It looks very likely that Sony (formerly Sony Ericsson) has begun to discontinue the Xperia Arc and Xperia Neo smartphones in the United Kingdom.
Both handsets can still be found in stock at some retailers, but we’ve picked up several clues along the way that certainly point to both devices being superseded by their successors; the Xperia Arc S and the Neo V.
Xperiablog.net recently spoke to T-Mobile UK about the phones, and was told that both were being discontinued by both the network and Sony. We’ve checked out Vodafone, O2, Three and Orange for the Arc and Neo and the only network still stocking it happens to be Orange, which seems slightly odd given that they are in partnership with T-Mobile who has discontinued it. Perhaps Orange just has more stock left to sell.
Before Sony bought out the Ericsson side of the business, the company released two new smartphones in the form of the Xperia Arc S and the Xperia Neo V. Both keep the same design as their predecessors but improve on speed and other areas. The Xperia Arc S boasts an improved 1.4GHz processor, though the Xperia Neo V has a downgraded camera of 5-Megapixels, which makes it a shame that the original Xperia Neo is so hard to track down now.
One of our favourite UK retailers, Clove Technology, has posted discontinued notices against both handsets on their webstore. Expansys UK also are no longer stocking the original Xperia Neo, though they do appear to have some stock of the Xperia Arc (x12).
We can understand the move to phase out the two smartphones, as it will encourage customers to opt for the newer models and avoid confusion between devices that share very similar model names, save for an added letter.
We feel that Sony should have kept the Xperia Neo on sale due to its fantastic 8-Megapixel camera with the Exmor R sensor, offering cracking still images with a high resolution.
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Via: XperiaBlog