Xperia™ arc – Design and Home Screen
Monday, January 10th, 2011
As I said in the initial post I have been using the Xperia™ arc for a week or so now and just thought I would share some of my thoughts of the design in a video. I also included some of what the Home Screen look like with the changes we’ve done to the media interface etc.
I will post more videos with more details as we go along so feel free to request what you want to see more of in the comments section.
Please also remember that the software I have in my samples is still at a very early stage so there will be changes made before launch.
I will also take the opportunity to clear out some questions on Xperia™ arc from the comments section of the earlier post.
* The CPU and GPU specs are: MSM8255 at 1 GHz with Adreno 205.
* The music player does have an equalizer, my current software has 10 different genre based presets.
* It does not have a front facing camera.
* Mediascape is removed in its earlier form and has changed into a customizable widget based “media pane” (as shown briefly in the video)
* It’s too early to officially give detailed comments around specific later Android versions for Xperia™ arc during its lifecycle but the changes we have made to our way of working with Android puts us in a good position to make sure that Xperia™ arc will get later versions in a timely manner.
* I’ve seen articles around higher numbers than 2.3 being seen in the display of Xperia arc phones – As I have been informed that is due to a misconfiguration in some samples and nothing to get too excited about really, sorry.
* It does have two microphones which will be used for noise suppression during phone calls.
* The camera LED flash is possible to put in four different modes; Auto, Fill-flash, Red-eye Reduction & Off.
* It does have full multi touch support, I just tried a similar multi touch test app as I did in the video on the X10 and at least in that app it accepts 4 simultaneous touch points without any issues with X- and Y-axis or such things. I will try to get confirmation on final specs in regards to multi touch.
* It does support wi-fi up to the 802.11n mode.
Xperia™ arc – Camera Improvements
Tuesday, January 18th, 2011
The new Xperia™ arc really is something when it comes to the imaging capabilities.
From a user interface perspective parts of the camera UI is new and brings new settings and even further refined ease-of-use.
It’s also already now a lot faster compared to our earlier products, especially when comparing the time needed in between shots when trying to shoot action scenes. We have set very aggressive targets for that time between shots and it will be optimized even further in the work ongoing up until launch.
The main addition compared to earlier models though are the improvements in light sensitivity in the sensor itself. The camera sensor is a new type of sensor from Sony called Exmor R™ for mobile which relies on back-illuminated sensor technology. What’s new is that the actual light sensors are moved to the front, in front of the “wiring” connecting the individual photo diodes together which makes it a lot more sensitive for light. More information can be found here.
Another thing when it comes to light sensitivity is that the lens of the Xperia™ arc has an aperture value of f/2.4. In short what this means is that the opening letting the light in is bigger than before which also makes more light hit the sensor.
These two things together makes the Xperia™ arc shoot pictures in low-light situations such as indoors or at night in a completely new way for a mobile phone. At least I who also use a lot of cameras have always been very aware of this limitation with mobile cameras where indoor pics often come out blurry due to subject or hand movement. With increased sensitivity in both the lens and the sensor the shutter time can be decreased and therefore minimize blur.
The main improvements in the reworked user interface are quicker access to lots of settings and also more control over e.g. the flash which is something I personally have been asking for in our products for a while. I recorded this short video to show the user interface a bit.
This video was also recorded with another Xperia™ arc to give you an idea of the result of its HD video recording capabilities.
Please remember also that this is pre-release software on prototype hardware so there will most likely be some minor changes made and performance will be further optimized before launch.
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