When looking for an award-winning smartphone that also has a good price, who do you go to ? The people at Acer are the ones to think of. They have their “Acer Liquid” available and it delivers the goods. Get a closer look at what it can do here in this quick article.

With everyone seeming to focus on the android applications, but also on the Nexus One, it seems good to point out that you can very nearly get all the same things with an Acer Liquid. The screen is just two tenths of an inch smaller than the “google phone”. The weight is five grams more for the Acer Liquid. Can you tell the difference in five grams when holding two smartphones ? The Liquid has earned a “Smartphone Essentials Editor´s Choice Award” by a company from Europe that sells the Acer line of smartphones.

The screen on the Liquid is fully color saturated with 256,000 available colors. It has a bright screen that shows an impressive 480 by 800 pixels. This is a true WVGA standard screen. That beats many smartphones that are on the market now. It can do the automatic acrobatics with the included accelerometer. The screen also has a proximity sensor to turn the screen off when not in use.

The Acer Liquid has a quick processor that runs at an impressive 768 megahertz. The processor on the Nexus One is less than 300 megahertz faster, at 1000. The same company makes both processors. The smartphone runs super fast without those annoying waits for things to happen on the screen. The Liquid has 256 megabytes of RAM and 512 megabytes of ROM. This is the key to having a fast smartphone that powers through programs quickly. Those programs are applied by the Android operating system. This has got to the be the hottest topic on the internet at the moment. Google is offering this system for free to cell providers. It has 30,000 applications and counting. There is no doubt you can visit the “Google Market” and download one of the “apps” that will save you money or time. There are games available that have been ported to the Android system. “Nesoid” is one app that can put Nintendo games on the Liquid. The games are not included, it simply makes them available for download on your smartphone.

Quad band GSM and tri band HSDPA networks are the ones chosen for voice communication. The Liquid can connect with EDGE, WLAN ( Wi-Fi ), GPRS, 3G and bluetooth networks. The hard-wired data connection is a MicroUSB cable. Wi-Fi connects at a maximum “G” mode.

The camera is absolutely super on the Liquid. It takes photos with 2560 by 1920 pixels of resolution. The camera is rated at five megapixels. You get geotagging, autofocus and no flash. The video section is about average. The Liquid camera can take videos at twenty frames per second. By the way, that is exactly the same as the Nexus One. For music, there is a Java player that uses all the popular file types for songs, including the ever-popular MP3. There is a speaker and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack when you want privacy.

Acer has done well and allowed us three choices for colors; black, white and red. The battery is just average in size and gives five hours of talk time. It is already released in Europe and is priced at £286.  Look for the next model of he Liquid, the Liquid “E” to be even better.



Introduction and Design:

The Acer beTouch E100 is a new Windows Mobile 6.5 phone. It has a 2-megapixel camera, A-GPS and 3G 528MHz processor, except it lacks in Wi-Fi and an accelerometer. It comes in black and white color solutions it looks spectacular. The great thing is the cell phone comes with 3 other back panels (green, red and pink) allowing you to be able to change the looks within seconds.

Inside the box:

• Acer beTouch E100
• miniUSB cable
• 3 extra back panels
• User Guide
• Stereo headset
• Software CDs
• Charger

The Acer beTouch E100 has a 3.2-inch display. It has a resolution of 240×400 pixels, and supports 65k of colors and images. Regrettably, the screen is completely unusable within direct sunlight. Buttons around its navigational keypad are not raised enough, however they are pronounced. The fascinating thing is the keypad is touch-sensitive circular motions allows navigation through menus. It’s not to pleasant to operate, as said edges create annoying, uncomfortable feel.

The slider puts the phone into silence mode, the other buttons are not well raised, yet they quite simple to press. The Acer beTouch E100 has a miniUSB port.

Functionality and Interface
The beTouch E100 comes with perfunctory personalization of Windows Mobile 6.5 by Acer Home. You have the home screen which allows a quick access to some functions. It is a grid with 9 icons and you are able to change 6. The top three buttons are phone contacts, dialing and messaging. You will enjoy the simple interface; however you would instead use your regular home screen that’s WM 6.5, as it offers a richer functionality.

The Acer beTouch E100 has preinstalled applications that allow access to Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger. In general, the Acer beTouch E100 is rather a disappointing device in that respect.

Internet:

since it lacks  Wi-Fi, you going to  have to depend on 3G (HSDPA 7.2 Mbps) when  connecting to Internet. It has high connectivity speed enough to permit the fast loading.
The Acer beTouch E100 comes with a standard software, i.e. Internet Explorer 6. In fact, it’s quite good in opening websites also offers a limited Flash support, however you will always need zooming out and in  because of the low screen resolution which is 240×400 pixels.

GPS:

as mentioned , the Acer beTouch E100 is set with built-in A-GPS. It was able to pinpoint the location within 30-40 seconds. Google Maps are preinstalled on your smartphone – the application gives many options and is easy and very user-friendly interface, however it needs internet connection to download significant maps in good time.

Camera and multimedia

the Acer beTouch E100 sports a 2 mega pixel camera with a good design and camera speed. The snap shot in particular has nothing special actually, since they lack adequate details and the feature poorly represented colors. Same as the videos, here to the maximum video resolution is 320×240 pixels also the frames a second count is only around 10.

Totally unexpectedly, the Acer beTouch E100 perform reasonably well in multimedia this affordable handset uses Media Player, the normal application plays Xvid, DivX and H.264 coded videos and with the resolution of 800×480  pixels. The handset also manages to play its video clips on resolution of 1280×720 pixels, however some content stutters. Anyhow, we are amazed.

You will be able to listen to music using its Media Player also. The boxed headset of the beTouch E100 is fairly good. The downside is that you will have to purchase a converter miniUSB to 3.5mm jack if you need to plug in a must better pair .the earpiece sound with the built in loud speaker is passable.

Performance and Conclusion:

As a cell phone, the Acer beTouch E100 is average. The callers sounded very monotonous, there was crackling, and the overall sound was inadequate. The beTouch E100 is rather a disappointment within that respect.
What is beneath the hood is 528MHz Qualcomm, 256MB RAM, MSM7225 processor and 512MB ROM. The battery is passably robust provides about 5 hours of nonstop talk time 400 hours.

Pros

• excellent multimedia functionality
• bonus panels in a range of colors
• Snappy operation rate
• average in-call quality
• Low display, build quality
• No Wi-Fi
• Perfunctory personalization

Cons

• average in-call quality
• Low display, build quality
• No Wi-Fi
• Perfunctory personalization