This time the HTC Desire S takes on the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
We compare the HTC Desire S to Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Arc.
Form:
HTC Desire S - 115 x 59.8 x 11.6 mm, 130 g
Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc - 125 x 63 x 8.7 mm, 117 g
The HTC Desire S doesn’t really stand out that much in the current smartphone market. Nor does it look very different from the majority of other HTC handsets, but in each case this is not necessarily a bad thing.
There’s something to be said for the elegant simplicity of the Desire S, something HTC seem to consistently get right, with smartphones at least.
The Desire S is thin, sleek and professional-looking with that HTC minimalist style and slightly rounded (though not overdone) corners bucking the trend for the angular.
Sony’s device is a completely different ball game, like the rest of the Xperia range, each is different and distinguished from each other and they’re very much attention seekers in the wider world of mobile tech too.
The clue is in the name for the Arc, with the whole handset curving along its back panel in the palm of your hand.
At the front it’s very straight and angular and very clean looking, while the back is a peculiar but effective mix of curves and angles, there’s some chrome trim but it’s tastefully done and actually suits the overall bombastic visuals of the device quite well.
We think the silhouette of the Xperia Arc from any angle looks fantastic, it looks like it shouldn’t work but it simply does.
The Desire S looks average and ‘okay’, but the Xperia Arc really is something exceptional and very special indeed when it comes to design, if only all smartphones were so interesting to look at.
Winner – Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
Display:
HTC has, funnily enough, opted for Sony technology for the Desire S’ display with a 3.7-inch S-LCD capacitive touchscreen which is reinforced with toughened Gorilla Glass.
The display comes in at a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and 252 dots-per-inch (dpi). The Desire S has multi-touch input as well as an accelerometer and comes preloaded with the HTC Sense user interface (UI).
The Xperia Arc boasts a larger screen than the Desire S at 4.2-inches, it’s an LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen at 480 x 854 pixels and 233 dpi.
The Arc’s display has a scratch-resistant surface and features multi-touch input and an accelerometer. This curved handset also has the Sony Mobile Bravia engine and Timescape UI pre-installed.
Quite a tricky one to call, we prefer the larger screen size of the Arc and it also has a slightly higher resolution. However, the Desire S has the upper hand with a higher dpi rating for a sharper picture and the S-LCD screen technology offering better power economy as well as enhanced brightness and colours.
We think the Desire S will offer the most satisfying display quality overall.
Winner – HTC Desire S
Storage:
Storage on the Desire S is not what we would describe as fantastic, it’s got 1.1 GB of ROM for internal capacity which is acceptable but nothing to write home about, meanwhile on the RAM side of things it has 768 MB, which is rather good. Micro SD is supported for cards up to 32 GB.
The Arc isn’t great in this area either with a mere 320 MB of onboard storage space, RAM is decent enough at 512 MB though it comes in behind the Desire S. Card support is the same as the HTC and the Arc includes an 8GB Micro SD card as part of the package.
Neither handset provides as much storage as we would like but of the two the Desire comes out better with more RAM and more internal memory for your contacts, apps and multimedia.
Winner – HTC Desire S
Processor:
Oddly enough, the Desire S and Xperia Arc use identical single core processor setups and pretty speedy ones at that.
In both cases it’s a 1GHz Qualcomm Scorpion running the MSM8255 Snapdragon chipset while graphical number-crunching comes from an Adreno 205 graphics processing unit (GPU).
There’s nothing to distinguish the two phones here. These are both very good single core offerings and the Qualcomm technology means performance is great, though they won’t keep up with all the dual core monsters roaming around freely these days.
Winner - Draw
Camera:
The Desire S has a nice enough primary camera at 5-megapixels, the resolution comes in at 2592 x 1944 pixels and video capture is 720p. There’s a secondary camera but it’s only VGA but the primary’s feature-list is decent with autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus and image stabilisation.
The camera setup really is one of the Xperia Arc’s most standout features with an 8-megapixel primary at 3264 x 2448 pixels with autofocus, LED flash, touch focus, image stabilisation, geo-tagging plus face and smile detection.
Video capture is at 720p and has a continuous autofocus mode and video light. This excellent setup had to compromise somewhere and the Arc has no secondary camera, but we feel it’s no great detraction.
There’s no doubt that while the Desire S’ camera is admirable the Xperia Arc is a much better offering and the clear winner of the two.
Winner – Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
Operating System:
Both phones run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which is as good as it gets right now for Android on smartphones. It’s better than 2.2 Froyo, but not quite as good as what the tablets get on 3.0 Honeycomb.
It’s very fast, the multi-tasking is brilliant, the user interface is slick and responsive and the touch keyboard is a refreshing change from the treacle-y iterations of the past.
We wish the browsing was as good as Honeycomb, though. No contest here as they’re both on the same version.
Winner - Draw
Final Thoughts:
Neither handset is perfect but both have a lot of positives which make them rather endearing in their own right.
The Desire S has a slightly nicer screen and more storage and RAM to play with, though both phones are somewhat lacking on storage, it is the lesser of two evils in this case, and the Arc’s screen isn’t bad either truth be told.
The Arc excels in a couple of areas but neither of which are significant enough to make the phone particularly desirable for those reasons alone.
The first one is it’s visual design, which is just phenomenal, but buying your phones on looks alone is a quick way to accumulate a large but attractive paperweight collection. The other area is the camera which is a very high-end setup.
With the same processor and operating system these phones are more similar in terms of basic functionality than their vastly different looks would imply and there simply isn’t an obvious winner here.
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