Monthly Archives: April 2011

Available from Clove for £412.80.

There is little doubt that the Arc made a very positive impression on me in the first 24 hours. The design hit me between the eyes like a smartly designed bullet with an Xperia logo on the side and 3 days later I am still in awe of the way it looks and feels.

Anyway, I need to move on from my smartphone glee and look at what is inside.

Camera

The camera is very impressive for stills. Even thought it is rated at 8 Megapixels this is rarely a guarantee on a smartphone that good pictures will come out of it, but here the story is in the quality of the output. Examples are below-

Video capture quality is also impressive and I would put it at a similar level to the iPhone 4. It is different, but largely similar in output. Shapes in dark conditions tend to be smoothed out more, thus losing minor detail, but you do get to see clearly what you are capturing which is not always the case with the iPhone 4.

All in all though this is one of the best smartphone cameras I have seen on an Android phone and very likely the best yet.

Battery

It seems that Timescape is a bit of a battery hog at times and it is worthwhile playing around with the sync frequency, but even on high I managed two days use before a charge was needed. This is good for me and better than I can managed with the iPhone 4 under the same conditions. Very heavy usage will require a daily charge, but at least you can feel secure knowing that a day of extreme usage is possible.

Screen

Very, very good. Indoors it is wonderful for media and the 4.2” size makes for an immersive movie watching experience. The Bravia engine is supposed to bring better definition and colours to images and I guess it works. It is, however, hard to tell because everything looks great on this screen.

I tested it outdoors on a very bright day and could still use it for everything I needed to. It isn’t the best in bright conditions, but it matches up to the Super AMOLED experience on the Galaxy S.

General performance

On the whole the experience is smooth and hassle free. I noticed the occasional slow down in Timescape (I wouldn’t use it personally no matter how well it is presented) and when many apps were open, but standard to power use should present no problems at all. The performance is particularly strong though when rendering complex web pages with Flash or high encoded videos.

Voice and signal quality

The call quality to the ear is vibrant and works well even in windy conditions. The speaker phone is also good, but a little tinny when the volume is pumped up to the maximum. It says something that a good quality sound can still be produced from the external speaker in a phone so slim when others struggle to match up on much thicker phones.

Signal is good with the magic ‘H’ appearing almost constantly at home, work and on my journey to work. It still isn’t BlackBerry level, but is adequate for what most people will need.

Media / web browsing

As I said earlier video playbook looks great on the huge screen and the viewing angles are terrific. Music quality is decent even with the supplied headphones, but a better set brings out the pedigree that Sony obviously has in this area. Throw in a lovely gallery app and a high visual music interface and the whole experience feels much better than you see on most Android phones.

Web browsing is even better. We all know that the default Android browser is good, but I spent a lot of time testing this on the Arc and little things like watching Flash videos on the BBC website add a lot to the experience. I have to say that I didn’t experience any glitches at all and the performance was excellent throughout. I am sure that some sites will present a problem, but I would expect them to also present a problem on my Mac Mini as well.

The debate about Flash and its performance on smartphones is of course valid, but all I can judge is from what I experience and Flash makes for a big positive on the Arc.

Software

Sony Ericsson has sparingly added a couple of widgets and left the operating system alone. There are some clever themes included which make the interface feel more organised and it all works well together. I could write three more parts to this review if I wanted to go into each app because there are some brilliant tweaks that have been made to contacts and many of the other standards. I think SE has got the balance right here between offering standard Android with just enough additions to add genuine usability.

Mediascape and Timescape are wonderfully presented, but heavy Timescape use could slow down the device a little so your mileage may vary. When I say slow down I am talking relative here because on the whole it is extremely quick and any tiny stop is more noticeable than it would normally be so you can rest assured that the software will work near perfectly with the hardware on the Arc.

I didn’t get enough time to fully explore all of the differences in this version of Android, but tested Navigation, PIM, the Android Market and every other app I could find. One word- flawless. Android is coming of age and as each release passes more pieces of the puzzle fall into place. This is by far the best Android experience I have had so far and could quite happily use it every day.

Data Input

This is my favourite part of any touch screen phone to complain about, but even here I am struggling a bit to shake off the positivity. The large screen aids data input greatly and there are various options built in to auto-correct words etc. I have to say that the auto-correction could be better though because some times it does fly off at a tangent. Remember though that you can substitute the standard keyboard with others from the Android Market.

Conclusion

The Arc is without doubt an all round superb smartphone. It does almost everything right and I am left wondering how so much was crammed into such a small space. The improvements in Android are gradually starting to work together to create a more rounded experience and when it is sensitively squeezed into a piece of hardware like this something special happens. This is my new favourite smartphone.