You don't need to be an experienced mobile industry analyst to see that there is a huge shift in the power base happening right now. The traditional leading handset manufacturers are being challenged by new names within mobile manufacturing, names that are new to some, and names that are established within the general electronics industry, such as Huawei, Dell, Acer and Asus. And central to this is the Android Operating System. The emergence of Android has allowed new names to enter the mobile industry, and deliver high powered smartphone devices for a relatively low cost. With the Android OS ready and proven, all that is needed is development of hardware, plus a bit of marketing and distribution.
Acer, a name more commonly associated with manufacture of Laptops, have produced a couple of handsets running Android, and another in their fast expanding line up is the Acer Liquid e. The Liquid e is a traditionally styled modern touchscreen mobile phone, sporting a large, 3.5 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen, supporting up to 256,000 colours and with a pixel resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The Liquid e uses the proprietary Acer UI, version 3.0, and is equipped with an accelerometer for auto display rotation, along with a proximity sensor which automatically disables the touch display when the phone is held close to the face. The Acer Liquid e is a standard monoblock shape, reminiscent of many PDA style devices, with long straight edges down the side, and a slightly curved top and bottom. The device weighs in at an acceptable 135g, and measures all round 115 x 63 x 13 mm, which puts the Liquid e firmly in the mid range of handsets in terms of size. Underneath the main display are four touch sensitive buttons, which are used for selecting Home, Back, Search and Menu.
All Android phones are well connected, making it easier to handle the integration between the handset and web services, and the Liquid e follows this philosophy, delivering a strong suite of data connectivity options. The Liquid e offers tri band HSDPA connectivity on the 900, 1900 and 2100 frequencies, with HSDPA speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps available, with HSUPA speeds of up to 2.0 Mbps supported. The Liquid e brings WiFi 802.11 b/g support, and for areas where hotspots or mobile broadband are not available, the handset offers Class 10 GPRS and EDGE. The quad band GSM handset completes its connectivity options with Bluetooth 2.0, supporting A2DP for stereo audio connectivity, and has a Micro USB connector for connecting the handset to a PC via a cable.
The Liquid e has a strong line up of media features, starting with a 5.0 Megapixel camera, with autofocus. The camera is capable of recording VGA resolution video clips at up to 20 fps, and is equipped with geotagging, allowing you to record the location of where images were captured, information which can be shared with friends when you upload the photos to the web. The handset also includes a full media player, supporting popular digital formats for both audio and video, including MP3, WMA, MP4 and WMV. There is plenty of memory available on the phone, too, with 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM, and there is a memory expansion slot which supports Micro SD Memory cards, up to 32 GB in size.
The Acer Liquid e will ship with Android 2.1, and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 768 MHz processor, giving the handset a snappy feel and hardly any lag, even when multitasking with many applications running at the same time. The device integrates well with many online services, such as Flickr and Facebook, and there are many apps available from the Android Market that will add further functionality to the phone, with apps available for Twitter, Maps, and a vast range of games.
Expected to be released soon, the Acer Liquid e will be available in three colour options, either Black, White or Red. In comparison to other handsets in the smartphone range, the Liquid e holds its own well, and seems perfectly suited for the job at hand. It remains to be seen whether the relatively unknown quantities of Acer as a manufacturer of mobile handsets will effect the sales of the Liquid e or not, but it is clear that anyone who is prepared to give it a go is going to be getting their hands on a very good device.
Related Acer Liquid E Links
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- Full list of Acer Liquid E specs
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3:39 pm
The phone actually has 512mb of RAM, http://mobile.acer.com/phones/liquide/details/?s=specs
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6:57 am
Do you have the same problem that we have in Canada with the fingerprint of the OS not being registered with the android marketplace? There are a ton of apps we aren't able to get on our acer liquid e's on Rogers because of this (apps that are otherwise available in Canada).
I've blogged a bit about this experience at http://blog.noblemail.ca/2010/07/android-acer-liquid-e-from-rogers.html
I would suggest not buying this phone if you have the same problem. It is very frustrating to simply have apps missing.
11:59 am
For a long time in the UK there was a similar problem with handsets running on the Android 2.1 OS, which effected amongst others the HTC Desire. Once the update has been registered with the Android Market you will be able to get those apps. As I recall here it took about 4 or 5 weeks for the Desire to be enabled.