Originally Posted by david.boobis:
“The Arc does sound like a good phone, with one glaring flaw being the screen having shocking viewing angles (not a problem for most people but still), although as GSM Arena points out it's currently fighting it out with the top end phones but very soon it'll be mid-range, so if you really care about having great hardware for the length of your contract I'd either get the Optimus 2X or wait for the Galaxy S II or the HTC offering (which rumours suggest will be overclocked to 1.2GHz so will be the most powerful handset available at launch).”
I think Sony Ericsson have not particularly pitched the phone at the top-end. Low-£400s on launch, probably dropping to £400 or below over the next few weeks - a good £100 under the launch prices of the Galaxy S II et al. I would probably argue that it's already pitched "mid-range".
As for the phone itself, I got hold of mine on Friday of last week so have had plenty of time to play with it now. Compared to the 3.7" of the HTC Desire I now have sitting on Amazon Marketplace, the 4.2" screen of the Xperia Arc is a significant difference. It is also
so light, though I've not held an iPhone 4 without a case on it so I'm not sure how it compares. The phone is fast enough but Lord knows what SE were thinking when they loaded three widgets onto one homepage and the Timescape widget onto the next - slows the phone down like a dog. I wondered if it was faulty at one point! But once those shitty widgets were gone, the phone sails along like a breeze - really beggars belief that SE think the best first impression they can give is to slow the phone down to a crawl.
A quick and personal summary:
+ really nice screen, not noticed any viewing angle issues; videos look amazing
+ battery life seems a bit better than HTC Desire
+ decent camera, loud loudspeaker
+ some SE tweaks (eg. messaging, contacts) are quite good
+ light, thin, attractive
+ phone seems to stay cool, even when working hard
- have had to replace SE keyboard for standard Android one. Perhaps I'm too used to, say, holding down 'o' to get a '9' appear, but I couldn't adjust to SE's
- has rebooted twice now during heavy use of Google Navigation. Don't know if the phone is overheating (but see last + point), but it's happened twice out of probably ten or so uses
- booting seems to take forever
- no automatic brightness
Overall, though, this is a better phone than the Desire IMO and so a worthwhile upgrade. Am hoping that a couple of OTA updates might iron out a few of the minor bugs, as this is a really good phone that could do without being spoilt by a few niggles.