News - Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc HD details and pictures

[HEXUS]

More rumours of Ericsson's latest smartphone emerge.

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[Brewster0101]

Looks nice, shame its made by Sony.

[cptwhite_uk]

Deleted

[crossy]

Codenamed Sony Ericsson Xperia Nozomi, the Arc HD is said to sport the Snapdragon chipset powered by Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz dual-core processor and the Adreno 220 GPU. According to the anonymous tipster, it will run on Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread and feature a 4.3 inch LCD display of HD resolution (1280 x 720 pixels) and a 12 megapixel camera capable of 1080p video recording. Other specifications include a HDMI out slot, 1GB RAM, a microSIM slot and 16 or 32 GB of built-in storage. Apparently, the Arc HD won’t support a microSD card for increasing storage capacity.

Camera and HDMI output are good, as is the RAM allocation and perhaps the cpu.

Not so good are the iPhone-like (quick Apple - sue 'em!) fixed memory and uSIM. And Gingerbread - wtf - the current line are getting ICS when it's stable, so why the heck launch a new phone with an older OS? Even my "old" X10 has an official 2.3.3 ROM running.

And as for the design - - are these really the same folks that managed to design the X10 and Arc S? Both of which (the Arc S and X10) make this latest effort (if it's real) look like a right minger!

If this is the best that Sony can do, then it's definite that Samsung will be getting my business next year.

[Bluecube]

Ugh! I've got an Xperia Arc S and this HD upgrade looks like a downgrade to me. It's a horrible looking phone compared to the Arc. Looks like Sony have dropped the ball design wise here.

[cheesemp]

Got to agree here. Weird design and 2.3.5??? SE are working hard on getting on top of ICS 4.0 releases for old phones so why ship one with 2.3.5? Kinda of hoping this is fake. If it looked more like an arc s with ICS i'd be tempted as 1Gb of RAM would be nice (My X10 is seriously RAM limited now).

[cheesemp]

Actually having looked at photos again I doubt it is a fake. The back is so similar in design and construction to my X10 it probably is real...

Edit: Wait a minute - It has no hardware buttons on the bottom (like X10, Arc etc) which makes me think its just running 2.3.5 as a prerelease (how could you control 2.3 without hardware buttons). Hopefully this means it will release with ICS as that has software buttons.

[Bluecube]

Especially since the Arc series is due an official upgrade to ICS in March(ish).

[crossy]

Actually having looked at photos again I doubt it is a fake. The back is so similar in design and construction to my X10 it probably is real...
Edit: Wait a minute - It has no hardware buttons on the bottom (like X10, Arc etc) which makes me think its just running 2.3.5 as a prerelease (how could you control 2.3 without hardware buttons). Hopefully this means it will release with ICS as that has software buttons.

Yes, but it's still uglier than a road accident!

Didn't think it'd be possible to design something that ugly and still call yourself a "designer". Still I suppose it means a bumper year for the folks who do cases for it.

Given that Samsung were making noises about "curves" on their new phones, I'd kind of hoped that Sony would turn out an evolution of the Arc S - a truly beautiful device. Sure ArcS->this _is_ evolution probably, but in the same way that Brad Pitt -> Neaderthal Man is.

As you can guess - I'm not a fan!