to 32GB additional storage.

The HD video capability is nice, and you get more vibrant colours than I would normally expect from a smartphone. In the low light of PC World’s test centre, however, footage became grainy and blurry, although colours still came across surprisingly well.

Photography on the Xperia Arc encounters similar problems in low light without flash on, but the 8.1MP camera also doesn’t fare well with movement and takes a few extra seconds to automatically switch to macro mode when taking close-up shots. The Arc’s LED flash washes out colours a bit, but it produces sharper, cleaner images if you leave auto-flash on.

Early adopters will be happy to know that the Xperia Arc runs Android 2.3 right out of the box, which provides a quicker, more responsive experience than Android 2.2. Sony Ericsson have also said that its new Xperia devices will be upgradable to the latest versions of the OS as quickly as possible – as part of the company’s plan to become the number one Android device manufacturer – so if Android 3.1 comes out in a couple of months’ time, you should be able to upgrade the Arc fairly promptly.

If you’ve seen the Xperia X10 and are worried that Sony Ericsson’s software layered on top of Android might be a bit overbearing, don’t fret. The company has learned from its mistakes. The software is now entirely app-based, so you don’t even have to look at anything you don’t want to use.

If you’re looking for a high-end smartphone running something other than iOS, the Xperia Arc is one of the only real iPhone competitors on the New Zealand market. Of course, we’re reserving judgement on whether it’s the best Android phone until we get our hands on Samsung’s Galaxy S II, but for now the Arc is looking pretty darn good.

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