14 DAY TRIAL // In an attempt to strengthen its presence on the South African smartphone market, Sony Ericsson has recently announced the availability of the Xperia arc and Neo device.
It appears that the Xperia Arc is now available on contract from Vodacom at R249 (about $37) and R319 (roughly $47) per month from MTN, while the Neo retails for R179 (about $26) per month from Vodacom.
“We see the Android operating system as bring us to the race; we have to have it to play in the race,” said Colin Williamson, marketing manager for Sony Ericsson South Africa.
Announced earlier this year at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, Xperia Neo is makes its way on the South African smartphone market.
The bar handset is powered by Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) platform and is equipped with a single core Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon processor clocked at 1GHz, complemented by an Adreno 205 GPU.
Xperia neo comes with a 3.7-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen, which is based on the Sony Mobile BRAVIA engine.
Furthermore, the phone sports a 8.1 mega-pixel camera that boasts Sony’s Exmor R for mobile sensor and packs 320 MB storage, 512 MB RAM, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
“The whole thing behind our Xperia brand is that we want them to be the most entertaining smartphones,” added Williamson.
The second Android-powered smartphone launched in South Africa, the Xperia arc features the same hardware, but comes with a slightly larger 4.2-inch LED-backlit LCD capacitive touchscreen with 16 million colors support and 480 x 854 pixels resolution.
Powered by Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the Xperia arc boasts a superior 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, 512 MB RAM, a microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB, 8GB card included), as well as Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n connectivity and built-in GPS.
