The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and the Samsung Galaxy S II (coming this May) are probably the two hottest Android phones that we’ll be having this year. I was able to briefly compare the two phones courtesy of Manila Bulletin’s tech editor, Mr. Art Samaniego, who owns a Galaxy S II (and other drool-inducing gadgets).
Looking at the two, the Xperia Arc has a huge 4.2-inch screen while the Galaxy S II has a tad bigger screen at 4.3-inch. The Xperia Arc has the Mobile Bravia Engine powering its display and the Galaxy S II has Super AMOLED Plus.
Which is actually better? While the Super AMOLED Plus screen looks more vibrant, the Bravia display looks more sharper. We can also attribute that to the Arc’s higher 480 x 854 pixel count as compared to the Galaxy S II’s 480 x 800. Anyway, on their own, both have really gorgeous displays! The Galaxy S II has the sought-after Gorilla glass though.
If you think the Arc is already slim at 8.7mm, the Galaxy S II managed to be slimmer at 8.5mm. Negligible difference really but it would make for a good trivia. The Galaxy is lighter too by just a gram.
The Xperia Arc follows the design of the front menu buttons from the Xperia X10 but they decided to switch the placement of the Back and Menu button for some strange reason. The Galaxy S II on the other hand has only one button on its front, ala-iPhone. The Menu and Back button are actually activated by touch and only illuminates when used.
As for the camera, the Xperia Arc has an 8-megapixel camera using Sony’s Exmor R lens while the Galaxy S II also has an 8-megapixel camera with flash. I wasn’t able to test the camera on the Galaxy S II but I reckon quality would be the same as the Galaxy S which is already good for a mobile phone in my opinion.
Even though the Galaxy S II has a dual-core processor, a single 1GHz processor with a decent GPU (Adreno 205) makes the Xperia Arc very spiffy. Really, I don’t think you would need a dual-core processor on a mobile phone unless you will be doing some heavy video editing on it which is highly unlikely.
I’m still playing with the Xperia Arc here and will give you a more detailed review of it in the near future. Meanwhile, here are the side-by-side specs on both phones.
| Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc | Samsung Galaxy I9100 S II |
|---|---|
| 1GHz Scorpion processor, Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon | Dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor |
| Adreno 205 GPU | Mali-400MP GPU |
| 480 x 854 pixels, 4.2 inches, 16m colors | 480 x 800 pixels, 4.3 inches, 16m colors |
| Scratch-resistant surface | Scratch-proof Gorilla Glass |
| Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine | Super AMOLED Plus |
| Timescape UI | TouchWiz UI |
| 320 MB storage (8GB card included) | 16 GB storage (up to 32GB microSD) |
| Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot |
| 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash, Exmor R lens | 8 MP, 3264×2448 pixels, autofocus, LED flash |
| 720p @ 30fps video recording | 1080p @ 30fps video recording |
| No front camera | 2 MP front camera |
| HDMI port (HDMI cable included) | Mobile High-Definition video Link (MHL) |
| Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) | Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) |
| 125 x 63 x 8.7 mm | 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm |
| 117 g | 116 g |
| Php30,000 | TBA |
