The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc has proven very popular with the masses this year, but is it all it’s cracked up to be? We road test one for you…

The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is a sleek and stylish smartphone running on the Android Gingerbread operating system.

With its incredible thinness of just 8.9mm and a unique ergonomic curved design, the handset fits snugly in the palm of your hand and also sits comfortably in your pockets. The device has got a bit of weight to it which is often a desired quality, so that the handset doesn’t feel flimsy or cheap.

The Arc is all about saving time. Quick navigation and an overall excellent user interface help make tasks easy to complete and a pleasure to do. The home screen consists of multiple pages which can be personalised to the user’s requirements, such as customising shortcuts, widgets and folders, accessing contacts, using Facebook and the downloading from the Android Market.

The phone’s status bar is visible in almost every function and feature of the phone. The right hand side of the bar shows the signal strength, battery life and other information, while the left side displays notifications, including new messages, and whether Wi-Fi connections are available. To view more details about the notifications simply pull down the bar and to hide it just push it back up! It couldn’t be easier!

The 8.1 megapixel camera is simply phenomenal, with a range of settings to get the best possible picture, including night scene, party and even document modes. Using the full resolution the photographs come out amazingly and are incredibly detailed. High definition videos are also vivid and look superb on both the 4.2 inch screen and external HD monitors which you can hook the handset up to.

In response to a query posted on the manufacturer’s official Facebook page, Sony Ericsson commented “The launch of the 2.3 software for X10 is getting closer, and the planned release date is approx. week 30. The date could still be changed, since the launch is depending on operators’ approval. The software will be rolled out continuously, just like the earlier 2.1 release. The exact launch date is depending on market and operators’ approval, so it will unfortunately not be possible to give precise information on launch dates for each market/operator. You will get more information once the roll out has started.”

O2 has confirmed that the Gingerbread update will roll out this month.