Hands-On with the Acer Liquid
The Android scene is starting to get crowded, and Acer is putting the pedal to the metal with their new Acer Liquid. We got a brief hands-on with this new Android device, powered by the new Snapdragon processor. Read on for the sneak peek!
Hands-On with the Acer Liquid
Another week, and another Android device running on the Donut update. While HTC might be dominating the Android scene for now, its competitors such as Samsung, and now Acer, are hot on their heels. In fact, Acer has just announced their first Android device, and it is shaping up to be another viable contender for the Android favorite.
The Acer Liquid, or also known as the A1, will be the first Android device powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. But, the catch here is that the processor will be underclocked to a 768MHz instead of the rated 1GHz. This is to increase battery mileage, but we aren't able to give a definite verdict on this until we've had a go at the final commercial unit.
The Acer Liquid and its 3.5-inch WVGA glossy screen. Unfortunately, you have to greet it with fingerprint smudges.
The Acer Liquid relies heavily on its touchscreen capabilities with minimal hardware buttons, as seen here. It'll take some time to figure out where the Menu button will be with no related icons present (it's actually the End Call button).
The white border looks clean and simple, and only has the bare necessities such as the Camera and Volume button.
A 3.5mm audio port on the crown of the device. Nowadays, we are no longer in awe of its inclusion, and regard it as one of the more essential input ports on smartphones.
Other than that, the Liquid is loaded with Android version 1.6, known as Donut within the tech circle. On the surface, the Liquid's interface is mostly related to the Android default user interface (UI), but there are some specific widgets added on by the company. This includes some slight tweaking on its dialer and camera UI.
The notable ones are Acer specific widgets that look like a spin wheel to access your media and browser content. Media playback, as what we've seen, is either through Android's default music player, or the nemoPlayer loaded by Acer. In fact, online multimedia delivery is one of the main focus areas for the Liquid, via its Spinlets app, which provides free streaming of worldwide music and video.
Taking a cue from HTC, social networking will be another point of focus for the Acer Liquid. This includes contacts synchronization with your Facebook account, and integrating direct media uploading portals such as YouTube, Flickr and Picasa onto the Android device.
Like most manufacturers, Acer is also including their own widget presence in the Android OS. Seen here are the Bookmark widget...
...and the Multimedia widget.
Besides that, and some other widgets, the Liquid holds true to the original Android UI and leaves it as intact as possible.
In short, the Acer Liquid could give HTC a run for their money within the Android scene. Aesthetically, it might not have the UI that HTC has managed to refine over its various iterations of Android devices, but we are not ruling out the possibility that Acer could one-up the competition with some basic, yet essential customization.
The Acer Liquid is slated to be available in December 2009, but pricing hasn't been announced as of now. When queried on the future of the Liquid, Acer did confirm with us that the Liquid will only be on Android version 1.6, and no plans have been put in place to upgrade the OS to Android 2.0 (Eclair). But this doesn't signify that Android 2.0 will not be in Acer's sights. For one, the Taiwanese company has stated that the 2010 roadmap will see a stronger growth of its Android lineup. Details are still scarce, but we understand that at least half of the 2010 lineup under the Acer brand will be sporting the Android OS.
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