Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc video shows off curvy Android bombshell

The curvacious Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is the leading light of our latest production, a video designed to give you an in-depth first look at this camera-focused Android smart phone. The Arc is shaping up shapely, and could well be our favourite Xperia to date.

One of the thinnest smart phones around, the Arc squeezes down to a wafer-like 8.7mm in the middle -- but that doesn't mean it's a tiny little thing. The Arc has a whopping great 4.2-inch screen with a good quality 854x480-pixel resolution that makes use of Sony's Bravia image processing tech to smooth out streaming video.

The undoubted star though is the Arc's 8.1-megapixel camera, which for the first time uses an Exmor R CMOS sensor. That back-illuminated chip should give smoother, better-quality low light shots than your bog-standard mobile snapper -- perfect for capturing the fun on a night out. It shoots hi-def 720p video, too, and you can pipe that to your TV via HDMI.

The Arc runs on Android version 2.3, the very latest edition of Google's popular operating system. Son Eric hopes to be quicker on the draw with future Android updates than it has been in the past, partly by slimming down the amount of custom user interface stuff it adds to its phones.

The Arc will parabolate into the UK this spring, and we'll have a full review for you as soon as is humanly possible. In the meantime check out our extensive hands-on preview. We're delighted Sony Ericsson has upped its game -- how about you? Let us know in the comments.