Acer Liquid Metal review

Acer's follow up to the Stream brings Android 2.2, but dials back the specs slightly.

Acer Liquid Metal
The definitive Acer Liquid Metal review

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Any smartphone worth its salt needs to be able to import contacts from a wide range of external sources. As well as coping with your SIM, the Acer Liquid Metal can add contacts from Facebook, Twitter, Exchange and Google.

Twitter support has been added since the Acer Stream appeared, but our review device refused to perform its synchronisation duty with Twitter, indicating that maybe there are some teething problems.

Acer liquid metal

When it comes to synchronising, you've got some options to sync all contacts, just sync info with existing contacts, or not sync at all. This runs for both Twitter and Facebook.

Acer liquid metal

Acer liquid metal

Acer liquid metal

When you've been through the process, you can see an individual's contact details drawn from different accounts in the People section of the Acer Liquid Metal. Mobile numbers and email addresses are drawn right in.

A quick tap on the Facebook profile link takes you through to the web interface where you can view a contact's wall, info and photos, and write messages.

Alternatively adding a contact in by hand lets you enter a range of information about an individual including their names, two phone numbers (mobile and home), two email addresses (work and home), postal address, work details (title and company) an IM handle, nickname, a web site address, photo and some notes.

There's no problem with making a call using the dialler, and we like the large Call button that means you really can't miss it with a thumb. Tapping the button at the head of the screen takes you to your contacts.

Acer liquid metal

During out testing period, the Acer Liquid Metal held its signal strength well, though we did find ourselves getting annoyed at the notifications bar which was sometimes in the lower third of the screen and sometimes at the bottom.

Looking to see if we had notifications was a bit more of a chore than usual – we normally just glance at the top of the screen for the relevant info.

Conversations we had with people were clear enough, and we didn't experience any dropped calls. We had no real worries with voice-based conversations.