Introduction
Today we get to look at Acer’s first North American Android handset, out further do we present to you though Rogers Acer liquid E.
Looks
The liquid E is a sharp looking phone, the beautiful black Piano finish that fits nicely in palm of your hands. It Measures 115 X 62.5 X 12.5mm and weighs in at a total of 135g. It is a candy bar styled phone that it has basic buttons on the front for home, back, search, and the locks button. It also comes with a standard camera button volume up and down rocker button as well power button. Is a you many USB port charge phone and at the top as of 3.5mm jack connector top of the phone. One cool feature about this phone that I’ve never seen on any other device as of yet located at top of the phone, it is a little LED indicator notice that notifies you when you have e-mail phone is in charge mode. This phone looks awesome and fits the style of anyone not like cheap one at all.
Hardware
Phone is powered by a Qualcomm snapdragon 8250 768mhz processor, it is surprising that this phone did not come with a 1ghz processor but it can handle everything you throw at it and more. Comes with 512MB Ram and also has 200 MB of internal storage also comes with external 2GB micro SD card that is expandable up to 32GB’s. Comes with standard features most smartphones looting 3.5 MM audio jack, wifi 802.11 B/G , bluetooth 2.0. The liquid E runs very smooth and will have no problem handling any applications in this phone.
Screen
The screen is a TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors that is 480 x 800 pixels, 3.5 inches and has Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and Proximity sensor for auto turn-off. Revise a very vibrant color and good sized screen that will allow you plenty of space for applications, videos and gaming. The screen is very responsive to touch and makes for smooth scrolling to across the home screens. You can adjust the screen brightness in the settings that will alter the amount of batter usage. Personally I like my screen at full brightness so I can get all the vibrant images and colors that an android smart phone has to offer.
Battery
The battery on the phone is a standard battery LI-ION 1350 mAh rated four stand by of up to 400 hours and talk time up to five hours. During our testing we received above average battery life even after mixed usage of phone calls and using applications. The battery did run very hot though throughout usage.
Operating System
Phone comes with the latest android operating system available at this time which is android OS 2.1. The phone runs very smooth there is no lag even when running the most intensive applications. There’s no word yet if phone will receive android 2.2 froyo update but I would imagine that it will receive it sometime in the late fall. The phone runs very smooth no need to worry about the operating system.
Software
Phone comes with the standard android and Google software it has a custom Acer UI 3.0 on the phone which is very basic and is not interfere the android OS. There’s really no software highlights on this city is pretty standard other than Acer registration, sync and settings. I think it was really smart of Acer not bloat the phone if additional unneeded software, instead they included applications on the phone.
Applications
In terms of applications this phone comes with the standard android application that comes on all phone, as well as a few additional applications from Acer. Some of the highlights of the applications included are a ‘Java Me’ app that allows you to install and play Java games. Another nice application on here is one called ‘Media Server’, you can configure it to sync with your Home Network to share pictures and videos. It also comes with ‘NemoPlayer’ which is a media organizer allowing you to sort through pictures, music and videos on your phone. There is also an application called ‘RoadSync’ that uses Microsoft exchange activesync protocol to provide secure wireless and direct push synchronization of corporate e-mail, attachments, contacts and calendar for your business needs. There is another application on the phone called ‘Spinlets’ it is media application that allows you listen to music online and purchase it if you lie there are samples songs from most major albums and artists. There’s also a handy update notification, that will notify you when the phone is in need of a software update which is a nice feature that some phone’s do not come with. There are two built-in widgets for this phone that are very cool. They are located on the last screen on each side. One is for is for media that allows you to scroll pictures ,videos and music with a quick swipe displays a snapshots of each media so you know which one to pick. The other one does this same thing but it is for your bookmarks and displays snapshots each of your believer websites you can scroll through access favorites site click of a button. After reviewing a lot of android handsets I did not expect there to be any useful added applications this phone I was pleasantly surprised by the pre-installed a that Acer has chosen for the Liquid E. Of Course any android phone you can install any application you would like the android market.
Keyboard
Keyboard is fairly simple and straight forward it has a touch screen keyboard and is fairly accurate though the keys are a little tiny unless using in landscape mode.
Camera and Video
A camera is a 5MP 2560×1920 pixels auto focus and Geo tagging video is VGA @ 20 FPS, takes fairly nice pictures and decent video that the average user will be happy with.
Call Quality
Call quality on the phone is normal and runs on the Rogers Network and has very good reception.
Pros:
- Very active looking phone
- 2.1 operating system
- Speed
- Applications
Cons:
- Under clock processor
- Higher end features
- Hot Battery
Conclusions and Final thoughts:
The Acer liquid E is a great android phone, beginners to seasoned android users will love this phone. May not have some of the fancy bells and whistles of a EVO or Droid X but it does not lack any thing and power department. This phone has everything you will need and is a truly impressive debut for Acer to the android smart phone market in North America. Been there first android handset in Canada we kept it simple but made us solid phone that will impress every user. I recommend this phone to anyone looking at a new android handset. Rogers is offering this phone for only $49.95 which is hands down cheapest and the best android phone for its price, it also would just happens to be Rogers top of the line android handset for the time being.