Difference Between HTC Velocity 4G and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S

HTC Velocity 4G vs Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

When we choose two handsets to be compared, they have a unique signature that differentiates them from the rest of the smartphones out there. They are either the best smartphones for that niche market and the comparisons let us explore the strengths and weaknesses of those handsets. Above all, it makes us clearly think what we need from a smartphone and how we perceive a handset. As we have mentioned earlier, sometimes you get smartphones just because it is a high end product that was released recently, but whether you are to use every single feature in the smartphone is a question.

In this comparison, we are about to compare two handsets with unique signatures emanating from both. The HTC Velocity 4G is considered as the first 4G smartphone released to the Australian market by Telstra. It is indeed a great smartphone that serves almost all the purpose you would have in your mind and more. On the other hand, we have Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, which is another handset that grabbed our attention. At a glance, it’s a normal smartphone, but in depth, it has most of the features included in HTC Velocity 4G. It is also beautifully designed and very attractive in every aspect. The design of the Xperia Arc S is different from other similar smartphone, which makes it to have a unique signature.

HTC Velocity 4G

This is the time we face right on with handsets having dual core processors and super-fast LTE connectivity, high end optics and an operating system like Android, iOS or Windows Mobile. That’s how we perceive a modern smartphone and HTC Velocity 4G matches exactly to that definition. It is powered by 1.5GHz Scorpion dual core processor on top of Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 220 GPU and 1GB of RAM. That’s the top notch configuration you can find in a smartphone right now, until a quad core processor surfaces (We had a rumor at the CES about Fujitsu announcing a quad core smartphone). The Android OS v2.3.7 Gingerbread might not be the ideal version to take control of this beast, but we are positive that HTC will provide and upgrade to v4.0 IceCreamSandwich soon enough. We also like the HTC Sense UI, because it has a clean layout and easy navigations. As the name suggests, Velocity 4G has the LTE connectivity and records consistent rate of high speeds. The powerful processor enables it to seamlessly multi task with all the opportunities the LTE connectivity provides.

HTC Velocity 4G has 4.5 inches S-LCD capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels at 245ppi pixel density. The display panel is good, but we would have preferred more resolution from a high end smartphone like this. It is somewhat thick scoring 11.3mm and on the hefty side of the spectrum scoring a weight of 163.8g. The smooth edged Black smartphone looks expensive, but you might have trouble in holding it for extended amounts of time due to its weight. HTC has included 8MP camera with autofocus, dual LED flash and geo tagging that can capture 1080p HD videos at 60 frames per second, which is awesome. It also has a 1.3MP front camera for video conferencing bundled together with Bluetooth v3.0. Although Velocity defines its connectivity through LTE, it also has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, which can also act as a hotspot, to share your super-fast internet connection. It also has DLNA for wireless streaming of rich media content to a smart TV. It comes in 16GB internal storage with the option to expand using a microSD card. It would have 1620mAh battery that has juice for 7 hours 40 minutes of constant usage.

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 IceCreamSandwich. 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 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 autofocus, LED flash, touch-focus, smile detection, image stabilization and above all, 3D sweep panaroma 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 of 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 communication 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 Facebook 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 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, because it lets user make Arc S in to a PC or game machine by docking it in LiveDock and connecting USB peripherals.

All these features add up to one great handset. Let us look the bettery life for Arc S. The 1500mAh 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.

Conclusion

Since we have looked at the feature set of both smartphones, you may already have drawn up your conclusion. In this case, HTC Velocity 4G definitely has better performance with the better processor even in usability perspective. The 1.5GHz dual core processor is better than the 1.4GHz single core processor features in Xperia Arc S, and we wonder why Sony Ericsson has only given Xperia a RAM of 512MB; 1GB of RAM would be ideal to complete the configuration. But as a plus point, Xperia Arc S is beautifully designed and attractive while it’s also smaller and thinner than Velocity 4G. Xperia Arc S is also substantially lighter than the Velocity 4G and would be a pleasure to have in your hand. We cast our vote for Velocity 4G in terms of the display panel and the resolution because the differences will be visible to even the ignorant user. Further, Velocity 4G has better network connectivity through 4G connection and better optics as well scoring more on 1080p HD video recording at 30fps which Xperia Arc S is unable to do. Apart from that, we like the color combination of Xperia Arc S and the talk time is almost similar in both handsets.