Arc S delivers a better snap in low light and normal light conditions. Just see it yourself.

Xperia arc S Samples                                                                                   Xperia S Samples

Source: Xperiablog

It is the first day of february and I thought of reminding you all about the major event of this month. It’s the MWC 2012 which is to commence from 27 February 2012 in Barcelona. So, what to expect from Sony? New Xperias? Yes, it’s evident from this invitation letter from Sony Ericsson:

“Find out what’s new and what’s next! Join us at our Press Conference at Mobile World Congress for the latest news on our Xperia smartphone portfolio and strategy.”

There are rumours about some phones that would be announced by Sony. There are no official statements regarding any of those phones but we get a lot of details in the form of leaked pictures and benchmark results. We have reported them here and to them who had no time to look into it, I’d like to gather everything here.

Among the rumored phones, the most desirable and eye catching one is the LT22i ‘Nypon’ (Xperia P). It’s one among the phones expected to be announced in the event.

LT22i ‘Nypon’ Specsheet:

• 1.0 GHz Dual-Core Processor
• ST-Ericsson NovaThor U8500 Platform
• 1GB RAM
• 4.0-inch (540 x 960 resolution) display
• 8.1MP (1080p video recording) Exmor R back-illuminated sensor with LED Flash
• Gingerbread (2.3.7)

Another interesting phone is the MT27i ‘Pepper’.

MT27i ‘Pepper’ Specsheet:

• 1GHz dual-core processor
• ARM Mali-400 MP GPU ST-Ericsson chipset
• 5MP camera
• 3.7-inch (480×854) display
• Sealed battery

Yet another one with some decent configuration and is highly expected to be announced in the event is the ST25i ‘Kumquat’. (Xperia U)

ST25i ‘Kumquat’ Specsheet:

• 1GHz dual-core processor
• 3.5-inch qHD display with Bravia Engine
• 5-megapixel rear camera with Exmor R, 720p HD video recording
• Gingerbread (Ice Cream Sandwich update later)

Also, we have the details of a mid range phone which could be possibly the successor of Xperia X8; that is the ST21i ‘Tapioca’.

ST21i ‘Tapioca’ Specsheet:

• 800MHz processor
• 3.2-inch display with 320 x 480 pixel resolution
• 512MB RAM, 4GB ROM
• 3.2MP camera
• Android Gingerbread

And then we have a list of another 6 phones with their price and expected launch dates, but we know little about their hardware or software. We don’t have any pictures either.

Also, there were talks about LT28at/LT28i; the ‘at’ version for US and ‘i’ for the rest of the world. Sadly there is no mentioning of this phone in the price list and hence concluded that it doesn’t exist or it’s already released as the Xperia ion (for the US) and Xperia S (Worldwide).

For now these are all rumors and what is real is the event itself and the fact that Sony is a part of it. On the other hand there are no reasons why you shouldn’t believe the existence of these phones. Sadly, you have to wait 25 days more to get to a conclusion.

Most of us don’t bother this. Once the phones are launched, we analyse and judge it. But for the real hardcore Sony Ericsson fans out there, the wait is painful, especially when they loose their sleep on “Will that be a dual core…?” or “Will it be affordable?” or “Will it have a nice cam” and so on!

Leaked Pictures of Pepper, Kumquat and Nypon:

Since the official 2.3.3 update for the X10 is out we can make a fair compare between the new and old flagship devices from Sony Ericsson.Day to day use:
After playing with the X10 a bit I have to say it isn’t smooth. Swiping between the screens has little lags which comes due its 32fps cap. What doesn’t make it better is that it doesn’t fully go up to the 32fps on 2.3.3 because on 2.1 it was smoother.
So in the point of smoothness the X10 loses against the Arc. The Arc scrolls smooth trough the screens, the app drawer and everything else. That’s because it is uncapped. It goes up to 60fps like all other uncapped devices.
The next point is opening apps:
Here the both competitors are both very good. They open the apps really fast, but again the Arc is faster, just a little but you notice it.
The only thing the X10 is faster is on opening the contacts and the messaging app, that’s because the X10 is clean, no contacts or texts on it. Just 5-8 apps.

Now we come to browsing:
And again both devices are very close. In loading pages they are both fast, but the Arc is a little bit faster. But pinch to zoom isn’t smooth on the X10 compared to the Arc, that may be because the X10 has buggy Dualtouch and the Arc has real Multitouch.
Both devices handle pages with flash quite well. I’d say it’s a tie here.

Last point is youtube, tested with the youtube app that comes shipped with them.
Both open the videos fast, but on the Arc it’s definitly faster. I’d say it’s a second faster, it was always noticeable.
Both devices were connected to the same Wi-Fi network.

Benchmarks:
Linpack:
Xperia Arc: 38.90mflops
Xperia X10: 36.322mflops

Quadrant:
Xperia Arc: 1683 (someone got 1790 points, also on stock ROM)
Xperia X10: 1322

Speedtest.net:
Xperia Arc: Ping: 87ms, Download 8.5Mbps, Upload 0.98Mbps
XPERIA X10: Ping 41ms, Dowload 7.2Mbps, Upload 0.98Mbps
These tests are from today. Xperia Arc scored a ping of 55ms and downlod of 12.3Mbps a while ago. My Wi-Fi seems a bit slow today.
But anyway, I’d say the Arc has faster Wi-Fi

Camera:
A lot of people want to know if the Exmor R sensor of the Arc makes a difference compared to the X10.
Here are some pics made at dark conditions:
X10:

Arc:

X10:

Arc:

I used auto mode on both devices to make the pics. As you can see the Exmor R sensor makes definitely a difference. So the Xperia Arc wins here, too.

We should keep in mind that the comparison was made right after the X10 got updated. So it’s totally clean (no texts, no syncing) and no apps are running and I only installed 5-8 apps for testing on it. That’s because it’s my spare phone.
The Arc is my daily phone and I have around 95 apps on it, a lot of texts, syncs emails etc, Facebook is on and push activated. Also it was up for 43 hours when I did the test.
So it’s a good achievement from the Arc. Clean and fresh restarted phones are faster than phones that run for a while and are loaded with apps.

As expected the Xperia Arc wins this dogfight but the XPERIA X10 isn’t bad, too. It’s a year older and you notice that.

Enjoy the videos on our blog:

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Via: xblog.gr

Razvan,

I thought it would be fun to do a little comparison between the old Idou render and the Satio one. Besides the obvious wallpaper change, can you spot other differences? More than 5 even? Eleven in total, kids.

PS. The song playing is also different, yes.

I had originally promised you a camera comparison between the Sony Ericsson C905 and the Nikon D80, but I didn’t have time to do this comparison back then. Now, we’re back with a large comparison between the C905 and the Nikon D90 (don’t have the D80 with me currently, so this is the other choice).

About this duel
All the samples shot with the C905 were shot with automatic settings and flash disabled, unless needed. All the samples were shot in high quality JPEG mode. The Nikon D90 was set to aperture priority mode (f/3.8), with flash disabled. All the samples were shot in RAW (uncompressed file format), and converted to TIFF with Adobe Lightroom 2.2 using default conversion settings.

It’s important that you’re aware of the fact that you can completely change how the pictures look when you shoot in RAW format. If they’re too dark, you can simply knock up the exposure in the post-processing without affecting the quality of the picture. This is not possible with pictures shot in JPEG format, which means the C905 is suffering from a severe disadvantage even before we kick off the comparison.

It’s also rather important to point out that there’s no such thing as a perfect RAW converter, and that they’ll all convert the RAW images differently. Most of the unprocessed RAW images, in my opinion, are better than the converted ones, but like I said earlier on, you can always change the look of RAW images.

I will briefly comment on each set of samples, and pick a definitive winner in the end of this post. All the following samples are 100 percent crops of the original pictures. The JPEGs are unprocessed and the RAW images have been converted, as explained earlier on. To cut down on the bandwidth, I’ve decided not to include the full resolution samples.

Sample 1

The C905 had to make use of its flash in this shot, which results in an over-exposed picture. Its noise levels are greater than that of the Nikon D90, and the greys have a red / purple tint in the edges.

Sample 2

Here we start to see the benefits of a having a much larger and more advanced imaging sensor onboard. There’s no noise in the D90 sample and the bush at the bottom is sharp, whilst the C905 sample is very noisy, especially in the blacks, and the bush is a really blurry.

Sample 3

Much better white balance in the D90 sample and the edges are sharp and crisp. The C905 sample has a pink tint to it, and the edges are rather noisy. The C905 sample is too saturated.

Sample 4

The amount of details in the D90 shot is staggering, when compared to that in the C905 sample. It’s clear that the post-processing on the C905 is removing valuable details in the picture. The white balance in both cameras is good, although slightly better in the case of the D90.

Sample 5

Again, it’s clear that the D90 sample is much more detailed. The sample from the C905 is slightly more saturated, but overall it’s the image from the C905 that’s most preferable.

Sample 6

This is how a bad RAW conversion looks. There’s a horrible blue tint over the D90 sample, whereas the sample from the C905 is much better in terms of colours. But again, the D90 image is more much detailed, and despite it being a lot darker, it also suffers from less noise.

Sample 7

Slightly more accurate colours in the C905 sample, but it’s a lot worse than the D90 sample in every other thinkable aspect.

Sample 8

Here’s another crop of the picture above. The Nikon D90 is miles ahead of the C905.

Sample 9

Chromatic aberration is very obvious in the C905 sample, and this is exactly what I wanted to test with this sample. It also shows that the D90 is much better at handling the transition of dark elements to bright elements.

Sample 10

Here’s another crop of the picture above. What’s obvious about this is that the sample from the Nikon D90 is brighter than that of the C905, and yet the D90 is still a lot better at dealing with the transition from dark to bright.

Sample 11

The text is easily readable in the sample from the Nikon D90. What actually surprised me a bit is that you can actually read parts of the text in the C905 sample, although it is quite hard.

Sample 12

Much better white balance and exposure in the D90 sample. The blacks are black and there’s absolutely no noise in the black areas – one can hardly say that about the sample from the C905.

Sample 13

Another crop of the image above. The exposure is still better in the D90 sample, and you can actually read the text ‘WINDOWS / MAC OS’ on the Adobe Lightroom box. The colours of the C905 shot are more appealing, but not correct.

Sample 14

The D90 trumps the C905 again. The black areas are black and the white areas are white, although with a mild level of chromatic abberration around the edges. This is expected in these kinds of extreme situations, and easily removed when converting from RAW. The sample from the C905 looks terrible.

Sample 15

Same as above. Blacks are black in the D90 sample, while they are grey / purple / green in the C905 sample.

Conclusion

As expected, the Nikon D90 pretty much slaughters the C905 in every single aspect. It clearly proves that you want to be looking for a real camera, preferably a dSLR camera, instead of a mobile phone the next time you’re looking for a camera. The small sensors in mobile phones are simply not good enough to replace a standalone camera yet, and it’ll probably stay that way for a number of years ahead.

If you’ve got any questions about this quick comparison, feel free to ask.

The following pictures are 100 percent crops that are straight out of the cameras. All cameras were set to auto, and left to decide everything themselves. We’ll provide full size samples in the upcoming full comparison, but the crops should do for now.

We understand that it really isn’t fair to include the C902 in this comparison, as a complementary source of light is needed, but we’ve decided to go for it anyway. Some of the pictures were shot up to several times because the quality just wasn’t satisfying.

No doubt the quality is improving, but there’s still a long way to go if the mobile phone manufacturers have any plans of reaching the really high quality levels. Can you match the cameras and pictures?

Enjoy the photos

Stay tuned for my review of the P1 (and I’m sorry about the lousy photo quality).