The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is a good looking Android smartphone, and one of the first in Australia in 2011 to feature Gingerbread 2.3.
The Xperia Arc’s design is likely to attract most buyers to this handset. The distinctive concave back is pleasing to the eye and makes the phone comfortable to hold. It’s also super slim – 8.7mm, and incredibly light, weighing only 117g, whilst still maintaining its durability.
The Reality display is an adequate 4.2 inches, and runs at a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels. A stainless steel ribbon edges the handset, along with the camera button, volume control, the Micro USB charging port and the 3.5mm headphone jack. Users will need to remove the battery in order to dig out the SIM card and and MicroSD card slot. The colours on the display are impressively rich – but only as long as you’re facing the phone head on. The colours tend to wash out as soon as you view the phone from other angles, such as when it’s lying on the bench.
The 8.1-megapixel camera comes with cool features like geo-tagging and face recognition. Photos taken in bright conditions come out almost in full detail and minimal noise. However, like many other handsets on the market, once you view the images on a bigger screen, they probably won’t look as sharp as they once did. Additionally, photos captured in dim conditions tend to look a bit washed out.
The software on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc runs smoothly. There are a number of widgets you can flood your screen with, and you can also view all of them at once using the Overview function. Navigating through the browser can be tricky at times, however viewing Flash on the Xperia Arc works surprisingly well.
The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is a stylish phone that’s easy to use, whilst also providing all the basic smartphone features. The camera is sufficient, and the phone seems durable enough. The display may let some users who are used to vibrant AMOLED displays down, but this probably won’t faze too many people when the design of your phone looks this good.