This past Monday a bunch of us attended the second official meetup of the Rogers Android Customer Panel at the Rogers HQ. We were lucky enough to have Sony Ericsson come and show their two new flagship devices, Play and Arc. Both these devices are a testament of the learnings which Sony Ericsson took from the release of the X10 and vastly improved upon the design and performance of their next generation Android mobile phones.
Both devices, although prototypes, were flawless and extremely responsive. In comparison, the X10 which were provided prior to their release last year, were noticeably buggy and lacking in performance. It is evident that Sony Ericsson has taken a huge leap by making the decision to improve the hardware and more importantly going straight to Gingerbread (Android 2.3) rather then introducing the devices with Froyo (Android 2.2).
Sony Ericsson took a lot of heat when the X10 came out because it was originally released with Android 1.6, while a lot of other devices being released were either running Android 2.1 or slated to be upgraded to Froyo. Making a direct jump to Gingerbread instead of Froyo is a move in the right direction.
Since then, Rogers has made it available for new and existing customers to Pre-Order their SE Arc and Play devices.