Hasta La Gadget!

LAS VEGAS — Sony Ericsson’s new Xperia Arc packs some startling photo and video-taking features into a rather slim – and arc-shaped – package.

The phone runs the latest version of Android 2.3, Gingerbread, and slides it into a thin body that measures just 8.7mm at its waist. And it is a “waist”: the case has a pronounced concave-curve at the rear which gives it a swooping elegance. Onto the front of this body is grafted a huge 4.2-inch multi-touch screen. It is, with its 1 GHz Qualcomm processor, a competent Android phone.

Then we get to the camera, an 8MP monster with a wide maximum aperture of ƒ2.4, coupled with the Exmor R sensor, a backlit CMOS sensor also seen in Sony’s proper cameras. If the promo videos are anything to go on (and obviously allowing for their inevitable exaggerations) then the camera is impressive, with image processing to take care of noise, tweak colors, enhance contrast and generally fix up cellphone photos into something worth keeping.

Android is great, but the handsets are starting to look more like giant slabs of chocolate than actual phones that can fit in a pocket. The Xperia Arc manages to not only buck this trend, but pack in some serious photography tools to boot.

Xperia Arc press release [Sony Ericsson]

Next Step – Xperia arc [Sony Ericsson product blog]

See Also:

• Xperia
• Gingerbread
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