Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc and Samsung’s Galaxy S II are the two gladiators currently fighting in the smartphone Colloseum. Which is better? What are the strong points and weak points of the two devices? Well, this is what we are about to see, so let the gladiators’ fight begin!
Samsung Galaxy S2 vs Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
Galaxy S II comes with a huge screen of 4.3 – inch and a Super AMOLED Plus cutting-edge Gorilla Glass HD display with a pixel count of 480X800. At just 8.5 mm thickness, the device is very slim. Samsung have chosen not to cram the front with buttons, therefore this smartphone has only one à la iPhone button on its front and its Menu and Back button are activated by touch. Galaxy S II has an 8 megapixel flash camera featuring image stabilization, face and smile detection and geo-tagging. It has a 1080p video capture. It incorporates a 1 GHz dual-core Exynos processor with an impressive 1GB RAM. Galaxy S II offers a 16/32 GB storage capacity and another microSD allows users to gain another 32GB. The additional HDMI-out port allows user to plug the device in their HD display for media transfer.
Xperia Arc offers a nicely sized screen of 4.2-inch and a 480X854 pixel LCD display powered by Mobile Bravia Engine. It is a slim device with only 8.7 mm thickness. The Back and Menu buttons are placed on the front but their usual position has been switched by Sony Ericsson. The device has an 8-megapixel autofocus camera featuring Sony’s Exmor R lens. The camera offers image stabilization, geo-tagging, face and smile detection and 720p video capture; the maximum resolution is of 3264×22448 pixels. Arc is powered by a 1 GHz single core Scorpion CPU Adreno 205 GPU processor. Xperia offers a 512 Mb storage capacity extendable up to 32/8 GB via a microSD. Talk time battery lifetime is estimated at 7.0 hours and the standby time at 400 hours. Arc also features a HDMI-out port.
Both smartphones run on Android operating system. In regards to the screen size, Galaxy S II offers a slightly bigger screen at 4.3 –inch compared to that of Xperia Arc (4.2-inch). Samsung Super AMOLED display provides excellent sunlight legibility and needs only 1/3 of the power amount used by Xperia’s LCD display. Only Samsung Galaxy S II comes with a Gorilla glass which makes it extremely hard to scratch or break. Samsung have managed to created a slightly slimmer (8.5 mm versus 8.7 mm for Arc) and lighter device (116 g versus 117g for Arc). Again, Galaxy’s dual-core processor is better, it allows heavy video editing and lightspeed apps opening and closing. Compared to Galaxy’s processor, Xperia’s processor has a lag of one millisecond. Galaxy uses a Li-Ion 1650 mAh battery but no talk time/standby time estimation is available. Unlike Xperia, Samsung Galaxy II incorporates some of the most popular codecs so users need not visit Android Market.
All in all, Samsung Galaxy II appears to be the winning gladiator scoring excellent in processor speed, video capture, Gorilla Glass display, incorporated codecs, storage capacity and sunlight legibility.
Raju PP is the founder-editor of Technically Personal. He holds an Engineering degree in Electronics & Communication, and has previously worked as a Technical Specialist in Banking Software domain.
