Face to face, the two slimmest Android smartphones that will be available soon on the market: the new version of the Galaxy S, the S II and the Xperia Arc from Sony Ericsson. You thought about purchasing one of these elegant and good looking phones? Let’s compare them and see which one performs better and might worth your money investment.
Samsung Galaxy S II was confirmed last month at the MWC show to the delight of those attending the event and comes with an impressive design, more solid and well-constructed, very slim, stylish and light. On the other side, we have Xperia Arc announced at the CES in January, another impressive handset to come out on the market. Comparing both dimensions, both devices have almost the same high; 125/125.3mm, the Galaxy S II being wider and measuring 66.1mm unto 63mm. And it is also more slimmer with only 8.49mm whereas the Xperia Arc has 8.7mm. While the Xperia Arc weighs 117g, the Galaxy S II is 1g lighter and weighs 116g.
If we take a look at the display, the Samsung Galaxy S II comes with a 4.3-inch touchscreen with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, incorporating a new technology called Super AMOLED Plus that can offer better image quality up to 50%. SE’s Xperia Arc has also a big 4.2-inch LED-backlit LCD display, featuring the same resolution and being capable of great colours reproduction. Day or night, the Galaxy S II will take excellent shots, much more clear and vivid than the ones taken with the Xperia Arc.
Speaking of more or less great shots, it’s a must to mention about the camera. The Galaxy S II has a rear 8 megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash plus 1080 video recording and a second front-facing camera of 2MP. Its talents also include geo-tagging, touch focus, smile, face detection and image stabilization. The Xperia Arc also prouds itself with an 8MP camera on the back and other features such as autofocus, LED flash plus touch focus, image stabilization, geo-tagging, face and smile detection. It doens’t include a fron-facing cam.
With a dual-core revolution, it was impossible for the Galaxy S II not to feature this type of processor. It has a powerful and speedy 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 processor while the Xperia Arc is stuck with on single 1GHz Scorpion processor, not so performant as the dual-core one. Regarding the storage part, the Galaxy S II comes with a huge 1GB RAM, 16GB expandable up to 32GB via a microSD port. Not so much internal memory for the Xperia Arc which features only 512 MB RAM plus 320MB. So, for sure, we know who’s the winner at this category.
Taking into consideration the software part, the Galaxy S II will be running on the latest version of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, customized with Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, v4.0. The Xperia Arc will also come with Gingerbread OS, so we have no winner here. Other features you might be interested include for the Galaxy S II GPS/A-GPS, DLNA content sharing, Wi-Fi direct, stereo FM radio (with RDS), optional NFC support, a digital compass, gyroscope, super-fast HSPA+ connectivity, Bluetooth 3.0 and an HDMI port. The Xperia Arc packs GPS/A-GPS, DLNA content sharing, Sony Mobile BRAVIA Engine picture processing, a stereo FM radio with RDS, an HDMI port, noise cancellation and a digital compass, Bluetooth 2.1 and WiFi.
Wrap-up
Only one month difference between the confirmation of both devices and we can see some new improved features. Clear signs that the technology is making progresses daily. The Xperia Arc comes with one single processor, while the new Galaxy S II incorporates a speedy dual-core. Plus, the S II is slimmer, featuring a catchy and modern design and a better display. While none of them is available, take your time to decide which one you wanna grab. No matter the choice you make, you’ll have a powerful smartphone in your pocket.
