HTC Desire S vs Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc

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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