Difference Between Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V and Xperia arc S

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V vs Xperia arc S | Speed, Performance and Features

There was sometime where Sony Ericsson used to feature mobile phones, not smartphones. But that era is long gone now and Sony Ericsson has come to a prominent place in the smartphone market, specially the Android Smartphone market, actively competing with Samsung and HTC. We are going to start off about Sony Ericsson with a comparison between two internal rivals, Xperia arc S and Xperia neo V. Xperia arc S is very much similar to original arc, but the new version shows some improvements in the multimedia functionality and faster than the original arc. In our brother notation, Xperia arc S would be the big brother while Xperia neo V is the little brother. Needless to say, both are high-end phones and have cutting-edge features, to please the users. Xperia arc S was released in September 2011 while neo V was released in October 2011. Both phones are more or less of the same size, but neo V comes to be somewhat thicker than his big brother. Let us see what the brothers have got.

Sony Ericsson Xperia arc S

Arc S is actually a silver arc. It is brilliantly designed for ease of use, feels comfortable in hands, and comes in several colors schemes like Pure White, Midnight Blue, Misty Silver, Gloss Black and Sakura Pink. Featuring the generic Sony Ericsson geometry, it comes with stiff, lightly curved edges and an arc shaped bottom. Arc S has a 4.2 inches LED-backlit LCD Capacitive touchscreen with 16M colors featuring a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels. It comes with a relatively good pixel density of 233ppi. The screen has a scratch resistant surface, an accelerometer and a proximity sensor for auto turn-off.

Xperia arc S comes with a 1.4GHz Scorpion processor with Adreno 205 GPU on top of Qualcomm MSM8255T Snapdragon chipset. The 1GB RAM is sufficient for the processor to deliver breathtaking performance seamlessly. It ports with Android Gingerbread v2.3.4 and an upgrade will be available to v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That would enable the handset to utilize the full power of the hardware to unleash the beast inside. Arc S has HSDPA 14.4Mbps for super-fast internet browsing along with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n for continuous connectivity. The ability to act as a Wi-Fi hotspot is an added advantage Arc S has. Sony has integrated their excellent expertise in the camera industry to come up with a great camera in Xperia Arc S. The 8MP camera has auto focus, up to 16x digital zoom, LED flash, touch-focus, smile detection, face recognition, image stabilization and above all, 3D sweep panorama which is a pleasant surprise. The Exmor R CMOS sensor enables these functionalities which make you throw away your point and shoot camera. The assisted GPS system enables Geo tagging, in addition to the functionalities of the camera. Arc S comes with a 1GB internal storage, which can be expanded up to 32GB, eliminating any fear that user not having enough memory to capture the next moment. The front camera of the Arc S is lacking, which makes the video chatters to look for other options.

There are some other interesting features provided with Xperia Arc S; the reality display with Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine is one of them. It enables enhanced contrast, richer colors with less image noise. The reality display powered by BRAVIA engine displays razor sharp and crisp images. Sony Ericsson has also introduced an application called Timescape, which is a good concept. It lets all your communications with a person come together in one place. Instead of browsing in separate social media threads, Timescape is a Person-Centric feed, where one can get all the feeds of a certain person from the available channels like Face book posts, text messages, Twitter, LinkedIn and the list goes on. We can only assume that it would be a great success because the concept itself is a good one. Not only that, but Arc S also offers xLOUD experience to music lovers, and comes with a TrackID music recognition software, NeoReader barcode scanner and Adobe Flash 10.3 support. It also can stream content from your phone directly to your TV using Wi-Fi and DLNA which makes the life substantially easier. The only requirement is for your mobile and TV to be in the same Wi-Fi network. The USB host feature of Arc S is another great value addition, as it lets user turn Arc S into a PC or a game machine by docking it in LiveDock and connecting USB peripherals. Xperia arc S also has swype for text input, and sound recording for messaging. 

All these features add up to one great handset. Let us look the battery life for Arc S. The 1500 mAh battery is not the best in the market, but promises a decent talk time of 7 hours and 25mins. I personally think it is rather great compared to the size of the handset.

Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V

The little brother resembles the appearance of the big brother quite a lot, but it has more curved edges, and more arc shaped top and a bottom. It looks expensive and feels good in your hand. Neo V also comes in colors, White, Blue Gradient and Silver. It has a 3.7 inches LED-backlit LCD Capacitive touchscreen, featuring a resolution of 480 x 854 pixels with a higher pixel density of 256ppi than Xperia Arc S. It also has scratch resistant surface and accelerometer, and a proximity sensor. Looking at the outside, you can see that neo V features a front camera whereas Arc S does not.

Xperia Neo V comes with a 1GHz Scorpion processor with Adreno 205 GPU and a Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon Chipset. The 512MB RAM boosts its performance to a higher level. The OS is Android Gingerbread v2.3.4 and the update would be available to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich. Neo V has a 5MP camera with autofocus, LED flash; touch focus, face and smile detection as well as 3D sweep panorama. It is equally good to know that, the camera is capable of capturing 720p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. Xperia Neo has the ability to expand the storage using a microSD card which is handy when taking use of this high end camera. Been the little brother, Neo V only accommodates HSDPA 7.2Mbps, which also falls into the category of fast internet. It also has Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP making the video calling a joyous activity. As we have discussed before, Sony Ericsson is providing some interesting, extended functionalities in these two phones. Neo V also features the much boasted Sony Bravia Engine and Timescape. It also has a HDMI port to connect the handset to the TV and comes with XLoud and TrackID music recognition software. It also supports Flash 10.1 which enables smooth streaming of flash content.

Xperia Neo V comes with the same battery as Arc S but only promises a talk time of 6 hours 55mins. This may be due to optimization issues because, Xperia Neo V should have provided more battery life because the screen size is smaller and the processing power is less. 

Conclusion

In terms of performance, big brother wins over little brother, fair and square because Xperia Arc S is superior to Xperia Neo V in every way. But Quality if defined as fit for purpose, what if Xperia Neo V fits for your purpose? I know that it would obviously mean Xperia Arc S would fit your purpose too, but Arc S comes with a higher price tag than Neo V. Thus, if you’re not too tech savvy and finds Xperia Neo to serve your purpose, it would be the ideal phone for you. If you are indeed tech savvy and prefers to have only high end phones in your hand, Xperia Arc S is your beauty. This wouldn’t help to sum up which one should be your choice, but whichever the one you choose, both smartphones have a majestic and expensive look and feel that would attract anyone to its charisma. So beware, Arc S or Neo V might ensnare you.