Review: Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc

Earlier this month Sony Ericsson announced the Xperia Arc, their latest flagship device, at an event in Johannesburg. We were sent a pre-release unit to review. Does it stack up to the current crop of top-end Android devices?

Something without rounded corners.

Physical Features
At first glance the Arc is a welcome change to the usual array of rounded corner slabs we’ve gotten used to over the past year. The front is taken up by the 4.2-inch display, and right above it sits the speaker and proximity sensor. At the bottom edge you will find the three physical chromed buttons for menu, home and back. In the dark, the three icons indicating which button is which do not light up, which can be seen as a downside if you aren’t familiar with the layout. At 125x63mm the Arc is similar in size to the Galaxy S II but at 8.7mm, it’s not quite as thin. The sides of the phone are covered in a faux-chrome trim. On the top of the handset you will find the power/lock button and a mini-HDMI port. On the left hand side, near the top of the phone, you’ll find the standard 3.5mm headphone jack which is a bit of an awkward position, especially when you have headphones plugged in and the phone is in your pocket. The right hand contains a micro-USB slot, followed by the volume rocker, and a physical camera button. It does take some time getting used to the micro-USB connector being at the top right of the phone, as it makes the phone uncomfortable to hold when plugged in to charge or sync.

Looking at the phone from the side, it becomes apparent where the inspiration for the name came from, as it arcs inwards from the top and bottom towards the center. This translates into a device that sits nicely in the palm of your hand, and is comfortable to hold. The back also contains the camera, Xperia branding and a gradient paint effect. Sony Ericsson has opted to use plastic for the phone’s outer construction, which does sometimes come across as a little bit cheap. I much preferred the rubber backing on the X10i we reviewed last year.

Display
As mentioned above, the Arc has a 4.2-inch LED-backlit capacitive touch screen with a resolution of 480×854 pixels. The display is bright and crisp and SE has brought a new feature to the plate which they are calling the “Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine”.

Sony Ericsson’s website explains:

The Mobile BRAVIA (Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture) technology is a suite of image processing technologies. It offers improved image quality from any signal; be it photos, videos, flash animation or websites. Unlike most image enhancing technologies the BRAVIA suite is hardware based using popular APIs such as OpenGL 2.0, Direct3D Mobile and Direct Draw.

The screen itself is protected by a scratch resistant surface (not Gorilla Glass), but it did pick up some minor scratches during the reviewing process. Touch sensitivity was good and quite accurate, however I did notice a few times that it would not allow me to select a certain character when I was entering text. The one or two times it happened, it was the same spot on the screen, but simply closing and reopening the keyboard would fix this, so it’s probably just a software issue.

One thing that I have to note is that the display has no auto-brightness setting, although it appeared to be enabled by default as the display would sometimes dim slightly and then brighten up again when touched.

Performance and Battery Life
The Arc is powered by a 1GHz Scorpion processor and an Adreno 205 GPU. On the memory and storage side of things, you’ll be greeted by 512MB of RAM and 320MB of internal storage. An 8GB microSD card is also included but can be replaced with a microSD of up to 32GB.

The Arc’s battery is rated at 1500 mAh, and the phone includes the usual USB/wall-socket charger that we’ve become used to with Android phones. Battery life was better than expected with the phone easily taking me through my whole day and hitting over 24 hours on a full charge. This included at least 2-3 hours where the screen was constantly on and the phone in use.

Performance-wise there isn’t really anything to complain about. The phone handled anything I could throw at it which included a lot of 3D-intensive games. I didn’t experience any of the lag that was evident on the X10i, but as speculated, the software was probably to blame for that.

3G signal was good as is to be expected and I had no issues with Wi-Fi, using it extensively at home and at work.

Sony Ericsson's party piece.

Camera
On to another show piece of the Arc: its camera. It sports an 8MP rear camera (including LED flash), which is capable of producing 3264×2488 pixel images and 720p video with a frame rate of 30 frames per second. The usual array of touch-to-focus, geo-tagging and smile detection features are all available in the Arc’s camera application.

The camera also features Sony Ericsson’s new “Exmor R” CMOS Sensor. This sensor allows the Arc to shine in low light conditions, where it manages to produce low noise photographs that are properly exposed. Another cool feature is the image stabilization, which allows for the camera to compensate for the shaking produced by the person holding it. This, along with the “Exmor R” allows for beautifully sharp and vivid images.

Sony.net dishes out the technical details:

Sony developed “Exmor R”, a CMOS sensor featuring Sony’s independently developed back-illuminated structure, with the aim of creating a camera capable of taking exceptional photographs even by candlelight. “Exmor R” is approximately twice as sensitive (*1) as a conventional front-illuminated CMOS sensor and also features low noise. In a back-illuminated CMOS sensor, light is directed onto the silicon substrate from behind, allowing light to be used with a level of efficiency not possible with conventional front-illuminated pixel structures. Photographers can now create smooth, high-quality images in low light settings, including night scenes. In February 2009, Sony introduced the HDR-XR500V and the HDR-XR520V, the world’s first HD video cameras equipped with this back-illuminated CMOS sensor.

Note: The Arc doesn’t support panoramic pictures by default but the Sony Ericsson developed Panorama Beta (available in the Android Market) allows for seamless, easy to take panoramas. These will be stitched on the fly as you move the view across your desired shot.

Software
Like with most other Android phones available (except for Google’s Nexus line), you can expect a manufacturer skinned user-interface on the Arc. This time around we see Gingerbread (Android 2.3.3) running Sony Ericsson’s Timescape UI. Here at ZADroid we aren’t fond of skinning (I’m sure you know that by now), but I have to commend SE this time around by saying that it is one of the most complete skinned experiences I’ve seen on a Android device. Everything but the launcher icons and application drawer has a consistent look and feel.

With the new launcher (compared to the version of the Timescape UI running on the X10i), it does feel like SE has taken some influence from Samsung with the design. The look and feel for the application drawer has Touchwiz written all over it. Other than that, the only part of the skinning that stood out a bit was the dock and icons which just didn’t feel like it had the same flow as the rest of the UI.

The lock screen, although customized, is a pretty standard affair and contains a normal swipe (left to right) styled bar and a clock.

Like with all the other Sony Ericsson devices, Timescape is featured. Not much, if anything, has changed from earlier phones versions of the software. It still lacks key features that I would like to see such as retweeting of tweets and cross platform sharing of other people’s posts/statuses. It still serves as a very nice overview of all your incoming messages/social media/phone calls but still won’t get me away from using dedicated apps for each individual social media platform.

For those who don’t know what Timescape is here is a snippet from our Xperia X10i review:

Timescape basically gives you an aggregated view of everything happening on your phone. This includes Facebook, Twitter, SMS’s, MMS’s, Emails and your Call Log. It is divided into eight tabs which you navigate the same way you would the home screens on any Android device. From here you are able to update Facebook and Twitter statuses as well as jump directly into SMS’s to reply on them or return phone calls.

What I did notice was the lack of Mediascape, a Timescape-like overview and media player for all your video and audio files. This has instead been replaced by a nicely skinned version of the standard audio player. A set of non-removable OEM apps are pre-installed on the Arc, as expected.

As with most Android phones, there is already a rather large community gathered around the Arc, and with Sony Ericsson’s move to either give you a unlocked bootloader, or giving you a step by step guide to unlock your bootloader, this community will only grow more over time.

Conclusion
Sony Ericsson has really upped their game, but there are aspects of this phone that are still lacking.

The overall feel and consistency of the software is an amazing leap forward, and the Xperia Arc feels like a solid product, but it is let down by the build quality. The phone feels solid, as most high end Sony Ericsson phones do, but the faux-chromed sides and plastic isn’t something you would expect to find on a flagship device. The screen not being covered by everyone’s favourite Gorilla Glass is also another big downside on a device that is in a competition with other high end phones from manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung.

Build Quality: 7/10
Performance and Responsiveness: 8/10
Aesthetics: 7/10
Display: 8/10

Score: 7.5/10