Sony Ericsson’s top of the range Xperia Arc was a bold move, cramming a feast of the company’s very latest technology into a case seemingly not a whole lot thicker than a credit card. The Xperia Neo winds things down a notch, not least the price, and the style, but this Android mid-ranger still manages to pack a serious punch …

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Tuesday 19th July 2011 08:40 GMT Thomas 4

Looks good and all

...but I rather not have Hugo Weaving punching my face in over it.

Mine's the long black leather one that I keep tripping over.

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Tuesday 19th July 2011 08:54 GMT Anonymous Coward

Nope

"The Neo’s single core processor means you’re limited to 720p HD video recording rather than going the whole 1080p"

Actually, modern smartphones are built using SoCs (System-on-chip) that incorporate multiple specialised chips for things like audio/image/video encode/decode. The ARM application processor (the single core you're referring too) will rarely be called upon to do 720p or 1080p encode, however many cores it has, as in most cases it's not possible and in any case it would drain your battery in no time.

When giving the specs for smartphone chips, publications usually (over)simplify things and just spout the frequency and number of ARM cores, but that is only a very small part of the performance story.

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1. Tuesday 19th July 2011 10:24 GMT spencer
  
  ^ This.
  
  It's the Adreno 205 GPU that's doing the graphics work. To say it won't do 1080p because it's not dual core is simply not true.
  
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  1. Tuesday 19th July 2011 11:45 GMT tmTM
    
    True
    
    Saying it won't do 1080p video because it's rubbish is far more accurate.
    
    Who cares anyway, the video may be high res but the quality will still be pretty poor.
    
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Tuesday 19th July 2011 14:00 GMT Jacqui

Its a sony

The licence to use the camera will probably be revoked about a year into ownership :-(

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Tuesday 19th July 2011 14:03 GMT Shades

This was...

...a review for a phone, right? Strange really, because I distinctly don't recall reading anything about its primary purpose, i.e. being a phone!

I'm cancelling my subscription, etc.

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Tuesday 19th July 2011 16:56 GMT Anonymous Coward

Skype?

The reviewer has missed one of the main features of the Neo - it's one of only four handsets that officially support Skype video calling. Would have been nice to see that being tested.

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Tuesday 2nd August 2011 09:33 GMT Anonymous Coward

Screen and Camera Issues

I have had the Neo for around 10 days and the photo quality is not as it's cracked up to be. There are some very noticeable artifacting due to overzealous compression on the phone which cannot be disabled. There is also a very noticeable flickering of the screen in poor light due to an over sensitive auto-brightness sensor directly above the screen. How that was missed is anyone's guess.

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