Acer Liquid

Acer has had several outings with Windows Mobile this year and they were at best average. The Liquid runs on Android 1.6, but does it change anything?

The Hardware

For the chassis, Acer went with glossy plastic and neutral colors of white, black (display and top/bottom edges) and gray (physical buttons on the sides). We like the look of the smartphone and, although we prefer a better quality finish, the Liquid still feels well-built and not like a toy.

The 3.5mm audio jack sits on the top edge and beside it are three hidden LED indicators. These light up when you have a missed call, an unread text message or when the device is low on battery. There is a lone mini-USB port at the bottom which is protected by a rubber cover. The control panel comprises touch-sensitive keys which brings you to the home screen, search box, back and settings. At the back, there's a 5-megapixel camera and speaker grill, but no built-in flash which is a letdown.

User Interface

If you're looking for something similar to the Sense UI on HTC Android smartphones, then the Liquid ain't it. The only customizations on our prototype unit are on the home screens, a modified dialer and camera. The "inserts" fan out on the left and right home screens on the 3.5-inch WVGA display. There's one set for pictures, music and videos and another for Web bookmarks. Acer also has a Settings application that lets you toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, network, screen brightness and timeout options.

A few programs are preinstalled and these include RoadSync for synchronizing Outlook calendar, email and contacts via Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, Spinlets for streaming music and nemoPlayer for multimedia playback. Do note that these may not be available with the commercial unit as we are still looking at a non-final device. Aside from these, the software is simply a vanilla implementation of Android with the usual array of Google-related apps including Gmail, Marketplace, Google Talk and Maps.
Acer has said earlier it will integrate online services such as Facebook and Twitter to the default Android address book, but we haven't seen how this work on our prototype unit. According to the company, the 1GHz Snapdragon processor has been intentionally underclocked to 768MHz for a longer battery life. That said, we were still able to zip through menus and most programs during our hands-on. As to whether this will have a significant impact on the battery life, we'll have to find out in a full review.

Outlook

The Acer Liquid has the hardware going for it and, fortunately for the company, the design is a remarkable difference from the dull models it has released in the past. While we hope to see more custom UI on the Liquid, leaving the Android software as is also has its appeal for some people, too. Another big question is whether Acer will provide an update for the Liquid to Android 2.0. According to Acer, the Liquid (in white) will be available January in Singapore. The black and red versions will ship at a later date.