Sony Ericsson Xperia arc

The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc is an Android smartphone launched on March 24, 2011 in Japan, and April 1, 2011 in Europe.

It belongs to Sony's large family of Xperia smartphones and tablets. This family was launched in 2008 by a joint venture initiated in 2001 between Sony and Ericsson. Sony bought Ericsson's stake in the joint-venture in 2012, and since 2012, all-new Xperia products have been branded only Sony. The Xperia arc is also known as Anzu or X12 or LT15i, LT15a... (the ending letter in the 'LT15~' names -also often written with small caps 'lt15~'-, indicates different models, in particular, related to geography.)

The Sony Ericsson Xperia arc is available in four colors: Midnight Blue, Misty Silver, Pink (Japan and South Korea), Black (US), and White and Black (South Korea and Mexico only). The name of the handset refers to the arc-like side silhouette.

Hardware
It features a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, an 8.1 mega-pixel camera, micro-HDMI-out and 512 MB of RAM.

The display is a 4.2 inch capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 854 × 480. It supports multi-touch, is scratch resistant and features the mobile BRAVIA engine from Sony and is capable of displaying 16,777,216 colours.

The camera is an 8.1 megapixels Exmor R sensor and is capable of recording video at 720p high-definition. It also has an LED flash.

Storage on the device is 1 GB with 320 MB free for user storage, this is expandable to up to 32 GB with a microSD card.

The Xperia arc features only 3 hardware keys, unlike the usual 4-key pattern seen in Android phones. The search key has been removed, and instead, the user can directly search by long-pressing the menu key.

Software
The Xperia arc originally launch with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) with a slightly changed launcher. The device is compatible with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and Sony released an official update to 4.0 for unlocked units in early June 2012. Availability of the update for branded/carrier locked units is dependent on the carrier to offer it.

Reception
The Xperia arc was first revealed on 6 January 2011 at CES 2011.