Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S review

It kind of feels like nearly all of the phone makers are doing it. Take the most recent flagship release, add some welcome (but relatively minor) technical tweaks, slap an additional S on it and release to an adoring public not so much more than six months after the unique hit stores. Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc is the most recent (but by no means the last) to undergo said refresh. The recent Arc S appears identical at the surface, still carrying the trendy curvature that wooed us the primary time round. Internally, many of the parts remain similar to its predecessor, apart from a bump to a brand new CPU, a 1.4GHz Qualcomm chip. Alongside the minor hardware change, it is the primary Xperia handset arriving with Sony’s 3D sweep panorama feature, able to creating 3D stills for consumption in your compatible TV back home. Does the additional 400MHz make enough of a difference? Are sweeping panoramas enough to warrant a phone refresh at a time when dual-core, big-screened Android phones are the high-end standard? Read directly to get the complete picture.

Hardware

The Xperia Arc S sticks with the convex profile, virtually just like the smartphone that came before it. It is a relief to peer a trendy phone that’s actually distinguishable from the mostly black oblongs we stare at on daily basis. Our model arrived in a white finish, which helps to a reinvigorate a phone design that’s already done the rounds once. We did notice that the (slightly) flimsy backing seemed slightly more rigid at the refresh, though this might just be the fresh out-of-the-box condition. However an occasional creak does remain inside the battery cover, a shame considering the more solid feel of its smaller stablemate, the Xperia Ray.

The ability button, found at the top edge alongside the micro-HDMI port has slightly more give, but remains slightly small for our tastes; that 4.2-inch screen (and extra over-sized bezel on the top) means our fingers felt overstretched pushing at the petite button. Though not an enormous issue when the unique Arc arrived in stores, top-drawer Android specifications haven’t stayed put, and the Xperia Arc S continues to be conspicuously lacking a front-facing camera. It’s kind of of a mystery, since Sony Ericsson had no issues packing one contained in the lower-priced Xperia Neo. Sony Ericsson hasn’t messed with the physical buttons either, another three slivers under the screen will send you back, home or to the menu, with those still lacking any back-lighting. Though it isn’t a deal-breaker, though you have got to attend for muscle memory to kick in and teach you which ones button does what in low light.

Screen

The 4.2-inch screen remains a powerful performer. Despite its LCD roots, Sony’s Mobile Bravia Engine seems to accomplish minor miracles at the 854 x 480 display, with sharp detail and rich coloration. While its effects are limited to images and video, menus and icons still look rich, and blacks look black. With over four inches of space on your fingers, that’s a great deal of real estate to browse the internet, play games and kind at the stock keyboard. Sadly, tilting the screen shows up its limitations — this is not an IPS panel, and whilst we understand it’s doing its best, nor can it face up to the might of Super AMOLED plus.

Camera

Packing the Exmor R sensor, the eight megapixel camera performs just as admirably as after we tested it at the original back in March. Since then, software updates have added more customization options. To get to the photography meat, you will need to interchange off the automated scene recognition mode, and you will find the slide-out options at the left take a lifetime of their very own. Here, you may comply with macro mode, or choose whether to make use of touch-to-focus and even multi-point focus. Metering and white balance can be adjusted inside the menu, and there are a handful of preset scene options that provide up some quick automatic settings for those not eager to wrestle with ISOs and focus options. The Arc S also retains the 2-stage camera button, something still not deemed a regular requirement despite the impressive optical chops of new smartphones.

The telephone is able to 720p video capture and maintains good detail over distance, though the sensor still has issues with big moving objects, adding a shuttering ’tilt’ on your video if the action gets somewhat too intense. Given the zippier processor of the Xperia Arc S, we’d hoped it can were enough to permit for 1080p, but that appears prone to remain the domain of twin-core phones.

Software

With Android Gingerbread, you get an identical slice of Google to the Xperia Arc S’ predecessor. Nudged as much as Android 2.3.4, it also brings with it Sony Ericsson’s Facebook layer, conveniently adding status updates, photos and more on your contacts which are associated with Facebook. There’s also a screen grab function embedded into the ability-off screen – a convenient time-saver that suggests we will now avoid more complicated third-party solutions. The net browser ably displays, scrolls and zooms at the 4.2-inch screen – shrugging off slightly vigorous scrolling without having to catch its breath.

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The native keyboard has also gained an upgrade, with a distinctly Swype-ish typing function which might be switched off and on from the keyboard settings. “Swipe to jot down” works by picking up letters as you slide your finger from key to key, and taking your finger off the screen finishes the word. In action, it’s pleasantly responsive, with a classy highlighter trail mapping the letters at the screen. Sony Ericsson have also included an easier keypad layout for those used to nine-key typing, a great addition to anyone finding those QWERTY keys simply too small. While there are a handful of incremental changes, there’s nothing major here that we hadn’t seen at the original, except for the pre-installed 3D sweep panorama, a feature proudly emblazoned at the back of the box.

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Given the one lens, the camera actually doubles-up on itself to create the 3D effect, and you may should be in possession of your individual 3D-capable screen; no parallax 3D screen here. But how does it look when you get it up at the big-screen? Well, it really works — to an extent. Sadly, the image, resembling three-dimensional stills from those 3D-capable Android phones, stutters because it scrolls across your huge screen. Pictures also appear to lose a number of their clarity within the process; and the camera sensor won’t comply with lighting differences (check up on the brightness flare inside the sample seen here) and thanks to the motion of “sweeping” your phone to capture, expect to look detail lost.

The panorama capture setting didn’t adore it once we scrolled too slow, but accelerate an excessive amount of, and it didn’t like that either. Maintaining with the telephone also signifies that you’ll often get undulations on straight edges like buildings and roads – the sole solution for it is a tripod. In the event you haven’t bought into the 3-dimensional revolution just, you’re able to find the panorama sweep for 2D images just as useful – it’s pre-installed, though it suffers an analogous juddering motions. We’re skeptical that the feature will see much use outside of its first showing, and its arrival on all 2011 Xperia devices in a firmware update very soon — let alone the high probabilities of inclusion within Ice Cream Sandwich — means its chance to tell apart the Arc S from its forebear is all but non-existent.

Performance

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The enhanced processor makes itself known in numerous benchmark tests. Its Qudrant score bested the unique Arc’s by 200 points, while it notched a typical score of 14.2 in Nenamark 2, up from 13.3 with the 1st-gen Arc. Whilst the newer phone consistently scored higher than the primary, we were hard-pressed to note any meaningful difference. As we noted, if you are vulnerable to visiting graphically intense sites, or have an itchy scrolling finger, the Arc S is usually greater than able to maintaining with you. For media-streaming apps, the Arc S was also several seconds prior to its ancestor, as were start-up times from off. In the curved silhouette, Sony Ericsson have crammed within the same 1,500mAh battery found at the original Arc, and (despite the minor hardware and software changes), battery life seemed roughly equivalent. We managed to push six hours of non-stop video playback, and the telephone also managed to last an afternoon of ordinary use which included connecting several times to WiFi networks, occasional web browsing about two hours of music playback alongside push email and a medley of social network notifications. Using the phone’s built-in battery monitor, we found that it was that rich Reality Display that was drawing on lots of the battery and that that toying with the brightness settings helped eke out a bit more life from the dying cell. Call quality was superb, with due praise going to the secondary mic, which was capable of cancel out an excellent chunk of ambient noise when making calls.

Wrap-up

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The Xperia Arc S is an extremely capable single-core smartphone and debuts alongside Sony Ericsson’s latest Gingerbread retweaks. Sadly these don’t add enough to recommend it much beyond the unique Xperia Arc. The 3D Panorama Sweep may get an obligatory party-trick showing a handful of times, but it’s difficult to assume it will be an often-used feature. Compared to its predecessor, the upgraded CPU doesn’t appear to give much of a lift to day-to-day use, other than ever-so-slightly reduced (but certainly not instant) start-up times and cargo times for streaming media. There’s really not much here to push the Xperia Arc S beyond what we have seen on its predecessor– here is much more true once that software upgrade hits the eight-month-old original. (Even rival phones that get upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade look prone to pick up a wide ranging sweep option too.) Both the screen and camera remainside the strongest weapons in the Xperia Arc S’ arsenal, and priced beneath more powerful headliner smartphones, both the Arc and Arc S are very capable, attractive offerings. Yet, they cannot stand toe-to-toe with the likes of rival flagship handsets like Samsung’s 1 Galaxy S II 1 , which offers up a more robust combination of power, screen technology and build quality. The Xperia Arc S is now available in Europe, priced off-contract at £340 ($529). If Sony Ericsson are holding back on their lonesome 2 dual-core wonder 2 , we’d advise they got around to getting it out here — everyone’s doing it.

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This post is tagged: convex profile, flagship release, fresh out of the box, hardware change, power button, sony ericsson