Introduction

 

Welcome to the windowsmobilesoft.net review of the Acer Liquid Android Smartphone. This is the first Android device that we have reviewed so I was fascinated to see what Android and Acer can deliver. First impressions of the phone were very good, it feels very thin, light and the initial taps on various icons revealed the phone to feel very response and snappy, exactly what I would have expected given the Snapdragon processor. Hopefully the picture shows the glossy quality feel of the phone, which doesn't seem to show smudges or fingermarks as I feared it might. Included with the device, and as shown in my unboxing is

 

2gb Micro SD card

Owner manual on CD

Power plug and USB charge cable

Headphone/microphone

Screen protector (very nice, other manufacturers please take note!)

 

As with all the reviews you can click the picture to goto a higher resolution version.

 

Walkthrough

Looking at the device from the front you see the sleek black looking screen with 4 touch buttons at the bottom. From left to right they are the home screen, search, back and menu buttons.

 

Looking at the top of the device you can see the 3.5mm earphone socket, and also the notification system, which flashes when you have a new message and also to indicate when the device is charging - see youtube video below)

 

 

Looking down the right hand side of the device you can see the volume up/down buttons and lower down the camera button.

Moving to the bottom of the device you can see the USB charging slot and the plastic cover. This is a little disappointing as it doesn't match the surround colour and also suspect may not be that durable as it is only held in place with a thin plastic thread. You can also see the microphone to the right of the picture.

 

Looking down the left hand side of the device you can see the power on/off button. When powering on there is a satisfying small vibration so you know the phone is powering on. A short press of the power button when the device is on will blank the screen and lock the device, a longer press gives you the option to go into silent mode, airplane mode of power off.

 

 

Looking at the back of the device you can see the 5MP camera as well as the speaker for handsfree use. With the back removed you can see the battery (which includes a secondary clip to hold it in place), the SIM slot and the MicroSD slot. The device comes with a 2gb MicroSD card included, which is a nice touch. To remove the back you need to insert a finger nail into the top left of the device, and remove the door. It is difficult to remove and I suspect the tiny clips holding the back in place could easily get damaged or snapped if you were taking it off frequently to change SIM cards or change the MicroSD card.

 

 

 

Keyboard

 

I have to say outright that I am not a fan of on screen touch keyboards for any serious amount of data entry, I find I make more mistakes than I do with a 'hard' QWERTY keyboard. Comparing the on screen keyboard on the Acer Liquid with an iPhone then it's very similiar, in some cases I found it easier to type on than the iPhone but as it has no predictive text I found myself making more mistakes. Checking the manual and Quick Fixes and Show suggestions were both turned on, however Auto-complete wasn't, but neither seem to have any affect, ie typing opportunity and it doesn't auto correct, trying the same thing on an iphone and after typing oppor it has already suggested the complete word Opportunity. Windows Mobile goes one better suggesting the full correct word after only typing opp

 

Sometimes I found an error when the keyboard didn't appear when I wanted to type text, or last night when I was typing a username into a website in landscape mode, the liquid would not allow me to scroll down to the password box. I had to turn the phone into portrait mode to get to the password box.

 

Screen

 

The screen is a highlight for me, despite not being OLED it is very bright, with a resolution of 480x800, for comparision the iPhone 3GS has a resolution of 480x320 and the HTC Touch HD also has a 480x800 resolution screen.

 

Watching some HD youtube video and the display is sharp and easy on the eye to watch, websites look very sharp and the 800 resolution means you can see more on one screen without having to scroll down.

 

Connectivity

As seems to be the standard on most smartphones, the acer liquid comes with Bluetooth 2 (including EDR), Wifi, Assisted GPS, GSM, 3G, HSDPA and Edge support. I was very impressed with the ease of connecting to my hidden home network, I simply typed in the SSID, enabled the MAC address on the router and the acer quickly connected, no mucking around telling it that the network was hidden and not broadcasting it's name.

 

As I would expect from a google phone the integration with Google Maps is excellent, sitting in my living room last night with no GPS signal and google maps quickly had my location correctly within 10m, and your location is included by default when you do a Google search. Trying it with the SIM card removed close to a window and the GPS lock on was very quick, pinpointing my location exactly.

 

Camera

The camera is a 5 MegaPixel one with auto focus, and also has the ability to take video. It doesn't include any form of strobe/flash light as some other devices do. As I always find with these type of cameras the picture quality isn't good in poor light. The picture below was taken with the default settings in my front room, which is lit by artifical light.

 

 

There are a number of settings and options for the camera, including:

 

Apply an effect to the photo/video. Effects are:
• Mono: Black and white.

• Negative: Uses negative colors.

• Solarize: Highlights green and blue hues.

• Sepia: Gives a brown/sepia tint.

• Posterize: Highlights the red hues.

• Aqua: Gives an aqua tint.

The available settings are:

 

• Store GPS data in pictures:

• JPEG quality: Set the JPG quality.

• Anti banding: Set anti banding.

• Focus settings: Set auto or infinity focus.

• Resolution: Set the photo resolution.

• Effects: Apply an effect to the photo.

• White balance/lighting: Adjust the white balance.

• Contrast: Adjust the contrast.

• Brightness: Set the brightness.

• ISO: Set the ISO.

• Self timer: Adjust the self timer.

 

Included Applications

 

There are alot of 'essential' applications pre-installed on the acer liquid, including urFooz a portable profile where you create a virtual “look-a-like”, add your profile and bookmarks, then post it to your social networks. Whenever you update your avatar or profile from your Acer Liquid, it updates everywhere you’ve posted it. Acer also include Roadsync products to enable you to sync email, calendars and contacts with a corporate Microsoft Exchange server. This was easy to set up and worked first time for me. The only issue I had was that the 'default' calendar application is set to sync with Google calendars, and I had to open the Roadsync calendar in order to see my corporate calendar.

 

Also included is Documents to Go which allows you to view Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Adobe PDF files and attachments, with an option to purchase an enhanced version which includes editing, creating and advanced viewing options.

 

Acer exclusively add on Spinlets which gives access to hundreds of songs, videos and tv programming streamed free, wherever you go. This seemed slow to load over an EDGE connection, but much faster on my home WiFi network.

 

 

From the home screen you can extend it by swiping left or right, swiping left bring you into a scroller where you can scroll through pictures, music and videos on your device, swiping right allows you to do the same for your favourite web sites. You can also customise each screen by adding or removing links to applications you use frequently. In the first picture below I have added an icon for GoogleMail on the homescreen. Within in any application or screen you can touch the menu button at the bottom of the device to bring up the associated menu or options for that screen or application, as shown in the second picture of the 'picture browser'.

 

 

In the above examples you can see alot of information is displayed in the top line of the screen, as well as phone and data connection status, you can see the time and also battery status. On the left hand side are various notifications about new email, calendar reminders, USB connections and a warning. By tapping at the top and scrolling down you can see more information about these notifications as is shown below:

 

 

Adding additional applications

 

As this is an Android phone it comes with market place which has a huge range of applications that you can simply download and install on your phone. Whilst this sounds nice and simple at first, a deeper dive to try and find a screen capture application soon led me into the world of hacked phones and only running apps on devices that have root access installed, not something I would suggest that a basic consumer would want to get into.

 

Speed

 

I was very impressed with the speed of the device, it was quick to respond to taps, scrolls and button presses. Launching applications was snappy as was shutdown and power on speeds. However I did come across some glitches where apps stopped responding or wouldn't launch from the tap.

 

It is very quick and easy to jump between open applications by simply holding down the home button and then choosing which program

Battery Life

 

On reflection I would say battery life is average, I didn't use the device alot and over a few days it was down to 50%. I suspect with heavy use it would need a daily charge at a minimum. Unfortunately this seems to be a default position with alot of smartphones these days. I suspect Acer could increase battery life by moving to a AMOLED screen, but that would increase the cost. The Android OS does have a nice feature which shows you what has been using the battery:

 

 

Specs

The full specs below are taken from the acer liquid website

Dimensions / Weight

• 115 x 64 x 12.75 mm / 135g

Processing

• Qualcomm 8250 768 MHz

OS

• Android Donut

Camera/Video recording

• 5 MP Autofocus / VGA

Display

• LCD 3.5” WVGA Capacitive Touch

Connectivity

• WiFi 802.11 b/g
• Bluetooth Class 2.0
• GPS
• Micro-SD slot (supports up to 32 GB)
• Mini-USB
• Audio output: 3.5mm stereo audio jack

Messaging

• Universal inbox: SMS, MMS, email
• Email: Gmail, Android Email
• IM: Gtalk

Web

• Browser: Android Browser
• Search: Google Search

Entertainment

• Video, Music: RollTech nemoPlayer
  
• Video streaming: YouTube
  
• Music streaming: Spinlets
  

Battery*

• Li-Po 1350 mAh
  
• Talk time up to 5 h / Standby up to 400 h
  
• *Battery times may vary according to network status, signal strength, or running applications.
  

Location-based services

• A-GPS
  

Networks

• HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA 2 Mbps
  
• 3G (WCDMA) 850/900, 1900, 2100 MHz
  
• GSM/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz

A Ladies viewpoint

 

My first impression was that the ACER Liquid is a slim phone with nice smooth feel and pleasant to hold. That aside the Acer seemed less robust than my HP iPAQ which has survived several drops to the ground (although I didn’t put the ACER to this test!).

 

The user interface is very simple and intuitive with uncomplex, large clear icons. Functions such as configuring bluetooth were extremely easy for example.

The touch screen was effective for menu selection and the swiping function was great for manoeuvring around folders and quick access down lists, contacts etc.

 

However the reliability of the touch screen capability was poor for keyboard input. I found that composing texts and emails painfully slow due to rekeying incorrect letter recognition. On many occasions I had to touch ‘compose’ several times to display the keyboard to even start a text.

 

Although I found overall use of the ACER very easy I was let down by the telephone function. Several key presses were required to get to the dial function and although my contacts were stored and I could direct dial from contacts, there was no predictive dial function from the keypad. For example it didn't identify ‘mum’ on starting to press ‘mu’ or predicting a pre-stored telephone number once I had started to key the first few numbers.

 

Overall I found this a nice phone to use and would recommend it for people who require a lower amount of keyboard input. I was pleased to switch back to my slideout keyboard on my iPAQ Data Messenger which is less sensitive and allows me to press keys with my nails as well as finger tips!

 

Conclusion

 

In conclusion I was very impressed with this device, it felt small and light, had virtually everything I needed installed 'out of the box' and also included a screen protector and a 2GB MicroSD card. When you consider that it can be purchased unlocked from Clove Technology for £280 (£329 inc VAT) then it becomes very good value compared to an HTC Touch HD at £347.50 (£408.31 inc VAT) or an HTC Hero for £305 (£358.38 inc VAT).

 

As I would expect with a Snapdragon processor the speed was very good, however there were occasional application glitches, which I would hope could be fixed with a patch from Acer or Google.

 

If I were in the market for a new smartphone I would be looking long and hard at the Acer Liquid, and it could certainly tempt me away from Windows Mobile and I would say is a strong competitor for the iPhone.

 

Agree, disagree, wish to ask a question - please ask away here in the PocketPCSoft forum.

 

About the reviewers, I am Greg, the founder of this website which has been running since 2000. I have been using Pocket PC devices for many, many years now and am a gadget person who does alot of tasks on the move, including updating blogs, checking websites, Twitter, facebook and email.

 

The ladies viewpoint is provided by Heather, who has used a number of Windows Mobile devices, mostly using them for phone calls, text messaging and most importantly GPS navigation. Ease of typing and a long battery lift are important to her.