Acer Liquid

The Android meter is ticking. Acer want a piece of the pie. We all add two and two together. Yesterday, Acer didn't know the first thing about phones (if you can say that for a household name in notebooks), today they're betting on two horses in the mobile OS race. After their neoTouch running on Windows Mobile 6.5, Acer decided to dip their toe into another kind of water - the free and open source world of Android. This time attention goes to the Liquid - the company's second Snapdragon powered device.

We have to admit we weren't as impressed as we wished by the neoTouch and its almost naked Windows Mobile OS. It was less the price and more the really strong competition that drew our attention away from it.

We're certain it's not how Acer planned it to be and their answer was immediate - the sexy Liquid powered by Android 1.6. Just like the neoTouch, a Snapdragon core is ticking inside the Liquid and does all it can to run the OS flawlessly despite the slightly lower clock rates.

Key features Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support 3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps Android OS v1.6 with Acer UI 3.0 3.5" capacitive touchscreen of WVGA resolution Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 768 MHz CPU, 256 MB RAM 5 megapixel autofocus camera with video recording Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and GPS receiver Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute Digital compass Standard miniUSB port for charging and data Stereo Bluetooth (A2DP) microSD card slot with support for up to 16GB cards (2GB one included) Standard 3.5mm audio jack Direct access to the official Android Market

Both lists give us a sense of deja-vu. It was a similar case with the neoTouch, but this time the situation is a bit different. Some of the Liquid's weaknesses are inherent to the Android OS (especially its first iteration, the Donut). It's not that they won't count against, but it's at least fair to note most of those are not Acer's fault.

Anyway, the Liquid will be measured against the likes of HTC Magic, HTC Hero, Samsung Galaxy and Samsung Galaxy Spica and it sure has a few things to offer that they won't. WVGA resolution and sky-high processing speeds are enough of an edge against competitors. The excellent capacitive screen and all-round connectivity are perhaps no news for the Android species.

Design and construction The full-touchscreen form factor can be pretty limiting for manufacturers in terms of design and devices are beginning to look more and more alike with very few aesthetic distinctions. While that may be true, Acer have tried to push the envelope more than most others and the result is one very sexy Liquid. The huge touchscreen covers most of the front, while the back is pretty plain. The rounded edges certainly earn it some bonus points.

The 3.5" capacitive touchscreen unit has a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels and amazing image quality. With its type, size and resolution, you can chalk this one up as 'great' in our books.

As with the XPERIA X10, that 65K-color limitation of the Android 1.6 Donut takes its toll on some occasions, but unless it's single-color gradients that you are looking at, it won't bother you much in day-to-day usage. The default UI graphics by the way have been carefully chosen not to expose this weakness.

The sensitivity of the display is great as well - just what you'd expect in a capacitive touchscreen. You don't need a push but only a slight touch for a click to be registered. The snappy Snapdragon also plays a part as the responsiveness of a device is the screen and processing power in equal measures.

The four keys below the display are touch-sensitive and similar to the capacitive display in that they will react only to your naked fingers. They are comfortable, but unfortunately don't provide any haptic feedback. The left button serves the Home function, next is search, followed by Back and the typical Android contextual Menu.

Unlike the majority of first-generation Androids, Acer's Android has no dedicated Call and End keys obviously in keeping with the latest Android styling. For that purpose you can use the virtual on-screen keys instead.

The right side of the handset features the camera key and the volume rocker, which also doubles as a zoom control. Those are both painted in silver, comfortable and easy to use.

User interface We've already had a taste of Eclair, so the first generation Android UI should be no revelation. But for the review to be complete, we'll go through it once again.

The Donut in the Acer Liquid is a mature implementation that has been optimized and free of bugs. It feels extremely zippy and to be honest it should. There's a Snapdragon inside (downclocked from 1GHz to 728MHz), and the OS seems to take full advantage of it.

Since the Acer Liquid is the first Android-based smartphone powered by the Snapdragon CPU, we decided to do a benchmark and see how it will stack up next to the upcoming phones running the Android OS.

We used 4 different applications which we found in the Android Market - Benchmark, BenchmarkPi, Neocore, and MemBench. All of them can be downloaded for free.

On the homescreen there are three major types of items - the good old shortcuts, then folders and finally, widgets.

First off, shortcuts are just like the shortcuts on your desktop computer, so not much to explain here.

Folders can help you keep the shortcuts organized but you can't put folders within folders. Still, they can be used for a few quick tricks - like faking a quick-dial contact list. A shortcut to a contact uses that contact's photo so all you have to do is put them in a folder.

But this is hardly very interesting - it's when live folders come into play that it gets exciting. The main difference to ordinary folders is that the live folders are automatically filled with content.

All sorts of lists can go into Live folders - for example, you can have a folder that contains all the tweets from a contact, or an RSS feed, or maybe even a folder with all the good restaurants within walking distance from a given location.

The preinstalled Live folders are "Contacts with phone numbers" and "Starred contacts". They are filled with your Gmail contacts that either have phone numbers or are starred.

The other inhabitants of the Android homescreen are the widgets. Here is the list of all widgets aboard the Liquid.

Phonebook has fields for everything The phonebook can store quite a lot of information. It lets you input numbers for work and home, and you can even create custom labels. There is of course an email field and you can assign a custom ringtone.

You can also add IM nickname info to the contact as well as a postal address, company and job title, several notes, you name it. Quite interesting is the option to redirect calls directly to voicemail.

There are many info fields that you can assign to each contact, but it still remains perfectly organized. You have all the types listed (numbers, email addresses, etc) and there's a plus sign on the right - clicking it adds another item of that type. Pressing the minus sign under it deletes the unneeded field.

When viewing a contact, the various details are displayed in sections. There is a Dial number and a Send SMS/MMS tab with the numbers for the contact listed. Each number fills an entire horizontal row so that it's more thumbable.

Email also has a dedicated tab that works just like the ones for numbers. The rest of the information (if any) is displayed underneath.

You can "star" a contact, which puts it in the Favorites tab. Also, in each Gmail account there's a special group called "Starred in Android" where these contacts go automatically.

Still no smart dialing Acer Liquid's reception is quite good, as is the voice quality.

Alas, the telephony part of the Liquid has a slight problem - there's no smart dialing. In Android the phonebook, call log and dialer are all part of the same application. You can search the phone book but that's still not as convenient as smart dialing. The HTC Hero had it, so we guess that Acer just couldn't be bothered to make the effort.

Messaging the simple way The SMS and MMS department is quite straightforward and simple at first - there are no folders here, just a new message button. It doesn't stay like that for long - under that button is a list of all your messages organized into threads.

When viewing a thread, the newest message is placed at the bottom, just like with the iPhone. At the bottom of the display is the tap-to-compose box and the send key, of course. There is a counter on the right which shows the number of available characters as well as number of parts the message will be split into for sending.

Multimedia department needs an update Before we enter the gallery, let's take a look at Acer's Media Server app first. With its help you can define which type of multimedia (video, photo, and music) will be shared when the device is connected to a Wi-Fi network.

The gallery automatically locates the images and videos, no matter where they are stored. Images and videos located in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder, which is very convenient - just like a file manager.

Right next to the name is a number indicating how many items are in that folder. Each sub-gallery has a thumbnail, which displays either the latest image (if the folder contains less than four images) or four thumbs if there are at least four files in this folder. There is no way to change these viewing options.

From the main Gallery two new shortcuts allow you to start recording videos or capture images. Also, the flip orientation shortcut is now gone as there is system-wide UI auto-rotation.

Two video players, still no DivX support Liquid features two players you could use to watch videos - Videos and the nemoPlayer. There is even a third option - the gallery, which we talked about just a minute ago.

The Videos app has a very simple interface - all videos are displayed in a list (no option to filter them) and the ones you select are played in landscape mode. DivX files aren't supported.

Music player The first screen of the music player has four large buttons, which offer the four main ways to search your music collection - by artist, album, song or choose one of the playlists you've created.

The music player has that great feature that allows you to quickly look up a song in YouTube or through Google search by holding down a finger on a song. What's even better, the YouTube search results are loaded Straight into the YouTube client.

Audio quality is disappointing Unfortunately the Acer Liquid audio out disappoints with quite uneven frequency response. In addition the handset is one of the quietest we have seen as far as the volume in the earpiece is concerned.

The rest of the readings are pretty good so it's not all bad but with that kind of frequency response you shouldn't expect much. An error in the range of +- 1dB is nothing to worry about but when we are talking a deviation of 9 dB - you don't need any sophisticated equipment to hear that imperfection. Things are so bad that it might as well be a fault with our particular unit.

Camera interface isn't pretty but does the job The Acer Liquid has a 5MP camera with autofocus (there is no flash, though). The photos are very good but we're afraid we can't say the same for video recording or - indeed - the interface.

The camera interface… well, there is none to speak of, really! Start the camera and you get a viewfinder with a few icons on it along with the zoom bar at the bottom. None of the icons do anything or lead anywhere though. To get to the settings you'll have to tap on the menu button.

It brings up some more buttons: Switch to camcorder, Resolution, White balance, and Settings. We were glad to discover that the Settings submenu is way more extensive compared to previous Android-based devices. Now you can actually set things like ISO, brightness, contrast, etc.

Connectivity all-rounder The Acer Liquid offers excellent all-round connectivity. The quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support makes the handset capable of international roaming. From then on, tri-band 3G ensures fast network data with speeds ramped up by HSDPA and HSUPA.

One of the most convenient local connectivity options - Wi-Fi - is also onboard.

Bluetooth connectivity under Android OS is no longer as crippled as before - you can easily make file transfers but you need to download a suitable app from the Marketplace (no rooting required either).

The Liquid also sports a miniUSB port. The USB mass storage mode is supported, as expected. Thanks to the Acer Sync software you can easily sync your Liquid's calendar and contacts with your computer (over-the-air syncing option with your Google account is still there as well).

Excellent web browser, save for Flash support The Acer Liquid web browser is based on the same open source WebKit used in Chrome and Safari, and this accounts for the smooth user experience. Pages load quickly, and touch navigation is very fluid.

As you may suspect, the Android browser is fast and the interface clean. But unlike so many of its smartphone siblings, Flash support is not available.

Great organizing skills The Liquid comes with a preloaded Documents To Go viewer which handles diverse kinds of office documents (including PDF files). The editor comes for a fee, though.

Android Market has what you need The Acer Liquid comes with a few preinstalled applications - nemoPlayer, Google Maps, Google Talk, Documents To Go, RoadSync Calendar, RoadSync Mail, urFooz, Spinlets and the YouTube client are all you get (yep, there is still no preloaded file browser on board).

However with the Android Market open for business you can find a large number of apps (a good portion of them free by the way) which can be downloaded directly from the handset using Wi-Fi or the mobile network.