...see what I did there?
So, about the Arc itself. This was my second choice of phone, after the Neo, which has been unfortunately delayed due to various unforeseen events. I must admit it is a very slick, sleek and slender phone. Almost bordering on sexy, dare I say it, although that term shouldn't really be applied to anything less than a woman. One woman, to be precise; the future Mrs The Hurf to be.
See the unboxing photos from Xperiablog.net here...:
http://www.xperiablog.net/2011/04/02/xperia-arc-unboxing-pics/#more-850
...for an exhausting list of pictures of what's really in the box with the Arc. One thing I noticed was missing from my Arc upon receipt was the mini-HDMI cable. I have been assured one will be sent to me and the others from the group with an Arc as, given the Arc was demoed to us using the HDMI-out capabilities of the phone I was a little disappointed to find the cable missing from the contents. A packing issue perhaps which will be quickly rectified I'm sure?
First thing I noticed when holding the Arc? It's lightweight. It really is quite shiny and it's super-slim.
First thing I noticed when it was up and running? It's fast. Very fast. Compared to the sluggish response of from my 2.1 powered handset, it was like greased-poop-off-a-teflon-shovel fast. As someone who rooted and hacked their X10HD handset to get 2.2 (which is considerably faster than SE's own 2.1) this Arc is even faster, even with the custom SE (albeit lighter) UX overlay.
A quick check through the app drawer on this phone and the first thing that jumps off the screen at me is the presence of a DLNA Media Server. This was promised..ish...to X10 owners in May 2010: http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2010/05/05/sony-ericsson-xperia%E2%84%A2-x10-to-get-uxp-upgrade-in-q4-2010/
However following the No FroYo scandal of January 2011, things just got worse when SE announced they weren't going to bring DLNA to the X10 after all. Given that X10 owners were promised...ish...DLNA, this didn't go down to well at all, especially when SE were committed to bringing a series of software updates to the X10 in lieu of a proper upgrade to 2.2 and beyond:
http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/products/2011/02/25/questions-and-answers-from-mwc2011/ (4th question)
If DLNA wasn't enough, further inspection through the settings showed wifi/usb tethering was in place an fully functional. A couple minutes after this discovery my battered 1st gen iPod Touch was bleeping for joy, filling it's little email utility with my email, all via the wonder of a shared 3G connection from my phone.
This...is important stuff for Ericsson Android users who were really behind other Android users in terms of additional features present in FroYo and beyond. Very important stuff indeed. Further inspection of installed apps etc showed Adobe Flash 10.1 already installed on the phone and BBC iPlayer sat in the app drawer. Live TV, on my phone? Fantastic!
My heart sank a little when I discovered Timescape was still on the phone, but recovered when I remembered portions of the presentation about Ericsson's version of Gingerbread and the fact the UX overlay was no longer so deeply embedded in the OS. Crisis over, back to normal!
More to follow, just waiting on a delivery of Tim Tams....
