Stunning looks. Very good screen. And a polished Android experience. That’s Xperia Arc S looks at the first glance. But is it enough to compete with the big boys in the highly-competitive Android market? To find the answer, ladies and gentlemen, read on…
Slim & sleek Plastic has never looked as beautiful as it does on Arc S. Just like its predecessor, Xperia Arc, the new high-end Android phone from Sony Ericsson has stunning looks, complete with a curve in the middle – hence the name Arc – and sleek, clean lines. Yet, for all its design goodness, the fact remains that it’s all glossy plastic. This takes away some of the charm the phone has.
While looks are fine, detailed look into the design reveals a few shortcomings. I do not like the physical buttons on Arc S. My preference for touch-sensitive buttons aside – in my opinion it’s a much cleaner design to have capacitive buttons – the three buttons (Home, Back and Options) on Arc S are too thin for my taste. They feel clunky and slightly difficult to use. Then, there is the camera button. It’s too small and recessed to be comfortable, which is a pity considering that shutter release button is always a welcome addition to a smartphone. In fact, using camera button is so difficult that I preferred using ‘touch-to-snap’ for taking the pictures.
Power button too is on tinier side but because it’s not going to be used too frequently, it’s not much of an issue.
These are the issues that also afflicted Xperia Arc. In fact, Arc S nothing much but just a souped up version of Arc which, despite its design brilliance, fell a little short in terms of raw horsepower in the face of dual-core Android phones that launched in earlier this year.
Arc S still doesn’t come with any dual-core processor but Sony Ericsson believes that for now a bump in processor speed from 1 Ghz to 1.4Ghz is ought to do the trick. GPU duty is handled by Adreno 205. RAM is still the same at 512MB and so is the screen size at 4.2 inches. Resolution is 480 x 854 pixels. Arc S has user accessible storage of just 320MB but an 8GB micro SD card has been bundled.
Fairly fast but low on features Arc S comes loaded with Abdroid 2.3 aka Gingerbread. The OS has been customized by Sony Ericsson with its own user interface called Timescape. Unlike what offered by its competitors, Sony Ericsson’s custom UI has a minimalist design and is mostly focused around making Android look better. In my opinion it’s a good approach to take because it goes well with the overall design of Arc S as well is light on the hardware of the phone.
In terms of performance, lack of a dual-core processor makes little difference. It’s only during installing apps that you feel that phone could have done better with little more hardware. Performance is very smooth and polished. Animations in Timescape UI are pleasing and render well. Talking of performance, I must highlight the keyboard in Arc S. It’s among the best in terms of predictive text and spacing that I have seen on an Android phone.
LCD screen, which utilizes Sony Ericsson’s proprietary Bravia engine for mobiles, is bright and good but it lacks the vibrancy of AMOLED displays. The 8 megapixel rear camera is above average, especially when it comes to photographs taken indoors.
With location functions like navigation and places being an integral part of smartphone experience, I took special care to test GPS. It works very well and even under cloudy conditions managed to get good lock on satellites.
Battery life is also above average for a big Android phone. When used with 3G it is likely to last 10 to 12 hours. If you are on the EDGE you can easily expect a battery life of around 24 hours.
Nothing stands out The problem with Xperia Arc S is not what it offers in terms of performance and overall feel. The issue is with what it doesn’t offer. Given the excellent optimization engineers of Sony Ericsson have done, Arc S rarely feels slow. But still, there is no denying the fact that a dual-core processor helps in certain circumstances, for example during installing apps, browsing several websites at the same time or multi-tasking. Better hardware also means that phone is likely to have longer relevance in the future.
Then, there is poor multimedia playback performance. Arc S has an HDMI port but its usefulness is limited because the codec and resolution support is quite poor for a high-end Android phone. Similarly, despite the high-end tag, there is no 1080P video recording, a feature that is standard on top Android phones.
Arc S is a very functional phone. It is fast, has a good UI and a decent design. Unfortunately, lack of standout features means that it’s slightly over priced at Rs 28,000. The only reason why you should consider Arc S over similarly priced Android phones like Galaxy S II or HTC Sensation is its design – if you like it and don’t mind the physical buttons – and the fact that Sony Ericsson has categorically said the phone will receive Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, pretty soon.