Into the 4th month of 2011, I finally  make my first ‘big’ purchase. Yeah, before April the largest amount I spent on myself was perhaps the $70+ for Killzone3 so yeah. I haven’t been in a particular trigger-happy-spending mood since the new year struck. Mainly because up till March, I was tied up with school and when March hit, I had a nay-high stack of backlogged games just waiting to be completed. I never really was a huge fan of ‘Plat-ing’ games on the PS3, (although I did get into a crazy Plat phase some time back), but now I feel it helps me enjoy a game in the way it was intended. Most games have secondary side quests/features you might never touch in the core gameplay if not for a trophy. Ok I’m digressing again. Without further ado, my new loot……

Tada! My new Phone, the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. Zen Boss guessed that it was a Nintendo 3DS. Nope. Still way out of my price range, that gizmo. Until it drops to below $250SGD for 1, I’m not even considering touching it. Now, I do not actually have any original image of how my phone looks, primarily because I’m now using my new phone as my primary camera, so I scoured the web for a decent looking photo of it and found 1.

Front

Back

Props to AusDroid for the superb shots of the phone.

My previous phone before this was the Xperia X10, Sony Ericsson’s first entry into the ever-expanding Android scene. It was decent at launch, what with it’s fine 8.1MP camera, 4″ screen and what not. But it suffered greatly in terms of OS upgrades and the god-horrible speakers that were so soft, headphones were a necessity. With my Arc, most of my problems encountered with the X10 have been fixed.

• Camera is still 8.1MP but it now has ExmorR mobile, making shots look way nice.
• Video Camera is still untested at the moment, but have heard mixed reviews about it.
• Sound is a big improvement from the X10. But my biggest gripe is that the speakers are located right behind the phone and not at the side like my X10. This proves to be a problem when I’m streaming music out of my phone and I don’t really like the idea of placing my screen on my table to get the sound out. As such, I’ve used one of my old figma stands as a makeshift prop to elevate my phone off the table.
• Screen is slightly bigger at 4.2″. Not much of a leap here but I think any bigger, the phone would cease to be a phone, and just become a tablet.
• Video playback is pretty archaic with support only for MP4 files. There are apps that allow software decoding for MKV and AVI files but it’s pretty choppy, so yeah, think I’ll continue watching shows on my desktop.
• OS is now 2.3, Gingerbread, which is the latest mobile iteration of the OS. Here’s to hoping SE doesn’t make the same mistake of forgoing OS upgrades for their customers.
• Flash 10.2 comes with the phone which i’m mighty pleased. I can now watch anime streams on my phone. Wahahaha. It’s a mighty experience. I watched Hen Zemi Episode 1 via my usual streaming website and while it usually looks grainy on my 22″ monitor, it looked perfect on my phone. This is perfect when I want to watch new releases and just want a day away from the PC.
• HDMI output is untested
• Weight of the phone wasn’t really a deciding factor for me, but after holding the Arc, I must say. Hell yeah. The arc is obscenely light and thin. At it’s thinnest point, it’s perhaps the thinnest phone in the world. (Don’t quote me for this). Hell, it makes my X10 look like a rock paperweight.

All in all, I’m pretty impressed with my phone now. Wish I had pre-ordered it a week before I bought though, cause the Arc does not come with a leather pouch like the X10 had and after scouring the web for a decent looking pouch, the cheapest I saw was a $30USD 1. >.<

Anyway, I shall end my post with some test shots from my phone.

the HDMI to Micro-HDMI cable that came along. Probably gonna be untouched.

LBP bookends

00-Quanta

Light snow camo? Nah. It’s just the dust piling up.

Yea. I should probably clean the plastic casing every once in a while.

Kagamin!~

and lastly, the view from my room.

Guess I’ll end off with an unboxing video. Once again, not done by me as I lack the time.

All right, that’s all. Till my next loot.