Sony Ericsson's Xperia Arc is their most accomplished smartphone to date. It's light, thin, and well thought out coming with an impressive selection specs and features. There are loads of different Android phones on the market, but there are few that manage to tick all the right boxes - the Xperia Arc is beautiful to look at, a joy to use, comes with a impressive camera and is one of the best Android handsets around.
Design
Sony Ericsson has always been a by-word for stunning design and the Xperia is their finest work of design to date, from the offset you'll be taken aback at just how thin it is. Not only is it super slim, but it's incredibly light - weighing only 117 grams. But, there are disadvantages. For us, there's nothing more disappointing when you unbox your new phone and you have to build it. Like most Android phones you have to attach the battery, sim and rear cover. Having said that, it's not a particularly flimsy phone, although the battery cover is a bit cheap, but compared to an iPhone it's just not as premium as it looks.
The Xperia arc comes with a stunning 4.2-inch Reality display, the display is one the most accomplished you'll find on almost any phone. When the phone is off the screen is so dark you'll struggle to see where the screen ends and the bezel begins. More importantly Sony must be applauded for squeezing in a screen of this size into a phone that is only 1 cm bigger than the iPhone 4. The screen replicates deep, rich, vibrant colours and the quality of image is second to none.
The Arc is finished with a stainless steel trim that surrounds the edge of the handset. You'll find volume controls on the side, a dedicated camera button on the side, a top-mounted microHDMI port, 3.5mm headphone port, microUSB and a 8GB memory card. A nice touch is that Sony actually provides you with the HDMI cable something very few phone manufacturers bother with.
Features
One of the most impressive features about the the Xperia Arc is the way Sony Ericsson has approached Android. Sony's last Android Phone the Xperia X10 came with 1.6 while other phones of that time were already on Android 2.1. But the company has made sure it hasn't made the same mistake and the Arc ships with the latest version of Gingerbread 2.3.
The reason why the X10 didn't have the latest version of Android was Sony's decision to use a custom skin that couldn't be updated as quickly as other phones. But, for the Xperia Arc they have separated the UI and operating system, meaning updates should be handled much quicker than with the X10. Overall the UI is simple, user-friendly and effective.
Camera
The Xperia Arc come with one of the best cameras available on any smartphone - consisting of 8.1-megapixels, an incredibly bright LED photo light and a Exmor R CMOS sensor. The sensor is so impressive that it is only just being used in many compact cameras making this camera phone is on the best around. It also includes a host of clever options including face-detection and image stabilisation.
The Arc comes with both the ability to take photos by tapping the screen or using a traditional double-click photo button. When taking a photo with the button, you press it once the camera then works out how much light is needed then on the second press the photo is taken. It's easily the best way to take pictures on any smartphone we’ve used.
The Arc also shoots stunning 720p high definition video, sure it's not going to compete with phones that are capable of 1080p, but the results when viewed on a TV through the HDMI are stunning. There are plenty of ways to share you videos and photos and our favourite was to show them off on a TV. With the Arc you get the HDMI cable and allows you to mirror the phone on the screen. Meaning you can watch films, show-off photos, play games or use your TV remote to control control the phone via some Sony televisions.
Performance
You might think that a phone that is running on a single core processor would be a bit of a slouch, but having lived with the Arc for over a week now, we glad to report that the 1GHz processor is more than adequate. We did notice that the Arc does sometimes struggle to reconnect to a Wi-Fi network after you wake it up from standby, but perhaps this is one of the reasons why our battery life tests with the Arc matched Sony Ericsson’s generous 7-hour talk-time estimations. All in all, we easily made it through a work day with the Arc, and only burned through the battery before nightfall when we played several hours of games on the handset.
Internet
The Arc’s high-res 480 x 854 screen is superb for web surfing, it might not be as smooth as iOS, but this more a gripe with Android than the Arc. Multi-touch zooming around pages is usually good, although it can get a little rough if you try to move around pages before they’ve fully loaded. One annoyance was the limitation of having eight browser windows open at once. The combination of Android 2.3 and Adobe Flash Player means Flash sites are supported, while the phone’s 1GHz processor does a good job of handling complex, content-rich sites. It’s not perfect, though - pages with embedded videos can grind to a near halt at times.
Verdict
The Xperia Arc is not only the best smartphone Sony Ericsson has made, but it’s the best phone they have made in the last 5 years. It’s one of the best Android phones around for design, features and media capability. Sure, it would have been nice to see some Playstation compatibility, but it you’re looking for an impressively Android phone that has a big screen, great camera, and a full-set of media functionality you can’t go wrong with the Arc.