Three days. That's how long Acer claims its new Liquid Zest Plus smartphone can last you, although realistically, you're probably looking at closer to two with normal usage. Nonetheless, by 2016's standards, it's not something to turn your nose up at.

To make the magic happen, Acer has placed inside a 5,000mAh battery. For context, the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge packs in a 3,600 mAh battery. Acer's phone also has the benefit of quick charging, the result of which should require a lot less time juicing up.

The phone itself is nice; nothing incredibly beautiful, but it shows that Acer is giving more love to design than before. It's a mid-tier phone in 2016, one that stocks a decent looking 5.5-inch IPS screen, 2GB of RAM and Android 6.0 Marshmallow onboard.

Acer also talked a lot about the 13-megapixel camera, which it's particularly proud of. The camera uses a holy tech trinity of laser focus, face detection and contract detection autofocus to spruce up photos.

I found the contrast detection to be the most notable effect, and overall it's a good camera, although I'd need to take it off the show floor to see how well it really fares. The phone also has HD DTS audio, so you'll get solid sound from those speakers.

That stuff is nice, but my favorite feature of the phone is the optional front cover, which can be added or removed by swapping the rear casing of the phone. The cover has a long, ovular space in which certain notifications and controls will appear.

It's not a new concept by any stretch, but it's clever and looks really nice on the Zest Plus. I could change my music, adjust the volume, see a weather forecast, and get calendar updates - all of which looked vibrant on the front of the phone. You can also read messages, although given the lack of space to read them in, you'll probably just open the case anyway.

I've been picking up various Acer phones over the years, but this is the first time I'd really be happy to use one on a regular basis. It looks good and its battery life seems to be fantastic, but its mid-range specs mean that it's not the zippiest of phones out there. The so-so IPS display holds it down a bit, too.

We've not yet got a price for the Liquid Zest Plus, or any confirmation of where it might launch. Expect to see it popping up this year though.

Early verdict

While this one's clearly all about the battery, the Zest Plus is a good looking phone, too. Its mid-tier specs bring it down from flagship status, but if you're looking in that part of the market and find battery life to be your biggest bugbear, this could be a good choice. If it ever comes to your country, that is.

Now Microsoft has launched its first fleet of Windows 10 Mobile-toting Lumias we're beginning to see other manufacturers dabble in the software. One of those is Acer, and at CES 2016 it launched the Liquid Jade Primo.

First things first - the name is a bit of a mess. It's not clear what Acer is trying to go for here as it's borrowed the first part of the name from its Android Liquid Jade series, and it's fair to say it probably should have gone with something else.

Onwards though, and what you have here is a handset which from first look appears rather more stylish than Microsoft's Lumia 950 and 950 XL. The faux chrome border gives an air of premium style, while the brushed metal effect on the rear is reminiscent on the finish on the back of the actually-all-metal HTC One M9.

Upon picking up the Liquid Jade Primo however, the premium appeal is lost. There's no mistaking the plastic finish of the handset and while it does keep the weight down to a comfortable 150g, it also makes the Primo feel like a budget device.

Considering it sports a price tag of €569 (around £420, US$620, AU$850), the overly plastic finish is a bit of a shame.

Its slim line frame does sit nicely in the hand, with the tapered edges hiding the 8.4mm thickness. The power/lock and volume keys are located on the right, below a flap hiding the dual SIM card slots.

In the spec department it fares better with a 5.5-inch full HD display, Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, 21MP rear camera and 8MP front snapper.

What stands out though is the now-aging 808 chip. With 3GB of RAM by its side I still had high hopes for the performance, but unfortunately the Primo failed to really deliver during my hands on time with it.

The Windows 10 Mobile interface felt slow under finger, and even basic apps such as Messages seemed to take longer than you'd expect to load up. There was a noticeable delay firing up the camera app too, along with a pause when hitting the on-screen shutter key. Perhaps it wasn't running final software, but I do hope it improves before it hits shelves next month.

The rear facing 21MP camera is one of the highlights of the Liquid Jade Primo, once it's loaded. It takes bright, colourful, highly detailed shots which wouldn't look out of place on an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.

There's also a selection of more professional controls including white balance, ISO and contrast, while on the front you get a more than serviceable 8MP snapper.

As I've already mentioned, the Windows 10 Mobile interface isn't particularly slick on the Liquid Jade Primo with the handset appearing to struggle with the animations and app loading.

Windows 10 Mobile is however easy to use as the large tiled interface and simple app list is easier to grasp for first time smartphone users, but those used to iOS or Android will likely find it a jarring experience.

There's now a wide selection of quick settings which you can toggle from the notification bar, and the multi-tasking menu - accessed by holding down on the back key - has been redesigned for a better overview of what you've got running the in the background.

It also looks good on the 5.5-inch display, which is bright and clear - I certainly wouldn't be against watching movies on the Primo, although the circular rear facing speaker doesn't kick out the best sound.

One of the key benefits of Windows 10 Mobile is its Continuum functionality which turns your phone into a computer when connected to a screen via an optional dock.

Those invested in Microsoft's office suite could benefit hugely here, with easy access to the likes of Word, Excel and Powerpoint on a big screen without the need for a laptop.

Early verdict

While it's good to see manufacturers getting back into the Windows game, the Acer Liquid Jade Primo doesn't feel like a phone which will help win over the hearts of those currently wedded to iOS or Android.

The spec sheet is good and the rear camera is excellent, but patchy performance and a cheap feeling design means the Primo struggles for a desirability factor.

Hopefully this will be the first of several Windows 10 Mobile handsets from Acer, and fingers crossed it builds positively on it.

With Windows 10 Mobile now out manufacturers are slowly getting back on board with Microsoft's smartphone software and Acer is the latest firm to launch a flagship handset in the Acer Liquid Jade Primo.

It sports a full HD 5.5-inch display, Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, 21MP rear camera and 8MP front snapper.

It's a solid line up of specs, although the 808 chip is a little on the old side now, but Acer's design means the Liquid Jade Primo has a more style than the Lumia 950 and 950 XL.

There's no metal body however, with Acer sticking to plastic, so it's likely that once picked up the premium looks are lost.

Acer also claims it's included an advanced cooling system in the Liquid Jade Primo to keep processor heat down, although exact details on this are thin on the ground.

The Liquid Jade Primo will be available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa in February, and will a roll out to other regions later, for €569 (around £420, US$620, AU$850).

Child's play

There's also a new Android tablet on the Acer stand at CES 2016, with the low-cost Iconia One 8 offering up a viable rival to Amazon's affordable Fire tablet range.

At $99.99 (around £100, AU$) you're not going to get sparkling specs, so you'll have to make do with a 720p resolution, quad-core MediaTek processer and just 1GB of RAM. There's also 16GB of internal storage, 5MP rear camera. 2MP front snapper, and Android 5.1 Lollipop.

Why it doesn't sport Android Marshmallow we don't know, but it hammers home the slate's budget credentials.

Not that any of that will really matter, as the Iconia One 8 is aimed at kids with a child-friendly interface option and parental controls. It'll be able from February 2016.

• CES 2016: our most anticipated products of the show

Acer is known to many as the Taiwanese makers of respectable computing equipment, competing strongly with the likes of Asus. Yet, the story does not end there. Like John Everyman and his plucky donkey, Asus has opted to enter the smartphone race.

This is no easy proposition, especially when the likes of Apple and Samsung, with their marketing billions, are struggling to compete with the likes of Xiaomi and Meizu in offering quality devices at an affordable price. Selling a smartphone is no longer the easy task it once was, and in a space where Acer has relatively little brand name recognition, it becomes all the more difficult.

The Acer Liquid Jade Z is the latest in the Taiwanese firm's ludicrously named 'Liquid Jade' range, intended to be competitive in the mid to low market.

Indeed, at roughly £150, the device is a cheaper version of the Liquid Jade S, which boasts slightly higher specifications at a correspondingly higher price point.

Design

Holding the device, one thing is immediately apparent – 2012 is in vogue once more. From its size and thinness to its feel in the hand, the Acer Liquid Jade Z brings to mind the Samsung Galaxy S3. This impression is further enhanced by the software skin Acer has added (so Android 2.3 Gingerbread) and the useless bloat and gimmicks added.

This first impression certainly isn't what you might expect from a phone at this price point, however. At a mere 7.9 mm thick, and weighing in at only 110g, clearly a great deal of thought has been poured into the design and engineering of this device.

These dimensions are unfortunately not enough to offset the cheap-feeling, rough plastic that has been used throughout, with a subtle hatching that generally improves grip, but can feel scratchy.

With the tiny weight, these various factors contribute to the general feeling that a strong gust could see a Mary Poppins-like situation evolve, should the right conditions arise.

The front of the Acer Liquid Jade Z is a reasonably pleasant affair; in keeping with other smartphones is that it is mostly a slab of smooth glass, with a nice coating of Gorilla Glass 3 for that pleasant 'oleophobic' feel. The screen panel measures 5 inches, with a 720p resolution.

At the bottom of the display rests a small 'Acer' logo spelled out in chrome-effect plastic, while the speaker at the head does an excellent impression of a Borrower's shower-head.

On the left side of the device rests the nano-SIM and Micro-SD card slot, which can be a little finicky for those without steady hands. The bottom and top of the device house the Micro-USB charging port and the 3.5mm headphone jack respectively.

Where the screen meets the body of the phone, there is a strip of chrome-effect plastic, much as found on the Samsung Galaxy S5, with the Acer also possessing nice rounded edges, a thoughtful addition.

The top, unfortunately, is also home to the power button and on the right the slightly cumbersome volume rocker can be found.

The rear of the Jade Z is where Acer has chosen to make something of a statement. The company's logo is picked out, once again, in chrome-effect plastic, with slightly rough and unpleasant edges. At the bottom rests an unusual rear-mounted speaker grille – a perfect circle.

At the head rests a rather large camera hump (circled with, you guessed it, chrome-effect plastic) and a single white LED flash.

Whatever misgivings the size, weight and choice of materials may impose, one thing is undeniable, this is a comfortable device to use in one hand. Though the top-mounted power button will force some unpleasant hand-gymnastics on those with small hands, with its rounded-edges, this makes for a great reading experience.

Display

The display on the Acer Liquid Jade Z was never meant to measure up to flagship rivals such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 or the Nexus 6, and yet this does not detract from its quality.

Gone are the days when simply having a 720p display at this price bracket was enough, the likes of the Moto G 2013 have changed the game considerably. Luckily, the screen is an area where Acer has been hard at work.

At 5 inches, and with a pixel density of 294ppi, the IPS LCD on the Liquid Jade Z is great for reading on the go, as well as for watching movies. For an LCD screen, the colours on display are vivid, and, being IPS, the viewing angles are quite good. When viewing content from extreme angles, there is a little dimness, but everything remains clear.

Acer has repeatedly boasted of the 'zero-gap' technology used in the creation of the Liquid Jade. Utilised by the likes of Apple for years, this essentially means that the panel is moved as close as possible to the outside glass, meaning that there is no air in-between. This frequently helps to improve contrast, and I generally found this to be the case.

With plenty of space in which to view content, yet remaining comfortable to use in one hand, for the price level, this is almost a class-leading screen. To find significantly better performing panels, you would need to spend at least an extra £100. Acer has accomplished something quite nice here – in this category, I found the Liquid Jade Z to be a very strong performer.

So what makes the Acer different to anything else? Let's have a look.

Acer Gingerbread

Though the Liquid Jade Z technically comes running Android 4.4 KitKat, this might not be apparent on first appearances.

As with every other manufacturer producing Android phones, Acer believes that it can have a better go at Android than Google. Sometimes this kind of confidence is well-founded; with the likes of the One M9, HTC proved that Android could be altered and still remain a pleasure to use. Unfortunately, Asus falls into another category, like so many others before it.

When using the phone, the general colour palette is the first thing that seems a little off, with radioactive greens dominating. Adding to this sense of discomfort is the enormous, telling, 'Acer Suggests' widget, which loudly recommends a large selection of rubbish apps and services.

Not that Acer waits for you to download them, however. The Liquid Jade Z comes loaded with a great deal of bloat, not exactly inspiring when the in-built storage is only 8GB. Games such as Puzzle Pets and Real Football 2015, along with apps such as Livescreen, Booking.com and 50+ free games come pre-installed, and are sadly impossible to remove without rooting (not recommended).

In an age when Google is making strides to improve the general state of Android skins, Acer feels caught in the past, and maybe unwilling to catch up. Installing the Google Now launcher makes the whole experience of using the phone a great deal more pleasant, and is what many will likely want to do upon using the device for the first time.

Some of the pre-installed apps offer some useful functionality. The in-built battery saver app and System Doctor help to improve battery performance and memory management respectively, while the native flashlight app means that there is one less thing to download.

Acer also allows 'floating' windows, essential windowed apps that can be moved around on screen while in use, theoretically making for an improved multi-tasking experience. On a screen this size, however, while the gesture is appreciated, it is effectively useless.

Rear-firing speakers

Given the dimensions of this device, there can be no doubt that the Liquid Jade Z is primarily aimed at a younger audience than, say, the Doro Liberto series. And, of course, what does the average yoof of today like more than an impromptu rap battle, accompanied by bangin' beats?

With the effort being poured by Acer into the audio capabilities of this device, this would certainly appear to be their reasoning. Coming equipped with DTS surround sound, on paper, this phone certainly has its rivals beat. High-quality audio chops are typically the domain of high-end smartphones such as the LG G3, or HTC, which has made a great deal of its 'Boomsound' on such efforts as the One M8.

Despite whatever pretensions Acer has to high-definition audio, I generally found that the Liquid Jade Z simply does not cut the mustard. The circular speaker may give the impression of 'otherness', but it is rear-firing, and business as usual.

The first thing that any committed audiophile will take notice of is the complete lack of a native-music app, simply titled 'Music'. This took me by surprise, and it was only by searching the app list thoroughly that I found 'abMusic', the confusingly titled alternative.

Theoretically, this ought to allow integration with Acer's cloud service, along with the rest of the 'ab' suite, but the app frequently failed to even detect the music stored on a normal Micro-SD card. As such, I stuck to Spotify.

Though through headphones (much as with any smartphone these days) the sound was acceptable, through the rear-firing speakers I failed to achieve anything like acceptable volume for most situations. Competing with a shower, the speaker was completely drowned out. The sound output is generally acceptable, for listening to music alone in a padded room, otherwise it is a reasonably poor effort.

Megapixels! Aperture! Bright Magic!

Given that most smartphones have one thing in common, in that they are almost uniformly a bunch of rectangular glass slabs, improvements in the camera area have become a key area for improvement.

While some go for crazy megapixel counts, like the Nokia Lumia 1020, or for crazy optical zoom experiments like the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom, the current trend is for excellent low-light photography.

Given the size of image sensors in smartphones, and the general use-case scenarios they are given, designers have stopped trying to out 'camera' DSLRs and have begun to deliver the most from small sensors. Some such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and iPhone 6 succeed, where others fail.

This battle has now moved to the budget market. Whereas even last year, £150 might have bought a phone without an LED flash, or sometimes even autofocus, acceptable optics have become a focus for many.

Acer's efforts in this regard are… interesting. With a 13MP sensor, a nice wide f1.8 aperture and Acer's own Bright Magic mode, on paper this camera is very well equipped for the price point.

With the race tightening, however, the competition is only becoming tougher.

Performance

To keep costs down, Acer has taken a route that many others before have travelled, often with mixed results. Instead of opting for Qualcomm chips, and without the option of in-house effort, as LG, Samsung and Huawei have managed, it has opted for a MediaTek chip.

Specifically, it is the quad-core MediaTek MT6732, clocked at 1.50 GHz, that keeps everything ticking over. And in general use, I found the Liquid Jade Z to be a mostly snappy performer, even with an anaemic 1GB of RAM.

In Geekbench, the Acer achieved a respectable single-core score of 706 and a multi-core score of 2064, making it a respectable performer for the price.

Whether zipping through menus, apps lists, different launchers or taking photos, the Liquid Jade Z barely complained, only occasionally throwing a minor tantrum. Mediatek has been slowly improving the quality of its chips compared to Qualcomm, becoming a little less obsessed with cores and more with performance, and this device is a key beneficiary.

This level of performance generally carried over into gaming. Titles such as Dead Trigger 2, Subway Surfers, the in-built Puzzle Pets and Crossy Road ran mostly without any difficulty, although there were a few dropped frames in more demanding titles. For the average mobile gamer, the Liquid Jade Z ought to suffice nicely, though more demanding users might be inclined to look at power-demons such as the Samsung Galaxy S6.

The screen remains responsive no matter what task is set upon it, keeping true to its general promise.

Battery life

With thinness come sacrifices, in this case, battery life. In their never-ending quest to make the first paper-thin device, mobile designers long ago hit the point when it was merely useless bloat that was lost, now other, important, things are being judged as ballast.

In the case of the Acer Liquid Jade Z, as with many flagships (here's looking at you iPhone 6) this has meant that previous mAh points have been shaved from the battery. Indeed, the phone sports a dinky 2,300 mAh battery pack.

Despite the loss in dimensions, the performance of the Liquid Jade Z in this regard is generally acceptable, but only just.

On standby, with WiFi activated, the device lost around 6% of battery over 12 hours, with emails and notifications buzzing away, which gives a decent overall first impression.

Upon watching video, playing games or browsing via mobile internet, however, things begin to change quickly. Percentage points occasionally dropped on a second by second basis. And with no option to remove the battery and replace it with another, or fast charge, the general experience becomes very reminiscent of 2012.

What I found to be particularly irritating, however, was how power-hungry the music player proved to be. Using my Nokia Lumia 930, I listen to around six or seven hours of music during a long working day, via wired headphones.

For every hour I listened on the Lumia 930, I generally lost about 3-4% of battery, maybe a little more if using Spotify. The Liquid Jade Z on the other hand guzzled around 15-18% per hour, leaving me with around 50% battery after three hours. In 2015, never mind 2012, this isn't very good performance.

However, to help matters somewhat, the built-in battery-saver app closes background applications and throttles processor performance, which isn't great but helps to eke out a little extra juice in tight situations.

In all, the Acer Liquid Jade Z cannot hold a candle to stellar battery performers, such as the Moto G 2013 and Moto E 2015, but different use cases will see varying levels of performance. Savvy users shouldn't have much of a problem, with expectations correctly set.

The Liquid Jade Z comes with a few unusual connectivity options that help to set it apart from the rest of the budget flock.

Firstly, and most importantly, 4G LTE is present and ready for all of your high-speed data consumption needs.

Throughout the Bath, Bristol and Swindon area, I found connectivity to be generally good, with the device achieving acceptable speeds both on 4G and HSDPA+, meaning that this is quite a solid option for those who need the speed. Web-browsing was mostly a pain-free experience.

This alone does not set the device apart, however, with other, cheaper, devices, such as the Moto E 2015 coming with 4G also.

Packing dual-sim capabilities, the Liquid Jade Z sets itself apart as something different. The removable Nano-SIM/Micro-SD card tray contains a second slot for an extra SIM card, in the place of the Micro-SD card. This of course means that, should you opt to go dual-SIM, you will be restricted to the paltry 8GB of internal memory.

Regardless, for the business user, juggling two different numbers, this might present something of an attractive option. Dual-SIM cards tend to be popular both in Europe and in Asia, but for the budget market both in the UK and the US, this is something of a novelty.

Luckily, in addition to having a well fleshed out set of connectivity features, the Liquid Jade Z is also a reasonably solid telephone. Call quality was hardly spectacular, but generally calls were loud enough, with callers remarking on the acceptable volume on their end also.

In one area, Acer has forfeited any notion of going alone, and that is the keyboard. By default, the Liquid Jade Z comes packing Swype, the original gesture keyboard. For frequent users of this service, and for fans of gesture typing, this is a bonus.

However, with occasionally lacklustre predictive text features, and with a dated look, it isn't the best option for everyone. Of course, being Android, it is a simple matter to install another keyboard.

The in-built GPRS chip also makes a decent effort, locking on precisely in many areas with only a moment's hesitation here and there.

Camera

As I mentioned earlier, Acer has gone to great lengths to make the Liquid Jade Z the phone that all of those after a good camera experience while on a budget should turn to. With a 13MP rear-facing camera with an f1.8 aperture, all of the ingredients are there.

Unfortunately, the snapper fails to live up to expectations. Pictures, no matter the mode or resolution, lack detail, with a very noticeable blurring effect rear the edges of many pictures.

Autofocus is very unreliable, with a high proportion of photos taken having no discernible focus. This means that composition is an essential part of the shooting experience, meaning those after a quick snap are let down. The inability to focus becomes even more of an issue in poor lighting situations, where it hunts continuously.

The Bright Magic mode, which is advertised as being a solution to badly lit scenarios, is also something of a let-down. Brightness is indeed increased, but at the expense of detail, meaning that it should only be a last resort.

Despite all of this, the camera UI is reasonably easy to navigate. On the right-hand side rests the digital shutter button (which can also be activated by pressing volume down), above that is movie mode, and below is HDR (which is a little heavy-handed in evening exposures).

Generally, contrast is pretty poor, the camera errs towards the cooler side and exposure is generally a problem.

Beside this is the digital zoom, cropping the scene to get closer to the topic. And to the side of that there is a small arrow, which allows access to more in-depth features, such as adjustable ISO, scene modes, white balance and capture options.

On the left-hand side of the window is the flash toggle, the camera switcher and a (baffling) option for voice controls. Once activated, this allows for voice-activated functions such as capturing a photo and switching to the front-facing camera, though I can't imagine a situation where this might be useful.

Resting slightly to the right, there is a quick scene-toggle option, and in the bottom-left rests the icon which will allow for more in-depth toggling still, altering file sizes, aspect ratios and the like.

The front-facing camera is a slightly more compelling option. Present is a wide-angle, f2.2, 5MP sensor, which makes for some reasonably nice and detailed snaps. As ever, however, the baked-in beauty mode tends to result in nightmarish monstrosities that even a doting mother would be hard pressed to love.

Video was a similar story, no matter which camera. Footage was dull, motion blur an ever-present problem and audio recorded generally sounded flat. In all, this is quite a disappointing state of affairs.

Using the Acer Jade Liquid Z for a week was quite an odd affair. Mostly, it was an experience of ups and downs. While there were some things I liked about the design and the performance, there were others that I distinctly disliked.

So is the Acer Liquid Jade Z worth its asking price of £150?

We Liked

The size and the weight of this phone make it a nice proposition for one-handed use, even for those with smaller hands. General performance, despite the 1GB of RAM, was quite good. Jumping in and out of apps and games was a pleasantly quick experience.

With a 720p 'zero-gap' panel, the Liquid Jade Z is a pleasure to watch TV and play games on, with great contrast and readability. It is one of the best performers in its price class.

And with dual-SIM capabilities, along with 4G, the Liquid Jade Z is a very solid communications device that will no doubt appeal to many users around the globe, as well as in the business community.

We Disliked

Despite Acer's claims to the contrary, the camera on the Liquid Jade Z is quite a sorry affair. Although all of the hardware elements are there to make for a pleasant shooting experience, photos are mostly quite ugly, although likely 'good enough' for uploading to social media.

The 2300 mAh battery is enough to see you through most of a working day, however this performance can vary enormously. Tasks, such as listening to music, can drain it very quickly and without warning.

Though it has a nice shape and weight, the choice of materials on the Liquid Jade Z lend it a very toy-like feel, giving it a cheap overall appearance, something that could have been averted with a few different design decisions.

Verdict

The Acer Liquid Jade Z is an odd little beast. Though on the one hand it boasts good performance and is mostly acceptable in day-to-day use, on other fronts it fails entirely. And with the competition really heating up at the budget end of the market, with the likes of the Honor Holly and the Moto G 2014 helping to set the bar, it doesn't quite do enough to compete.

With a price drop, this would be an easy device to recommend for a teenager as their first smartphone, or as a back-up, yet for £150, there are better options available.

Despite this, the Liquid Jade Z is a likeable little phone. With a good selfie snapper, comfortable design, great screen and good internet performance, this ought to suffice for many users.

While the name 'Acer' is one more synonymous with desktop and laptop computers, over the past couple of years the Taiwanese company has released some solid budget and mid-range smartphones, such as the Liquid Z4 and E3.

Acer, like a number of other Asian smartphone manufacturers, is continuing to push the boundaries in regards to value for money, recently showcasing four upcoming budget-oriented devices at MWC 2015, including the promising Liquid M220 and Jade Z.

Last year, it was in the mid-range category where Acer showed signs of progress, giving us the curvaceous Liquid Jade. While at the time it was the firm's best shot at a smartphone, a number of gripes, including underwhelming performance, prevented Acer's flagship from really competing outside of Asia.

This year's iteration, the Liquid Jade S, looks to boost performance without altering the overall design of its predecessor. The Liquid Jade S retains the 5-inch 720p display from the Jade, covered by a single piece of curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3, with the same 13MP rear snapper with LED flash combo around the back.

Inside, Acer has added a more powerful Mediatek MT6752M processor with 2GB RAM and 4G LTE, and upgraded the internal storage to 16GB with the option to expand by a further 32GB via a MicroSD card.

Unlike many of their Chinese counterparts, the majority of Taiwanese Android smartphones come with Google apps and services such as the Play Store pre-installed. The Acer Liquid Jade S is no exception and a SIM-free model can be snapped up for £229.99 (around $336, AU$438).

While on paper the specs have seen a welcome upgrade from the original Liquid Jade, it remains to be seen how the Liquid Jade S fairs against current mid-rangers such as the Honor 6 and the Oneplus One.

Acer has really thrown the cat amongst the pigeons here. It's rare to see a smartphone in this price category with such a slick and minimal design. At just 120g, the Liquid Jade S is incredibly light. While the aesthetics won't appeal to everyone, the flowing curves are more than merely aesthetic and contribute to a superb in-hand feel.

An Acer logo, an earpiece somewhat reminiscent of a watering can rose and a 5MP front snapper are the only noticeable elements on the face of the Liquid Jade S. Proximity and ambient light sensors, as well as an LED notification light, are hidden away under a single piece of Corning Gorilla Glass 3, which tapers gently into the faux-chrome surround.

Despite the 5-inch IPS display having a resolution of only 1280 x 720, resulting in a pixel density of 294 PPI, text and images look crisp.

Viewing angles are also impressive with little-to-no colour shifting and thin bezels helping to create a pleasant, immersive viewing experience.

There's very little to see on the bottom edge of the Liquid Jade S, with Acer keeping things minimal once again. The microUSB port takes up a wide position flanked by a single microphone, which sits precariously close to one of the many rounded corners.

The dual-SIM card and microSD card slot is located on the left-hand side of the Liquid Jade S, with the volume rocker on the right. In terms of positioning, the volume keys are perfect.

However, they feel rather cheap when pressed, giving off a far from confidence-inducing click. The volume '-' key also has a habit of sticking, which doesn't bode well for longevity.

Although the Liquid Jade S is not particularly tall for a device with a 5-inch display, it is still a little awkward to reach the power button on the top edge.

Thus, as when using the HTC One M8, some hand-gymnastics will be needed for those with small-to-medium sized hands.

Fortunately, the power button is considerably better feeling than the volume rocker, and while not stellar, it does provide a certain amount of tactile feedback.

Around the back, the Liquid Jade S retains the protruding 13MP camera and single LED flash combo from the Liquid Jade. Acer has decided to do away with the silver ring around the outside of the camera lens, resulting in a more polished and understated look.

The Acer branding, DTS-HD logo and spherical speaker also return from the Liquid Jade, but the Taiwanese firm has decided to tone down the overall appearance of the rear.

Instead of using the same glossy plastic as the Liquid Jade, the Liquid Jade S features a matte brushed metal-effect finish. As well as being less of a fingerprint magnet, the matte rear makes for a much improved in-hand feel.

As you'd expect, even with curved Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front and durable matte plastic around the back, the Liquid Jade S still feels a lot less premium than metal/glass flagships such as the HTC One M9, Samsung Galaxy S6 and the iPhone 6. Nevertheless, for an affordable mid-range device, the design and build of the Liquid Jade S is impressive.

If the black Liquid Jade S is a little too understated for your liking, white, pink and red variants are also available.

The dual-SIM functionality of the Liquid Jade S may not be a high priority for every user in the UK, US and Australia, but in other countries, particularly in the developing world, being able to use two SIM cards in one device is a highly valued feature.

This feature, despite its limited implementation in the West, is extremely useful for those who normally have to carry around both a work and personal phone.

Frequent travellers, especially those who often go to one particular country for business or leisure purposes, can keep both a local and foreign SIM inside their phone; thus reducing the need to go through the laborious task of hot-swapping SIM cards every few days.

Two nano SIMs can be inserted into the Liquid Jade S' SIM tray side by side, with the option to swap one SIM out for a microSD card if the 16GB onboard storage is not enough for you.

While having to sacrifice storage for a second SIM is not ideal, this is one of the compromises that had to be made in order to keep slender profile and curves of the Liquid Jade S.

Other than the international version of the Moto G (2014), there have been very few widely available dual-SIM mid-range smartphones. The Liquid Jade S can be purchased directly from Acer, and thus is a much safer alternative than buying a dual-SIM smartphone, with no international warranty, through a third-party import supplier.

As well as dual-SIM functionality, Acer touts the prowess of both the Liquid Jade S' 13MP rear-facing shooter and the 5MP selfie snapper. That's a similar combination to those found on pricier mid-rangers such as the OnePlus One and Honor 6.

The Taiwanese firm also emphasises the "epic speed" of the Liquid Jade S, mainly due to the inclusion of an octa-core Mediatek processor. Both the overall speed and camera performance will be covered later in the review, it's just worth mentioning them here as they are two of the most noteworthy features.

On the software side of things, the Liquid Jade S runs a lightly skinned version of Android 4.4.4 KitKat. The absence of the latest version of Android could be a blessing in disguise, though, considering the numerous issues current smartphones running Lollipop are facing.

Acer's custom Liquid user interface is certainly not the prettiest, but it's light, functional and easy to navigate around. The Acer Launcher is very similar to the old stock Android launcher found on devices such as the Nexus 4 and features separate tabs in the app drawer for apps and widgets.

Many of the additions to the UI, such as the slew of Acer's own apps and 'Quick Mode', will not be immensely useful to most. That being said, there are a few helpful software features that aid multitasking and ease of access.

The 'Float Apps' feature works very similarly to Samsung's 'Multi Window', allowing you to use certain mini apps simultaneously on one screen. While there are only a limited number of mini apps to choose from, a small consolation is that any widget can also be used in a floating window.

'Quick Touch' gestures are a much-needed inclusion considering the hard-to-reach power button on the top edge of the Liquid Jade S.

By drawing certain letters on the screen while the phone is in standby/sleep mode you can either jump directly into your homescreen or open the dialler, music or camera app.

Yes, the gesture options are fairly limited at present, but at least they cover the basics and are pretty reliable. Hopefully more functionality will be added in future software updates.

Like the Liquid Jade and a number of other Acer smartphones, the Liquid Jade S includes DTS enhanced audio.

While the DTS-HD branding is proudly displayed on the rear above the circular speaker, the overall audio experience is decidedly poor.

'DTS-HD Premium Sound' can be enabled within the general settings menu, and despite there being a number of tweakable options present, the feature fails to provide fantastic audio quality through headphones or the Liquid Jade S' rear speaker.

With a decent pair of headphones, you can notice a considerable difference when toggling the 'Premium Sound' option on and off.

However, the improvement in audio quality with this option enabled only brings the sound quality up to a level comparable with other mid-range smartphones.

Another disappointing aspect of the audio experience on the Liquid Jade S is the muted and rather tinny rear-firing speaker. Even with the volume level set to maximum, audio was extremely quiet.

Whilst playing the same YouTube video, the Liquid Jade S – set at maximum volume level – was almost completely drowned out by a Nokia Lumia 735 that was set to only half volume.

Performance

Sluggish overall performance was a major thorn in the side of last year's Liquid Jade. Acer has sought to rectify this with the Liquid Jade S, opting for a much more powerful 64-bit MediaTek MT6752 octa-core processor and Mali-T760 GPU.

Despite a powerful processing package, the Liquid Jade S runs Android KitKat which, unlike Android Lollipop, does not fully support 64-bit architecture. Thus expect to see an increase in performance after the Liquid Jade S receives it's next update.

Even in its present state, the Liquid Jade S still delivers impressive benchmarking results, scoring an average of 3517 on the Geekbench 3 multi-core test. While the Liquid Jade S is a fair way behind the all-conquering Samsung Galaxy S6 (4850), its score is not far off that of Snapdragon 810-powered flagships such as the HTC One M9 (3803).

When factoring in the price of the Liquid Jade S and the scores of its mid-range competitors, performance seems even more remarkable. The Liquid Jade S scores considerably higher than the ever-popular Oneplus One (3050) and Honor 6 (3148), demolishing cheaper offerings such as the Moto G (2014) (1142).

As you'd expect from such a fine benchmarking score, real-world performance is superb. The raw power of the processing package combines extremely well with Acer's minimal user interface, resulting in a snappy and responsive experience.

Flicking through numerous homescreens, the app drawer and the UI in general is a smooth, snappy affair.

Multitasking was also handled without a hitch, thanks partly to the 2GB RAM, and graphically intensive games, such as Asphalt 8: Airborne, run very well indeed with no noticeable frame drops or lag.

Due to the thinness of the Liquid Jade S, heat dissipation isn't the greatest. The rear gets pretty hot during gaming and even when undertaking less intensive tasks such as web browsing.

Battery life

The slender profile of the Liquid Jade S has prevented Acer from including a high capacity battery. Although the non-removable 2,300mAh battery seems respectable on paper, considering the power efficient MediaTek processor and 720p screen, battery life on the whole was average.

For most light-to-moderate users the Liquid Jade S will make it through a full day of mixed use, with around four to four and a half hours of screen on time. Those who regularly use the dual-SIM functionality and 4G LTE will need to be a little more frugal with their use in order to avoid the dreaded low battery warnings.

Playing the TechRadar test video at full brightness and volume for 90 minutes drained the battery of the Liquid Jade S from 100% to 73%. That's 11% worse than the ZTE Blade S6, a fellow mid-ranger, which sports a similarly sized battery and 720p screen.

Initially, things don't look too great for the Liquid Jade S, but when delving a little deeper into the specs, there may be a glimmer of hope. As previously stated, the Liquid Jade S has a 64-bit processor.

However, unlike the Blade S6, it does not currently run the latest version of Android. Android KitKat is not fully optimised to support 64-bit architecture and an update to Lollipop would solve this issue, potentially reducing overall power consumption.

As of now, the battery life of the Liquid Jade S is not fantastic, but it's not dreadful either. For most, the battery will suffice for a day's worth of use.

Although if you're a heavy user who likes to play graphically intensive games or stream videos, expect to charge the Liquid Jade S before the day is out.

The essentials

Unfortunately, despite it's snappiness, the Liquid Jade S does only a mediocre job of providing the core smartphone features.

Call volume, rather than call quality, is the major sore point here. The earpiece on the Liquid Jade S looks elegant and delivers a crisp sound. Yet, due to the low maximum in-call volume, it's extremely difficult to decipher what the person on the other end of the phone is saying when you're in a loud spot.

The problem can be alleviated by using a hands-free headset, but that's a compromise you shouldn't have to make.

The rear speaker's quiet output is also not the greatest when you're listening out for notifications and calls. While the speaker is difficult to muffle, the low maximum volume often results in missed calls and notifications if you don't have the vibrate setting enabled.

On a more positive note, Acer's decision to subtly customise the stock Android dialler, contacts and messaging apps, rather than adding features for the sake of features, results in a functional if not spectacular core experience.

Some of Acer's pre-installed apps, such as the FM radio, torch and file manager are handy in day-to-day use. However, a number of Google apps, also pre-installed, offer better options than the Acer alternatives.

Prime examples include Google Chrome and Photos, which are far more refined and feature-full than the stock browser and gallery apps.

That being said, you'll encounter little slowdown when browsing the internet via Google Chrome or the stock browser on the Liquid Jade S. Webpages load up in a flash and swiping through multiple tabs is a fluid affair.

Being able to save webpages for offline viewing is certainly a useful feature of the stock browser; although it's not one that would persuade me to switch from Chrome, as I prefer the integration with Google's ecosystem.

Typing in the stock browser, or in any other app for that matter, is swift using either of the two pre-installed keyboards.

Swipe is enabled by default and while many prefer to type via swipes, the on-board Google Keyboard offers better English prediction and well-spaced keys.

Even though the 5-inch display on the Liquid Jade S is not the most pixel dense, consuming media should be at least a satisfactory experience. This is unfortunately not the case due to the poor, muted output of the rear speaker.

The microSD card slot in the SIM tray does offer media junkies extra storage for music and movies, yet in order to get audio of an acceptable quality, you'll have to slip on a pair of headphones.

Camera

One of the most common misconceptions is that if a smartphone camera has more megapixels, it will produce better images. While megapixels are important, they're not everything and the Liquid Jade S certainly illustrates this point.

A rear-facing 13-megapixel shooter with a f/1.8 aperture and single LED flash, combined with a 5MP snapper up-front sounds respectable for a mid-range device in 2015. Yet both cameras on the Liquid Jade S ultimately flatter to deceive, producing pretty grainy results that display a fair amount of noise upon closer inspection.

In order to squeeze the most out of the protruding camera on the Liquid Jade S, you'll have to change the aspect ratio from 16:9 to 4:3. That's not ideal for those who enjoy taking landscape snaps on a regular basis, but the increase in resolution is noticeable when bumping the megapixel count up from 10 to 13.

Feature-packed, rather than elegant, is how I'd describe the camera interface on the Liquid Jade S. There's an impressive array of shooting modes and options, akin to those on high-end flagships such as the Sony Xperia Z3. Although, I feel that inclusion of a dedicated manual mode, like the one found in Lumia Camera on the Nokia Lumia 930, would have been a handy.

The majority of capture and scene modes are useful, especially HDR and Night Mode. More unconventional modes such as 'Beautification' and 'Presentation' seem to work well enough, but will appeal only to a niche group of users.

Hitting the cog icon in the top left-hand corner of the the camera app opens up yet more tweakable settings. The menu here includes toggles for options such as continuous shutter and video stabilizer, two that arguably should be enabled by default.

Being able to select your preferred capture mode for the "Favourite shot" button to the left of the main shutter key is also a nice touch.

Much like the voice control feature of the Galaxy S6's camera app, voice command on the Liquid Jade S allows you to control aspects of the camera without having to touch the screen.

Aside from being unable to start a video recording via voice, the feature on the Liquid Jade S has more functionality than its Samsung counterpart.

As well as being able to snap a shot by saying one of the three trigger words, switching between the front and rear camera, selecting capture modes and even taking selfies, with the countdown timer, can be accomplished using your voice.

Thanks to the f/1.8 lens on the Liquid Jade S being able to let in more light, high ISO values can be used, resulting in fast shutter speeds. Autofocus is also pretty nippy and tap to focus is always available if needed.

Despite the competent camera app and promising specs, the Liquid Jade S manages to deliver only mediocre results. In well-lit conditions, you can take some passable shots with the 13MP rear snapper. Colours are not particularly vibrant and images are soft, lacking detail. Zooming in reveals a large amount of noise, and in general they're not the kind of photos you'll want to crop.

Click here for the full res image

Macro shots look a little better, with the camera able to capture a decent amount of detail on close-up subjects. The Liquid Jade S also does a reasonable job of creating a shallow depth whilst keeping the subject in focus.

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

'Night', 'Night Portrait' and 'HDR' modes help to maximise the amount of light that the f/1.8 lens on the Liquid Jade S receives. Images taken in low light are a little grainy and far from spectacular, yet some detail still remains.

Videos recorded using the rear camera of the Liquid Jade S are just as disappointing as the stills it snaps. The 1080p videos, shot at 30 frames per second, lack detail and the camera fails to adjust quickly to changing light conditions.

Much like the 13MP unit around the back, the 5MP front-facing shooter on the Liquid Jade S is underwhelming. Noise is once again visible and images lack sharpness.

The overall camera experience on the Liquid Jade S is far from the worst out there but, considering the specs, it performs poorly. Images from the rear camera will suffice for sharing on social media and the front snapper is adequate for the occasional selfie and video chat, but nothing more.

In terms of performance and design, Acer has improved upon its flagship from last year with the Liquid Jade S. Yet it is still far from the finished article and exhibits a number of issues that, unless you are looking for a dual-SIM device, are hard to overlook.

We liked

Thanks to the octa-core processor and Acer's minimal software tweaks, the performance of the Liquid Jade S is simply stellar. For just over £200, it's arguably one of, if not, the most powerful mid-range smartphones currently available – and even gives flagships a run for their money.

Design is another major high point with the lightweight, curvaceous build resulting in a solid and comfortable in-hand feel. The dual-SIM card slot is well integrated into the phone's aesthetic and, while the feature is not essential for everyone, it's incredibly handy for many businesspeople and frequent travellers.

Expandable storage in the form of a microSD is a welcome addition, although you do have to sacrifice one of the nanoSIM card slots for the privilege.

On the software side of things, Acer's Liquid UI is functional and includes the useful 'Float Apps' multitasking feature, allowing you to use multiple mini apps at once on one screen.

We disliked

The rather quiet pair of speakers on the Liquid Jade S really hampers the overall core experience. If you're in a loud spot you'll be hard to pushed to hear anything through the earpiece, and due to the muted output of the rear-firing unit, it's easy to miss a call or notification.

Even DTS enhanced audio cannot save the rear speaker from sounding faint and a little tinny. If you want acceptable audio, you have to slip on a pair of headphones.

Battery life is average at best and only light-to-moderate users will make it through the day without needing to charge. Power-saving mode is present, but heavy users will definitely rue Acer's decision not to go for a removable battery.

Linked into the issue of battery life, Android Kitkat is currently on-board the Liquid Jade S and despite being stable, it doesn't include optimisations for the 64-bit processor. An update to Lollipop will rectify this, but at present it still hasn't been released for the Liquid Jade S.

Considering the promising optical specs and impressive camera app, results are disappointing. Both the primary 13MP unit and the 5MP snapper up-front produce noise-filled images and videos that lack clarity as well as detail.

Final verdict

Acer is heading in the right direction with the Liquid Jade S, showcasing its ability to combine an impressive design and blistering performance with an affordable price tag.

That being said, there are still a few key areas where it suffers in comparison to other mid-range offerings, and as a result, the Liquid Jade S may not be at the top of everyone's wish list.

However, if you are in the market for an affordable dual-SIM smartphone that is powerful and well made, you'll be hard pushed to find one better than the Acer Liquid Jade S.

First reviewed: April 2015

Updated: Acer has announced the Liquid M220 will be the company's first ever smartphone to be sold in the US with Windows 10 in tow.

Acer revealed a number of new phones at MWC 2015 but none of them stood out to me as much as the Acer Liquid M220. It wasn't down to the specs though, the Liquid Jade Z surely takes the crown there. It stood out as it has taken the strange route of adopting the Windows Phone platform.

So far all Acer devices have been running on various iterations of the Android OS, enough that it has built up its own UI design overtime. I never saw the company stepping away from the platform as I never thought it'd have reason to.

If the Liquid M220 does anything though, it proves Acer's step toward the Windows Phone world is just a brief foray into the territory before it likely jumps and heads back into the Android forest.

The Acer Liquid M220 comes with the latest Windows Phone 8.1 software on board and is confirmed to be getting the Windows 10 Mobile update - in time.

But the company hasn't put all its eggs in one basket and has decided to offer the same spec and hardware package with Android on board instead. The Windows Phone version will cost £69.99 (about $105) while the Android version will be on sale for an extra £10 or so.

At a New York event on April 23, Acer also announced its plans to bring the handset stateside for $79. The Liquid M220 will also be available at retail Microsoft Stores preloaded with Windows Phone 8.1 and a free upgrade to Windows Phone 10.

Even speaking to the representatives on the Acer stand no-one seemed positive the Windows Phone version of the Liquid M220 will sell well even though it comes in that little bit cheaper.

The build of the Liquid M220 is quite nice considering the ultra-low price point. The back panel has a matted texture offering more grip with a protruding edge around the handset coloured silver and offering even more grip while in the hand.

I'm a big fan of the different feel on the rear but the edges feels a little like overkill and it doesn't really offer much for the user.

As for the display, the handset offers a 4-inch WVGA display with a pixel resolution of 480 x 800 pixels – that's 233ppi.

Under the hood isn't anything to marvel at – it offers a 1.2GHz dual-core processor alongside 512MB of RAM, but it should be able to cope with low intensity apps.

It's all powered by a weak 1300mAh battery but it doesn't have much to power here so hopefully it'll offer some long life in the day-to-day usage.

The internal memory is only 4GB causing a big problem as the operating system takes up 2.6GB meaning it's only got 1.4GB of storage left for any media you want to upload. When storage is this low it can mean it's a struggle to fit in all the apps you want as well, so it may be a good idea to extend the storage with a microSD card of up to 32GB.

On the back of the handset sits a 5MP main camera with an 89-degree lens - it will take alright looking normal shots but it's not the kind of phone designed to be taking high quality photos. On the front is a 2MP sensor for the odd selfie.

Early verdict

Nothing really stands out here in terms of specs – the most exciting aspect here is Acer taking on the Windows Phone platform. It is the cheapest Windows Phone device you can buy on the market and if anyone really loves the platform that much it'll be a great find for such a low price.

Windows Phone is not the draw it wants to be though; it still has a serious lack of apps and is so far behind compared to either iOS or Android that it will always struggle to catch up.

It's difficult to see why anyone would choose the Windows Phone version of this handset over the Android version but at least Acer is trying to expand a little. Only the sales figures will show if Acer will see fit to explore the Windows Phone world a little bit more.

Kevin Lee contributed to this report.

Better known for its affordable laptops, tablets and other gadgetry, Acer seems keen to stake out some ground in the budget-to-mid-range smartphone market too.

It's the first phone we've seen from the Taiwanese firm since the ultra-cheap Liquid Z4 and the slightly dearer Liquid E3 appeared in February, but there are more affordable Acer handsets on the way.

The sticker price for an unlocked Acer Liquid Jade stands at £229 (around $360, AU$400), though you can probably better this online; as yet there are no details of what you can expect to pay on contract, or even if it will be available through the usual operator channels at all.

That puts it firmly in the mid-range, substantially cheaper than the big hitters (such as the Samsung Galaxy S5) but a step above the budget models (such as the Motorola Moto E).

It's going up directly against the likes of the Sony Xperia M2 and the Motorola Moto G - and that means the phone has a tough fight on its hands.

The Acer Liquid Jade is something of an oddity in many ways: it looks unlikely to make it to the States and in Asia it comes as a pair with the Leap smartband.

The Liquid Jade offers some unusual features like dual SIM capabilities and a whopping 13-megapixel camera but cuts back in other areas — there's no 4G support here, for example, which is a shame as the high-speed data network rolls out across the country.

The key question is: has Acer done enough to make the Liquid Jade stand out in a crowded mid-range field? Or is it another handset destined to sink without trace outside of Asia?

You're not going to hear any sharp intakes of breath when you take out the Acer Liquid Jade in company, but then you're not going to be embarrassed to have it on show either. It's a neatly designed, light, 5-inch handset with a faux-metal trim around the edges, and it's functional without being spectacular (something of a running theme for this phone).

I like 5-inch screens - for me they hit the sweet spot for a large-ish display that you can still just about use with one hand - but the 720 x 1280 IPS display gives the game away that this isn't a premium handset.

With a 294ppi resolution it's crisp and bright in use, but it's one of the corners that have been cut to get to this price. Functional but not spectacular, again.

The handset measures 140.5mm x 69mm x 7.5mm (5.53in x 2.72in x 0.30in) and weighs in at a very light 110g (5.64 oz) - that's 20g lighter than the Nexus 5 I usually carry around with me. It's difficult to fault the design, though it feels a little cheap and is very plasticky (which means fingerprints can be a problem on the back).

It feels comfortable and well built when held and the protruding camera lens around the back isn't really a problem. The micro USB port sits on the base, with the headphone socket on top together with the power button; the dual-SIM card and microSD card slots are on the left with the volume controls in the usual position on the right.

That microSD card slot certainly helps: there's only 8GB of on-board storage, presumably another corner-cutting tactic to keep the price down.

Black, grey, green and white options are shown on Acer's website but it was the black one I had in to test for this review.

Key features

What's most notable about the Acer Liquid Jade is that there's very little of note about it. The dual-SIM capability seems a novelty more than anything else and most of the rest of the handset's specs are par for the course. If you were wanting to pick out the phone's highlights (or indeed lowlights) then you'd be struggling for material.

Perhaps the biggest eyebrow raiser is that 13MP camera - megapixels are by no means everything, of course, but that's a step above most other handsets out there (even the iPhone 6 settles for an 8MP snapper). More on the camera later in this review, but it's worth pointing out here.

The price could be another distinguishing feature of the Acer Liquid Jade, but while you could label it as affordable, a £200 outlay is still significant. Although, the Acer promo codes currently available could help. Considering it's up against the very good value Moto G, the Liquid Jade doesn't quite look cheap enough (though to be fair it's thinner and lighter than the Motorola handset).

There's a glut of mid-range Android and Windows Phone models on the market and the Acer Liquid Jade hasn't got the features to make it stand out from the pack.

The battery life can swing from pretty average to pretty impressive, as I'll explain shortly, but this can vary from user to user and it's not really enough to tip the balance significantly.

The Acer Liquid Jade is a phone that does well in most areas - design, camera, battery life, software, price - without really getting you up out of your seat.

Android 4.4.2 KitKat is the operating system you'll find on your Acer Liquid Jade if you decide to invest in one. Acer's tweaks to Android itself don't go to the same depth as those made by Samsung, HTC or LG but there's a slew of bloatware apps here covering file management, photos and cloud storage.

An extra camera app, an extra messaging app, a rather ugly-looking contacts replacement app, the little-known Polaris 5 office suite... it's not a particularly pleasant sight. There's even an unappealing quick mode launcher (for kids or older users) that it took me ten minutes and some web searching to extricate my way out of.

Among the usual suspects in the widget drawer you'll find a host of weather and time widgets together with a data use monitor that can warn you if you're approaching your monthly limit.

Fortunately, you can install all of your usual apps if you want to go your own way. Videos look sharp and vibrant on the Liquid Jade's screen and audio is above average thanks to the single rear speaker and the DTS-HD Premium Sound enhancements built into the phone. It's not movie theatre quality but it's surprisingly decent for a mid-range Android handset.

The Swype-enabled keyboard lets you peck at the keys as normal or keep your finger down and draw the words out. I found it a little disorientating to use but that's only because I'm used to stock Android and some of the secondary buttons are in a different place. No doubt it's easy to operate once you get the hang of it, though it's not particularly appealing visually.

The settings drop-down drawer you can open from the notifications tray is a little overwhelming but it provides easy access to a bunch of options: GPS, brightness power saving, auto rotate, data usage, messages and the built-in flashlight app.

There's also a float caller feature that you can activate here that means a smaller pop-up appears when someone rings (rather than it taking up the whole screen) - I've seen it on previous Acer phones and it's actually a feature that makes a lot of sense.

Performance

Performance is one of the areas where the Acer Liquid Jade slips to 'satisfactory' rather than 'good'. A ho-hum 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor and 1GB of RAM keep things moving, but I noticed occasional lag and hold-ups while apps got their ducks in a row.

It doesn't spoil the experience too much - perhaps the casual user wouldn't even be bothered by it - but it goes in the drawback column for me.

Try and do anything too demanding on this handset and it's likely to start wheezing, though it's fine for day-to-day use on the whole. Did I say, "functional but not spectacular," yet?

Those impressions are backed up by the Acer Liquid Jade's benchmark scores. It registered a multi-core score of 1160 on Geekbench 3, which puts it a smidgen ahead of our old friend the Moto G but some way behind the two-year old Samsung Galaxy S3. It's in the sort of range reached by a lot of budget and mid-range phones.

Battery life

Taking on our regular TechRadar 90-minute looped video test, the Acer Liquid Jade slipped from 100% to 71%, which means the 2100 mAh battery doesn't hold a charge quite as well as the Moto G or the iPhone 6 Plus do.

Most phones we test perform better than that so you can't expect outstanding battery life... or can you?

The phone has a special CPU power-saving mode that kicks in when the phone is idle, and when not in use, the handset's battery level drops about one percentage point an hour. It's not difficult to do the maths: if you keep your phone in your pocket all of the time, you could squeeze days out of the Acer Liquid Jade.

Presumably the CPU saver is a kind of sleep mode where very little is happening at all. Even if you're going to be using the phone extensively in the day, it's refreshing to pick it up in the morning to find the battery level has hardly dropped overnight, even with Wi-Fi and sync on. That's not something I can say about most of the phones I've had.

In normal use it was a less impressive story, with most standard activities (web browsing, gaming, music) chipping away at the battery life noticeably. I'd say you can expect the usual day's worth of use from the Acer Liquid Jade if you're a medium-to-heavy user of your phone; if it's sat idle for most of the time, then that power-saving mode can do wonders for you.

There's also a dedicated Power save app that you can use to specify which features (such as mobile data and Wi-Fi) are switched off when you're trying to save battery life. It works like the power-saving plans in Windows and it's a handy extra option to have.

The essentials

The phone dialler and contacts apps that Acer has put together here look smart and clear but behind the tweaked interface there are no real differences between these apps and the ones you'll get with stock Android.

The calls I made were loud and clear and I didn't suffer any drops, though it's worth pointing out that there's no ambient sensor on the Acer Liquid Jade, so it can't tell when you have your face up to the handset.

It's a small issue that isn't really a problem but it shows another area where you're getting what you pay for, something less than a top-of-the-range smartphone.

The 2MP snapper on the front of the unit is fine for video calling but that's about it, which is par for the course on the majority of phones out there. If you really want to look your best on Skype or Hangouts then you're going to need something like the HTC Desire Eye.

Hangouts is here for your text messaging needs but there is actually another messaging app that looks like it's been left over from the Android editions of days gone by. It's basic and functional but you're probably going to want to jump ship to Hangouts or indeed something else as quickly as possible.

The web is another place where you'll be spending plenty of your time: both the pre-installed browser app and Chrome worked smoothly, with no problems accessing sites over Wi-Fi or mobile networks (don't forget there's no 4G support here).

Moving around some of the flashier, more interactive sites was a sluggish experience, which is probably another consequence of the average internal specifications sported by the Acer Liquid Jade.

Camera

Back to that 13MP camera then, and the Acer Liquid Jade managed to take very good pictures in most lighting conditions, a summary you could apply to many a mid-range phone of recent times. Low light occasionally confused the camera software but I still managed to get decent results in dark areas with and without flash.

This is by no means a mobile camera up there with the very best, but it is a step above what you would normally expect for something at this price point. With Android phones typically struggling in the camera department, it's one of the Acer Liquid Jade's best assets.

Given enough time to frame a shot and work out your settings you can get images that are sharp and well saturated. If you're trying to snap something quickly and the lighting is less than ideal then blur and noise are definite problems - the autofocus isn't particularly nimble.

Acer's own camera app comes with a bevy of different modes and settings, some of which are more useful than others: landscape, night, night portrait, backlight, backlight portrait and portrait modes are all here as well as the standard auto setting, and you can control white balance manually and apply a handful of colour effects too.

In terms of video you can capture 1080p clips and there's a time lapse feature here that's fun to play around with - you can even pause recording, Vine-style.

Like Samsung's proprietary photo app it's possible to switch from videos to photos with one tap rather than two which helps. It's a more feature-rich alternative to the stock Android camera, though a little less polished.

Click here to see the full resolution image

Click here to see the full resolution image

Click here to see the full resolution image

The Acer Liquid Jade doesn't disappoint but it won't blow you away either: what good points the phone has are balanced out with a few niggles so you'll want to make sure it offers the benefits you need before parting with your cash.

The handset does the job, and is kind on your wallet too. It's not a bad choice if you want a mid-range, decent value Android handset, but the problem is it's up against some strong competition.

We liked

That CPU saver battery mode is certainly impressive, the 13-megapixel camera takes better shots than most phones at this kind of price, and in the design department you get a thin and light handset that looks sleek and feels comfortable in the hand.

We disliked

In general, battery life isn't amazing, and you get a pile of bloatware that isn't particularly useful.

The phone has middling internal specs and performance, and comes with a price that doesn't really make the Acer Liquid Jade stand out enough in a crowded market.

Final verdict

What matters to you most in a phone? If it's a decent camera, a long-lasting standby mode or the ability to use two SIMs in one handset then get the Acer Liquid Jade near the top of your shortlist.

In all other respects - value, design, performance - the phone manages to do okay, but not much more than that. It's definitely Acer's best phone yet, however, and at this kind of price level it's perhaps unfair to moan too much about its shortcomings.

First reviewed: October 2014

Acer isn't a manufacturer that you'd typically associate with mobile phones, despite having numerous handsets under its belt. With this experience, Acer is hoping to make a success out of its latest mid range offering, the Liquid E3.

A quick look down the spec sheet leaves little doubt where the Liquid E3 is going to be pitched, coming with a 4.7-inch 720p screen, a MediaTek quad-core 1.2GHz CPU and 1GB RAM this is certainly not going to set the world alight.

Elsewhere there is a 13MP rear camera and a 2MP front sensor, which interestingly both come with flash, as well as 4GB of internal space to store all your snaps. Thankfully the Liquid E3 does come with microSD support.

But how much does all of this cost? Signing up to a two year contract will get you the Liquid E3 from as little as £14pm (around $23, AU$26) or SIM free from £128 (around $210, AU$237).

This means that the Acer is going head-to-head with the new Nokia Lumia 635, the Moto G and the HTC Desire 610. Even older flagships such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 occupy this end of the market, and I wouldn't be surprised if the Sony Xperia M2 Aqua came in with a very competitive price tag.

There is definitely a fight to be had here.

Measuring in at 136 x 68 x 9mm (5.35 x 2.68 x 0.35 in), the Liquid E3 is by no means the smallest handset in the world, but at 134g (4.73 oz) it is not the heaviest.

This lightness is thanks to the (non removable) plastic casing which fits in perfectly with the budget price tag.

The size did mean that I had a little trouble hitting all aspects of the screen one handed, but this never proved to be a problem. Other than size, resolution is the big factor that comes into play when talking about mobile screens, and I am pleased to say that the Liquid E3 is not a let down.

Of course the same pop and sparkle that graces the full HD screens of mobile flagships was missing, but the Liquid E3 certainly gives the Moto G a run for its money at this level.

Fans of the HTC One series might be pleased to hear that the Liquid E3 employs a similar stereo speaker set up, with the speakers set back in stylish metallic red. Despite the cool colours, I really didn't like the design as they are set back from the screen, making it feel like the glass display doesn't fit the rest of the handset.

These speakers are backed up by DTS Studio Sound though, so the sound quality should be pretty good.

In terms of other key features, the Liquid E3 comes with a microUSB port at the base for connecting to a PC and charging. The volume rocker and covered microSD slot are on the right, with the covered microSIM slot on the left and headphone port on the top alongside the power/lock key.

The Liquid E3 also employs the use of capacitive keys rather than Android's on screen wares, something that I am still undecided on. I like having dedicated keys but the Liquid E3 could have benefitted from being that little bit smaller.

When it comes to the sales pitch, there are four areas that Acer is keen to push. The first of these is the curved design, thanks to a slightly curved back plate and bezel.

This certainly helps to make the Acer Liquid E3 more comfortable to hold but I struggle to see how this is a talking point of any handset.

Don't get me wrong the Liquid E3 is certainly very comfortable to hold, although I have to say that the set back speakers are very noticeable when holding the E3 in landscape. That said, the Moto G was also very comfortable to hold as is the ageing Galaxy S3.

Acer also wants to highlight how good the Liquid E3 is for watching and listening to your favourite movies and tracks, thanks to the HD screen and front facing stereo speakers.

First off is the screen, and I can say that I certainly never had a problem. Doubtless those that want a truly marvellous portable multimedia experience will opt for a tablet, or a larger full HD flagship handset like the HTC One M8 or LG G3 but there is little that the Liquid E3 can do wrong at this price tag.

At only 4.7-inches the lack of full HD isn't really noticeable (there will be some critics that press their noses against the screen, determined to pick out every individual pixel), and the Liquid E3 still manages to pack a rather impressive 312ppi.

My only real concern with the screen is that the colours didn't seem as bright as I would have expected, certainly an area that Samsung seems to have nailed with its Super AMOLED screen technology.

The stereo speakers certainly help with offering a decent all round multimedia performance. One of my biggest gripes with the Sony Xperia M2 was that it had just the one base mounted speaker that made it difficult to listen to any media whilst holding the handset in landscape.

Sound came out loud and clear, without any of the usual problems that beset cheaper handsets when blasting out at full volume. Even the DTS sound enhancements seem to make a difference; turning it off and listening to the same movie clip again did not give the same experience.

As a multimedia handset then, the Liquid E3 certainly has the play back credentials, but can the same be said for its creation of media?

In short? Just about. The 13MP camera is certainly one that Acer would want to shout about, given that the standard is around 5MP. After all, just look at the Moto G.

There is no doubt that the Acer Liquid E3 can take some decent photos, but these have to be done in pretty good lighting conditions. Outdoor photography can leave lighter areas seeming a little washed out, but macro photography does highlight the level of detail that 13 million pixels can collect.

Acer is also keen to highlight the forward facing flash on the Liquid E3, but throughout my extensive time testing the handset I was unable to work out how to engage it. For starters, there doesn't seem to be a manual button and it doesn't automatically engage in darker areas. In all, I was a little disappointed.

When it comes to using the Acer Liquid E3 in day-to-day use, there is very little that will leave you disappointed. Unfortunately the review model that I am using only has Android 4.2 Jelly bean but Acer told TechRadar back in February that Android 4.4 was on the horizon for this smartphone.

That was a whole six months ago though, so I am not holding out much hope, especially with Android Lollipop just around the corner. If Android 4.4 KitKat does eventually make it to the Liquid E3 then perhaps we are looking at a different proposition, but until then I am left more than a little disappointed.

Those that like the look of stock Android will be left pretty well catered for, although Acer has thrown in some of its traditional green colouring. Thankfully this is very easily turned off through the settings menu because the green can get more than a little much.

Once turned off though, there was still way too much green running through the device for my liking.

The Liquid E3 also has a very useful quick launch feature. Rather than having a dedicated camera shutter key on the side of the handset, there is a button on the back that can launch any app of your choosing or fire up the camera if you long press.

This button isn't something that I can see being used an awful lot though, unless you really must open up Facebook or WhatsApp that second faster than normal.

Swiping around the home screens and through apps was well handled by the four MediaTek cores and I never felt that the Liquid E3 was lacking in power in that department.

This was reflected in the Geekbench scores, averaging a score of 1120. Unsurprisingly, this puts it right up against the Moto G but behind the ageing Galaxy S3 (an older phone, yet more powerful and running newer software).

Even when gaming the Liquid E3 managed to hold up pretty well. One of my favourite test games is Temple Run 2; it scores highly on the downloads list and can often prove a little too much for lower powered handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy Fame.

That said, the Liquid E3 held up extremely well under this test. The graphics were displayed incredibly smoothly, and there wasn't a single point that I missed a jump or turn thanks to a slight hold up in processing.

Battery life

When it comes to performance as a whole, it really doesn't matter if your handset has a billion cores and hundred RAM's if the battery can't cope. Thankfully it seems that Acer has managed to tool the battery inside the Liquid E3 to cope with what is thrown at it.

Interestingly Acer hasn't chosen to release the information about how big the power pack is inside the Liquid E3, but in the end that is just a number, and the only number that should be worried about is how long it lasts.

With the standard TechRadar battery test (a 90 minute video played at full brightness) recording a battery drain of 22%, the Acer Liquid E3 is on par with some of the better handsets out there. Looking at the Moto G with its drain of 33%, there is a clear difference.

That said, the Sony Xperia M2 managed only a drop of 17% but its subpar screen will certainly have helped it, as will the newer more battery efficient software.

During my time with the Acer Liquid E3 I can't say that I was ever really left wanting, it matched my HTC One percentage for percentage during my own testing. One of these involved running a 12 minute video from my Google Play library, resulting in a 5% drain on both the HTC and the Acer.

I was left a little worried that the HD screen was going to end up draining a lot of battery, but this was not the case. Yes it was still the primary drain on the battery, but that is to be expected of the modern handsets that are pretty much all screen.

Obviously there are certain areas that the Acer Liquid E3 is going to have to succeed in to be considered a phone, even before it can be considered a smartphone.

The first one of these is calling, and I can categorically say that the Liquid E3 does indeed make phone calls. That is about as far as it goes though, because call quality is nothing short of atrocious.

Even with a decent signal on both the Liquid E3 and on the HTC One that I was using to call, the call sounded extremely fuzzy. Don't be under any illusions that the call was made in extreme circumstances either, I was upstairs in a quiet room with my test subject downstairs also in a quiet room.

No TV on, no radio, no crowds of people, traffic or even road works that all too often make phone calls too hard to make.

This gives the Liquid E3 a major disadvantage to start, making the rest of the call stuff seem a little obsolete.

That said, Acer has given calling some thought elsewhere. The contacts app is really well designed, giving Samsung's version a run for its money. Contacts are large and easy to read, with nice big pictures. My only real gripe with it was the colour. If you can get past the green, it's a very nice app.

This continues into the messaging app. Again, if you can get past the green the messaging app is well designed, if focussing more on the functional than on aesthetics. There isn't a whole lot that can be said about the messaging app, or the native email or Gmail apps that hasn't been said in other reviews though. They all work, and they all work well but that's about it.

In order to make the most of these though, you will need a decent keyboard. Acer's offering here is a bit of a letdown though. Yes it provides a continuous swiping input, but the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired.

This meant that inputting passwords was really difficult, especially if you aren't able to see the characters that you are punching in. In order to get it to accept my Google password, it took six attempts, even typing each character slowly one by one.

The notifications are pretty much handled the same as every other handset, complete with the quick toggles that allow you to turn off things like Wi-Fi a lot easier.

Also included is the ability to mute a certain type of notification. This can be done permanently, or for an hour, meaning you can stop annoying notifications

Those looking at media will certainly need to invest in a decent microSD card as there is only 4GB of internal storage. I can't work out how a phone that has been so heavily engineered to creating a decent media experience can have such little space.

The final area that is essential to the modern smartphone is the mobile browser. Like pretty much every handset that gets launched with Android Jelly Bean or above, Sony being the only notable exception, the Acer Liquid E3 comes with both a native browser and Google Chrome.

You'll end up picking one and sticking to it, because in the end they're both very similar if not almost identical. They both sync with your Google account and can download your bookmarks, but I would always give the nod to Chrome as it syncs across all your devices just that little bit better.

Camera

For a phone that has made such a song and dance about the 13MP sensor that is packed into it, the Acer Liquid E3 doesn't offer much in the way of software. Instead you're left with a pretty standard affair, one that certainly doesn't live up to Sony handsets, or even some of the Samsung offerings.

There are a few options to keep you entertained; scene modes including night, sunset, and snow, as well as the pretty standard colour filtering in monochromatic or sepia fashion. Also included are a negative, aqua and black/whiteboards effects.

Those with a little more camera experience will also be able to make use of the exposure and white balance toggles, but I have found that these settings often go unused. If I wanted to really take my time and compose a shot like that, Acer can rest assured I would have a dedicated camera rather than a phone.

Elsewhere is face detection and a self timer, in order to help you get the 'perfect' shot, as well as the ability to change the picture size.

However, the quality of the app doesn't have any real effect on the quality of the images, and this is where the real strength of the Liquid E3's camera lies, in theory at least.

While the test shots have generally come out okay, I was hoping for a little more given the amount of pixels packed inside and the level of promotion that Acer has given to it on the Liquid E3.

Colour reproduction has come out well, however the level of contrast between light and dark areas in wider shots is disappointing. On the plus side, the extra pixels help with the 4x digital zoom.

When it came to using the forward facing camera, the Liquid E3 has a trick up its sleeve, and one that it hopes will appeal to those like myself who have taken the selfie craze to its current level. Having a front facing flash may seem like a novelty, but it is one that I can see more manufacturers getting on board with.

My biggest problem with it though was that for the life of me I couldn't find a way to manually engage said flash. This led me to the conclusion that it must engage automatically when in darker areas, although testing this theory in an almost pitch black garage proved me to be wrong.

Again, the front facing camera suffered with the contrast between brighter patches and darker patches when taking outdoor photography, and the lower resolution delivered acceptable results.

Camera samples

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

Click here for the full res image

If you're in the market for a phone that doesn't cost the earth, chances are you might have stumbled across the Acer Liquid E3, a handset from a manufacturer more associated with computers than mobile devices.

With a price tag as little as £14 per month in the UK or £134.99 (around $224, AU$240) SIM-free and a spec list that includes a quad-core CPU, 13MP camera, forward facing flash and HD screen there seems to be a lot to shout about.

We liked

The HD screen is certainly something that the Liquid E3 can shout about. It gives a pixel density of 312ppi and makes watching movies and playing games that bit nicer, and out strips almost every other handset that can be had for this price. Only the Moto G and the Korean ex-flagship in the form of the Galaxy S3 can match it.

The forward facing speakers are also a really nice touch for a handset of this price tag. They're loud and produce a really clear sound. That DTS sound enhancement also helps boost them in a similar way that HTC's Boomsound does. In all, they make for a very comfortable movie watching and music listening experience.

The quad core CPU certainly kept everything running along smoothly. It might not come up with the same high powered insides that now dominate the flagships and even the upper mid range, often referred to as the "mini" generation, but it keeps the Liquid E3 ticking over very nicely.

We disliked

One of my biggest qualms with the Acer Liquid E3 was the design. Other than being a nice big black square, in much the same way as nigh on every handset that has ever been produced, there is little to say.

The stylish red colour used on the stereo speakers is offset by the fact that they are sat back from the display, making the front feel like it doesn't quite fit.

Another area that really got to me was the colour scheme. It is something that is only a third party launcher away, but when you've just spent out money on a brand new handset the last thing you want to do is download something to change the whole feel, for something as minor as an annoyingly bright colour scheme.

Finally is the biggest problem of all, one that shouldn't beset even the most basic of phones. Call quality on the Liquid E3 was poor, and that is somewhat of an understatement. Despite test calls in quiet conditions, complete with a decent level of signal on both handsets, the Acer was very hard to hear. Even with the volume turned up the call still sounded muffled.

Verdict

After spending a lot of time with the Acer Liquid E3, there is no doubt that this handset has been aimed at younger students, those that are in high school rather than at University. The price tag screams of a handset that you won't mind if it gets bashed up on the playground, and the forward facing flash is aimed very heavily at the selfie loving youngsters.

It is these people that will probably not care too much that the Liquid E3 can't make the world's best calls, because they're too busy Snapchat-ing or sending Facebook and WhatsApp messages. This won't appease the people buying the handset though, the parents that want to be able to get a hold of their kids at a moment's notice.

Yes the Liquid E3 does a lot of things well, but as an overall handset it is still left looking up to the Moto G as the handset of choice in this price bracket, and with software that is older than that found on the Galaxy S3, the reasons to choose the Liquid E3 over any of its rivals are quickly diminishing.

First reviewed: August 2014

Acer isn't just launching the Liquid E3 at MWC 2014. It's got another, smaller sibling that reckons it can fit in just about any pocket you own.

The Acer Liquid Z4 is all about being compact, affordable and as friendly to as many user demographics as possible. It wants to offer total one-handed control at a decent price, and for the most part it succeeds.

At 9.7mm thick, the Z4 sits nice and cosy in the hand and actually feels quite solid despite its budget look - though it certainly doesn't feel "premium".

But for €99 (about £82, $136) - and with a dual-core 1.3GHz processor and 512MB of RAM - you know you're in budget territory, so this isn't a huge criticism.

In a time of growing screens, this is a phone still made very much with your pockets in mind. This makes for a bit of a cramped typing experience at the expense of a more compact device, however. So its worth bearing in mind the trade-off here.

The 4-inch screen is much less agreeable in picture quality, with the 800 x 480 resolution making for a blotchy, pixellated experience. Colours look washed out, particularly when you're using it in a well-lit room.

The 5MP rear camera camera with flash isn't bad for a low-budget phone like this. We had a go at taking some pictures with Acer's camera app and the quality seemed reasonable, although it was hard to appreciate it on that screen.

That said, we'd need to spend more time with it to get a better picture...

Also on the rear is the same Acer Rapid button found on the Liquid E3. This can be assigned to open any app with a short press, while a longer press will start the camera app. Both of these, however, can be turned off if you so wish.

It follows in the footsteps of the LG G2, and its usefulness will most likely depend on how you hold your phone. Having a shortcut button on the front probably still makes more sense, but that's just my opinion.

The phone comes running Android 4.2.2 (which had enough zip when we used it) along with Acer's Liquid UI on top, the biggest change being Quick Modes. As with the E3, this allows you to tailor the Android experience to who's using the phone.

If it's granddad, you can make icons bigger and the more useful feature most easily accessible. Or for young children, you can restrict the phone's functions to basic calling and texting, if you so wish.

Early verdict

It's not going to win any spec battles, but the Z4 could prove to be pretty popular with its low price point. And with screen sizes getting bigger and bigger, it's interesting to see Acer putting out something that goes against the tide.

"4K recording" seems set to be this year's phone buzz-feature (sorry, "world's slimmest", you've had your day) and Acer is first to out its offering, the 6-inch Acer Liquid S2.

With a full HD IPS screen, the handset comes running Android 4.2 with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 2.2GHz processor which gives it that 4K capability.

Of course, it needs a camera too and its rear-mounted sensor is a 13MP one replete with LED ring flash.

On board storage tops out at 16GB so we're not sure how much Ultra HD video you'll be able to hang on to - we're waiting to hear if there's a microSD slot on board too.

Red elements

While Acer's going big on the Ultra HD recording, it reckons "the real beauty of the smartphone" is "its iconic soft round curves" and the "red elements" surrounding the camera and on the earphone mesh.

Yes. Real beauty.

The 6-inch screen puts the Liquid S2 firmly into 'phablet' (sorry) territory, backed up by 2GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity and a 3,300mAh battery.

While we expect to get our hands on the Liquid S2 at IFA 2013, the handset will hit European shop shelves at the end of October - no word on a US release or any pricing at all as yet.

• It's a big week for tech as IFA 2013 kicks off - follow all the action here

Microsoft is keen for manufacturers to build smartphones for its Windows Phone 8 OS, but Acer isn't willing to bite this time.

Acer isn't alien to the Windows Phone game as it launched the Windows Phone 7.5-toting Allegro in 2011, but it's yet to venture into the latest version of platform.

Allen Burnes, Acer's VP of Smartphones for EMEA told TechRadar: "We are looking at Windows Phone 8, we think it's a great OS. The integration with Xbox is nice, the enterprise suite is nice, but I think no one knows about it."

Burnes continued: "You'll find everyone in our smartphone team would really like to deploy Windows OS, but in relation to where we are as a company we have to make our decisions in relation to what we think will sell out.

Waiting game

"We've made the decision not to launch a Windows Phone 8 device this year. Next year, depending on how we see the growth go this year, we may well do."

Acer wants to hear more from Microsoft on the new platform. "What they [Microsoft] has to do is communicate. They can't rely on Nokia, which has its own challenges of rebuilding its brand, to do it for them," he said.

The Taiwanese firm is also looking at the bigger picture when it comes to Windows, with clear benefits across its PC, laptop, tablet and smartphone divisions.

"The way WP8 integrates in with the rest of the Windows ecosystem is phenomenal," Burnes says, "so yes we are looking at Windows Phone 8, yes we do believe in it, it just doesn't sell enough at this moment, otherwise we would deploy it this year."

Considering the rise of larger smartphones on the market at the moment, we weren't all that surprised when Acer announced its very first 'phablet' handset, the Liquid S1, at this year's Computex, which seems set to cater to a more affordable, non-LTE market.

The Liquid S1's 720p display measures 5.7 inches - just 0.2 inches more than the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 - and even packs a stylus pen like its Korean rival. This added padding means it might be slightly too big for some pockets.

At a resolution of 1,280 x 720, matching the Note 2, the screen is certainly less than remarkable considering other devices rocking Full HD displays, such as the HTC One. But given that this will land at a more reasonable price, it's not something to get too caught up on.

As for what's running on the inside, there's not an awful lot to get excited about. A 1.5GHz quad-core with just 1GB of RAM isn't cutting edge, but we found it's enough to run Android 4.2.2 smoothly on.

The 8GB of storage is a bit skimpy too, though microSD support means you can beef that out when you need to.

One thing that could be an off-putting is the 2,400 mAh battery, which doesn't match up to the Note 2's 3,100 mAh. Given we didn't have enough time to really test the battery out, it's difficult to know how big this difference will be.

When it comes to the camera though, the offering is pretty reasonable. The Liquid S1's primary shooter is 8-megapixels, offering 1080p recording ability. This is decent enough, and the pictures we snapped were satisfyingly sharp for the device.

Our favourite part of the Liquid S1, however, is its multitasking Float feature, activated by holding down the menu button.

While the S1 software is mostly pure Android, Acer is throwing in its Float feature UI into the bag, which lets certain apps remain on the same screen as other "floating" apps and widgets at the same time.

It's very reminiscent of the Multi Window feature of the Samsung Galaxy Note II (though we found this one a bit more fluid), and something that really takes advantage of that extra screen space.

However during TechRadar's demonstration we were only able to use a very limited number of floatable apps, such as the calculator, camera and a call notification feature that means you won't be thrown out of whatever it is you're doing when someone's dropping you a line.

We've been told that this will be opened up to more apps when the phone arrives officially, though a lot of this will be down to app developers too.

Early verdict

Ultimately, the success the of Liquid S1 hangs in its affordability. A decent price - and it's currently said to be coming in at €349 (about £300, US $455, AUS $475) - is the only way we can see this taking on the Samsung Note 2, and given that its Q3 release date could put it directly up against the Note 3, it would seem ludicrous to put it any higher than that.

But if big screens are your thing, the Float features of the Liquid S1 nicely make the most of the phone's 5.7-inch display, making for a reasonable, if unremarkable when it comes to specs, phone.

GLBenchmark has struck again, listing the specs for another device that has yet to be officially announced: Acer's V350 smartphone.

The Acer V350 appeared in GLBenchmark's listings recently, though exactly when is unclear.

However, reports of the unannounced Acer smartphone began arriving on Friday.

Given its specs, it seems the V350 will be Acer's flagship device for 2013.

Acer V350 specs

The benchmark profile pegs the Acer V350 with a 1280 x 720 display that's likely more than 4 inches in size.

Pair that with Qualcomm's 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 processor - the same one that powers Samsung's Galaxy S3 - and you've got an impressive device.

The Acer V350's specs also include Android 4.1.2: Jelly Bean right out of the box, a first for the Taiwanese manufacturer.

More leaks at Acer

Acer's ship has sprung leaks left and right in the last week, with the Acer V360 and Iconia B1 tablet inadvertently revealed in addition to the V350.

Despite the names, the Acer V350's hardware appears to be superior to the V360's 4.5-inch 950 x 540 resolution display and 1GHz dual-core chip.

What's more, the V360 will run on Jelly Bean jus as the V350 does.

The Iconia B1, on the other hand, is a budget-priced 7-inch Android Jelly Bean tablet expected to launch at CES 2013 or the Mobile World Congress next year.

The V350 and V360 could make appearances at CES as well, so stay tuned - TechRadar will be there live to bring you all the big announcements.

Via GLBenchmark

A scandal has emerged in the global tech world, with Google being accused of pressuring Acer to cancel (at the very last minute) a smartphone launch with China's Alibaba Group.

The smartphone in question was the Acer CloudMobile A800, which would have run on Alibaba's Aliyun operating system.

Previous CloudMobile devices (like Acer's CloudMobile S500) used Google's Android OS.

According to reports coming out of Shanghai, Google put the screws to Acer, threatening to pull Android support from Acer devices if the Taiwanese device maker launched a smartphone with Alibaba.

Risky business

According to the reports, journalists showed up to an event in Shanghai on Thursday expecting to receive news of the Acer CloudMobile A800's launch.

Instead, they were refused entry and informed by a representative of Alibaba that the CloudMobile A800 had been cancelled.

Alibaba then released the following statement: "Our partner received notification from Google that if the new product launch with Aliyun went ahead, Google would terminate Android product cooperation and related technical authorization with Acer."

Google and Acer representatives in Tokyo and Shanghai, respectively, have reportedly declined to comment, and TechRadar has so far received no response from the companies' U.S. representatives.

Some background

In May of this year, Alibaba bought back the portion of its shares that was previously owned by Yahoo, reversing a deal that was made in 2005.

Alibaba reportedly hoped to gain more control over its own operations, while Yahoo doubtless enjoyed cashing a $6 billion check.

Acer, meanwhile, apparently didn't mention the partnership with Alibaba in early September when company president Jim Wong announced six new Acer smartphones in Europe and Asia for 2013, with five running Android and one on Windows Phone 8.

Perhaps he saw this coming.

Via Reuters

Despite being a known name, Acer is still a relatively small player in the smartphone market. It keeps dipping its toes in but its output is dwarfed by the likes of Samsung and HTC, and it is yet to find much success.

Its latest foray is the Acer CloudMobile S500, and rather than relying purely on specs, Acer is hoping the handset will stand out thanks to its cloud storage options. Cloud storage is such a big feature of the phone that it has even put it in the name.

Making use of the AcerCloud service, it enables you to upload documents, photos, music and videos and share them between the Acer CloudMobile S500, your PC and any other Android phones or tablets you might happen to have.

It's increasingly hard for smartphones to stand out purely based on their specs, so a unique selling point like this is definitely a good approach.

Priced at around £290 (around AU$450/US$466) SIM-free, the Acer CloudMobile S500 is sitting pretty close to the top of the pack in terms of price.

It's a fair bit cheaper than an iPhone 5 or a Samsung Galaxy S3, but it's around the same price as the still-pretty-powerful Samsung Galaxy Nexus or HTC One S.

It's fortunate then that Acer isn't relying on its cloud service alone to tempt people to part with their hard-earned cash. Sure it's the headline feature, but even ignoring its cloud credentials this is a decent handset with solid - though not world-beating -specs.

With a 4.3-inch 1280 x 720 display, a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, an 8 megapixel primary camera and 1080p video recording, the Acer CloudMobile S500 certainly ticks a lot of boxes on the spec sheet, easily matching similarly priced handsets.

It also has a front-facing VGA camera and comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich out of the box. If only it had come with Android 4.1 Jellybean it would be that much more compelling, but Ice Cream Sandwich is still a great and relatively up-to-date operating system.

Rounding out the package, there's a slightly disappointing 8GB of internal storage included. But unlike the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the Sony Xperia S and the HTC One S, which make up three of its closest competitors; the Acer CloudMobile S500 comes with a microSD card slot for cards of up to 32GB.

At first sight, the Acer CloudMobile S500 doesn't exactly set hearts on fire. It's undoubtedly a premium handset, but it looks smart rather than stylish. For the most part it's black and grey, and the end result is very plain.

A silver trim and curved edges class it up considerably, but it could still never be accused of being stylish or cool.

It wouldn't look out of place in a conference room, and that's probably no accident. The AcerCloud service seems to be primarily aimed at business users, enabling them to access their work remotely and easily sync it and back it up.

Once you pick it up, impressions improve considerably. The mottled back cover provides a reassuring amount of grip, while its curves ensure it fits snugly in your palm.

With dimensions of 127 x 65.8 x 9.9mm (5 x 2.6 x 0.4 inches), it's a fairly dinky phone considering it's rocking a 4.3-inch screen.

That's probably down to the complete absence of any buttons on the front of the handset. There's very little wasted space, and other than the front camera lens and the word 'Acer' stamped across the bottom, it's almost all screen.

The only other thing on the front is the speaker, which is hidden in the decorative silver bar at the top. On the other hand it's not the thinnest phone around, coming in at more than 2 inches thicker than the iPhone 5, but it doesn't feel chunky.

Turn the phone over and you'll find the main camera lens near the top and a hands-free speaker near the bottom, with the 'Acer' logo printed in silver across the middle.

On the left side there's a micro USB port for charging it or connecting the handset to a PC, while on the right there's a volume rocker.

At the top there's a 3.5mm headphone port and the power button.

Finally at the bottom there's a microphone that's visibly nothing more than a little dot.

You might have noticed that we've neglected to mention any sort of physical home button, and that's because there isn't one. As we noted above, the front of the handset is button-free, and it's a great look, keeping it as sleek as possible.

While the lack of a physical home button can be a bit jarring at first, you quickly get used to it, and it's likely to be a design decision made by more and more handsets going forward, since recent Android builds don't require one.

A little indent in the back cover enables you to pull it straight off, and while it's quite flimsy it's certainly more substantial than some that we've come across.

Underneath you'll find the 1460mAh battery, a micro SIM slot and a microSD card slot.

We were happy to find that the microSD card slot is accessible without removing the battery, meaning that cards can be swapped more easily. Because there is a relatively small amount of internal storage, this becomes even more appreciated.

Prepare to be wowed when you first boot up the Acer CloudMobile S500, because the screen is stunning. While it's not small at 4.3 inches, it's also not huge, but that's not what makes it so impressive.

The resolution is the real marvel here. At 1280 x 720 it has a 342ppi pixel density, giving it a sharper display than even the iPhone 5.

You might be hard pushed to tell the difference between the two handsets displays in practice, but that's only because they're both so incredibly good.

Compared to most phones, it's night and day, with the display on the Acer CloudMobile S500 being so crisp that individual pixels are for the most part totally imperceptible.

The first screen that you'll generally be met with is the lock screen. This can be set with a wallpaper of your choice and displays the time and date at the top in crisp white lettering. Swiping downwards from the top edge on the lock screen pulls the notification bar down, and swiping left or right takes you to your home screens.

At the bottom of the Acer CloudMobile S500's lock screen, there are icons for your dial pad, text messages, camera and Gmail, and if you slide any of these across the screen it will launch them.

In a neat addition though, these are just the defaults - with the built-in 'My Style' app you can change the shortcuts to anything you want. Or if you'd rather have an uncluttered lock screen, you can get rid of them altogether.

Once on the home screens, it seems like a pretty standard implementation of Android 4.0. Swiping left or right moves between your screens, and doing so is very smooth.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual core processor doesn't seem to struggle at all with general operation, giving it silky smooth performance that could almost rival the quad-core power of the Samsung Galaxy S3. Even when you throw more demanding tasks at it, such as HD games, it still seems to handle them effortlessly.

There are five home screens initially available, but there's an option hidden away in the 'My Style' app to increase it to seven or drop it to three.

Each of these screens can be filled with applications, folders and widgets, while a dock at the bottom holds icons for your dial pad, text messages, web browser, camera and app drawer.

With the exception of the app drawer, these can all be changed or removed.

At the very bottom of the screen there is a black bar with a home button in the middle, back button on the left and multi-task button on the right.

They're all pretty self explanatory even if you haven't used a handset that features them before.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's home button acts like a physical home button on other handsets would - simply taking you to your home screen.

The back button cycles back to the previous screen or menu that you were on. And the multi-task button brings up a display of all your active apps and enables you to switch between them with a tap or close them with a swipe.

Swiping down from the top of your screen brings down the notifications bar, which lists any uncleared messages, emails, reminders, missed calls or other events.

There's a tab here for setting alarms, one for accessing music controls (which is only accessible when playing music through the 'Play Music' app) and one to turn connections on and off.

From the connections tab you can then access the Acer CloudMobile S500's main settings menu, which is the standard Android offering with options for everything from connectivity to screen brightness to storage, security and more.

If you don't want to have to go into the notifications screen to access your settings you can also add a shortcut to it on one of your home screens.

At the top of each home screen there's a Google search bar that we initially assumed was a widget, but it's present on every home screen and doesn't seem to be removable.

Though it says 'Google' in it, the bar can also be used to search for things on the phone.

A lot of Acer CloudMobile S500 users will likely find this useful, but it would be nice if there was the option to remove it for those of us who don't want it.

Other than that there are a few standard widgets included on the home screens from the start.

There's one for the weather, one with a clock and one that displays nearby places, but all of these can be removed if you'd prefer.

The app drawer is the standard Android 4.0 one - you swipe left and right to scroll between the various screens of apps, causing them to appear and disappear like cards in a stack.

Tapping an app will open it, while holding it enables you to add it to a home screen or delete it.

You can also view available widgets from here and place them on home screens in the same way. Finally at the top-right there's a button to access Google Play.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's whole interface is, with a few exceptions, exactly what you'd find on many other Android 4.0 handsets, and as such it's quite intuitive and highly customisable.

Unless you move things around, the contacts screen on the Acer CloudMobile S500 can be accessed from either the lock screen or the dock on your home screen by tapping on the phone picture.

Once you do, you'll gain access to not just your contacts list, but also to a dial pad and a call log.

These can be flipped between by tapping their corresponding tabs at the top of the screen.

The dial pad is pretty standard, but it supports smart dialling, so if you start dialling a number it will bring up numbers from your address book that match it, saving you the effort of typing out the whole thing.

More usefully, you can also type out somebody's name by using the number that corresponds to each letter in their contact profile, and it will bring up their phone number, so you don't need to be able to remember the number you're calling, luckily.

There's also a voice command option available here, and it was reasonably accurate, but all it does is bring up contacts from your address book.

So if you want to call someone you'd have to speak their name, then tap it on the speech screen, which takes you to their entry in your contacts list.

From there you still need to tap their number, so it's questionable how much time it saves.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's call log is even more straightforward. As you'd expect, it's just a list of missed and received calls.

Tapping on one enables you to see the exact time and duration of the call, and from there go to the caller's contact card or to the messaging screen to text them.

Alternatively, you can tap a button to the right of any call in the log to call them back.

The contacts list is a bit crowded. At the top it shows all your favourites, with large thumbnail pictures for them, and then below that it has a list of all your contacts.

Most phones put favourites on a different screen, and it comes across as a bit messy having them all together.

On the other hand it does keep everything contacts-related in one place, so it comes down to a matter of preference as to whether this is a good or a bad thing.

Personally we kind of like it, since the favourites screen can get a bit forgotten about, so this keeps it front and centre.

Delve a little deeper and it gets slightly more convoluted though. Because although Acer has created its own contacts screen, the CloudMobile S500 also includes Google's 'People' app, which is basically a contacts list/address book itself, and the two are linked up.

In fact, clicking on a contact's details on Acer's list brings up their 'People' contact card. It's not a big deal, but it gives the feeling that Acer left its own offering half finished.

Where it becomes slightly more confusing is where there is an option to assign contacts to groups, which is something that we've come to expect.

But at first we didn't realise the option was there, because it's been omitted entirely from Acer's own contact list and is only accessible from the 'People' app.

You'd think that Acer could have added a tab for it in its own contacts screen, even if it was just a link to the groups section of the 'People' app.

There's a small amount of social network integration on offer. You can opt to view Facebook friends in your contacts list, which will show you any email addresses or phone numbers that they have in Facebook.

You can also access their Facebook profile from their contact card, but that's as far as it goes.

Adding a new contact to the Acer CloudMobile S500 can be done by tapping a button at the bottom-right of the contacts screen, and options are as plentiful as we've come to expect from Android.

You can add a name and numbers of course, but also multiple emails, IM details, addresses, websites and notes.

Once you've created a contact, going to their contact card gives you additional options such as assigning a custom ringtone or displaying a QR barcode that friends can then scan to get their details.

You can also access a call settings screen from any of these tabs.

The settings include things such as call forwarding, call barring and voicemail settings.

Notably there's no support for speed dial.

When a call comes through, you're limited to accepting or refusing the call by sliding a green or red phone icon respectively.

Once you accept a call, you're greeted with a big picture of the caller (if you have one assigned to them), with the call duration and the caller's name above it.

A pause symbol next to their name enables you to put them on hold, while at the bottom of the screen there are options to bring up the dial pad, activate the speaker phone, mute the mic or add another person to the call.

Pressing the home button will take you back to your home screen but doesn't end the call, so you can navigate your phone while still talking.

Getting back to the call screen is as simple as tapping the phone icon or pulling down the notifications screen and accessing it from there.

When you do want to end the call there's a big red hang up button near the bottom of the call screen.

Calls come through loud and clear, and even in low signal areas we found them to be impressively audible.

We didn't have a single dropped call in our time with the Acer CloudMobile S500 either.

The text message screen on the Acer CloudMobile S500 isn't a million miles away from the stock Android offering.

The main screen displays a list of all your conversations with the name of the other person, their picture, a snapshot of the last sent or received message and the date or time of the last message.

Tapping a conversation takes you into the message thread as you might expect.

Long-pressing one enables you to delete it, and tapping on a person's picture displays their phone number and enables you to call them or go to their contact card.

At the bottom of the screen there are options to search through your messages for a specific word or phrase, send a new message, pick a recipient and then type a message, delete all conversation threads or access the message settings screen.

The message settings screen has options for delivery reports, notifications, ringtones and the like.

Once in a message thread you'll see that it is laid out like a conversation, with messages from you appearing in a grey bubble and messages from anyone else appearing in a blue one.

There's also a picture of the sender next to each message, which is a nice touch that too few phones feature.

At the top of the screen there are options to call the person you're messaging, add a picture, video or sound to the message, add a subject or contact info or access the settings screen.

Tapping the bottom of the screen brings up the keyboard to type a message, and as you start typing you can see how many characters you have left before it will become two messages.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's keyboard itself is very accurate. It's the standard Android keyboard, and typos are rare.

It also features haptic feedback, which gives a sensation more akin to hitting an actual button.

The keyboard does a decent job of bringing up suggestions as you start typing a word, saving you the time of typing the whole thing out.

But it doesn't go so far as to predict what word you want next before you start typing (which some alternatives from Google Play do).

It also doesn't seem to learn new words based on what you type.

There is, however, an impressively accurate voice input option if you're too lazy to type.

Our one complaint is that in portrait mode it's a little on the small side. The screen on the Acer CloudMobile S500 is big enough to support a bigger keyboard, and it would certainly feel more comfortable.

But it's only very slightly too small, and despite the size, mistakes were rare. If it really gets to you, there are always alternatives available on Google Play anyway.

In addition to the standard Android keyboard, the Acer CloudMobile S500 also comes with Swype.

As the name suggests, this enables you to swipe across letters rather than tapping them. It takes a bit of getting used to, but once you do it's accurate, and potentially faster than typing.

As well as sending text messages, you can also email contacts from the messaging app, though the emails are sent as an MMS that the recipient then needs to download from their email account to read, so it's not ideal.

Despite the fact that they can be added to a contact's details, social networks and instant messengers are totally absent from the messaging app, sadly.

Beyond text messaging there are of course also email apps on offer on the Acer CloudMobile S500.

There's one for Gmail and one for everything else, and both of these are the stock Android apps, so if you've had an Android handset before it's likely that you've come across them.

They both work very well, enabling you to easily compose, send and read messages. You can also get push notifications to inform you of whenever a new email arrives.

The only downside, beyond the fact that they haven't been combined into a single app, is that messages aren't resized to fit the screen, which means you'll often have to scroll a bit to read them.

In addition to 3G and Wi-Fi b/g/n, the Acer CloudMobile S500 can be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot.

It's impressively fast too, loading mobile optimised pages in around three seconds and desktop sites in around six seconds over Wi-Fi.

It takes roughly a couple of seconds longer in each case to load over 3G.

It uses the stock Android browser, which will be familiar to a lot of people, but experiencing it on the Acer CloudMobile S500 still manages to impress.

Sites are readable even when zoomed out, thanks to the incredibly sharp screen.

You can pinch or double-tap the screen to zoom and pages don't lose any of their crispness when zoomed in.

It makes browsing on the handset very pleasant and minimises the chance of eye strain.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's screen is a decent size for browsing too, and the accurate keyboard ensures that it's a breeze to enter web addresses and post to social networks.

The browser also supports text reflow, so wherever possible pages will be resized to fit the screen.

When in the browser you'll find an address bar at the top, and to the right of that is a button that takes you to a display of all your open windows, enabling you to switch between them, close unwanted ones or open new ones.

At the far right there's a drop-down menu with options to access your bookmarks, bookmark the current page, save the page for offline reading, share the page or access the settings screen.

There's also an option from here to wirelessly print pages with Acer Print if you have a compatible printer.

The Acer CloudMobile S500's settings screen contains a wealth of options, from remembering form data, to clearing cookies, to changing your home page and enabling plug-ins.

The bookmarks screen displays thumbnails of all your bookmarks, along with your browsing history and any saved pages.

Bookmarks can also be synced to your Google account, making them accessible on other devices.

All in all, the browser is accessible and intuitive.

If you don't get on with it, there are always other options available on Google Play. But whatever browser you go with, the Acer CloudMobile S500 handles web browsing well.

Pages load quickly, text and images are pin sharp and the screen is a good size for viewing them on.

The Acer CloudMobile S500 sports an 8 megapixel primary camera, putting it on a par with the similarly priced HTC One S and even the higher end Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5. But of course, megapixel count isn't everything.

You can change the scene mode, though the options are rather limited, with just panorama, HDR, low light and continuous shooting on offer.

You can also change the white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness and turn the flash on or off. There aren't any options for manually adjusting the ISO, though.

Beyond that there are a variety of effects to play with, such as Watercolour, Cartoon and Sepia. Some of them have fun results, but in general they won't be very useful for taking proper pictures.

When taking a picture you can either tap to focus or have the camera automatically focus, and there's a slider to zoom in on a subject.

What really struck us when using it was just how fast it is - standard pictures are taken almost instantly, enabling you to fire off loads in quick succession.

This is great when you want to catch something time sensitive or just want to take a lot of photos.

Even in panorama or HDR mode it's generally pretty speedy, taking no more than a few seconds before it's ready to shoot again.

You can also take pictures while filming, which is a feature that has started to filter into high-end phones but still isn't commonplace.

It can be really useful, though, if you want to capture both photos and video of something.

Picture quality on the Acer CloudMobile S500 is generally pretty good.

It's not up to the standards of the iPhone 5 or the 12 megapixel Sony Xperia S, but it beats the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy Nexus and seems fairly comparable to the HTC One S.

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Landscapes are quite detailed, with neither the foreground nor background suffering too much.

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Colours can sometimes appear a little muted.

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The camera can focus quite well even during close-ups, avoiding much blurring.

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Fast moving objects can become a little blurred, but considering there's no sport or action mode, the Acer CloudMobile S500 doesn't do too bad.

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Using the software zoom is as underwhelming as you might expect.

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The camera struggles in the dark and the resulting images are noisy, but not a total write off.

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Images really pop out of the screen when shot with HDR mode on.

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Panoramas are handled well and are quick and easy to take.

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Bright artificial light gives the image an unpleasant yellow tinge.

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Without flash, dark rooms come out noisy and blurred.

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Flash considerably improves dark images, but noise is still present.

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Watercolour mode

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Cartoon mode. These effects are fun, but of limited usefulness.

Shooting in 1080p Full HD, the Acer CloudMobile S500 takes a decent stab at video.

Settings are rather more limited than they are for photos, though. You can turn the light on or off, record a YouTube video, put it on a timer and turn audio on or off.

YouTube : http://youtu.be/Zk5mWPzD5h4

Settings aside, the video camera puts up a solid but unspectacular performance.

The Acer CloudMobile S500 comes with a bewildering array of media options.

It's a bit of a surprise too, given that in many ways the handset seems aimed at business users, for whom media wouldn't likely be a high priority.

First up there's a selection of Google offerings in the form of Gallery, Play Music, Play Books and Play Movies & TV.

These are all available from Google Play anyway, but it's nice to have them bundled with the handset.

Play Movies & TV contains any videos that you've bought or rented from Google Play.

But it can also be used to play any other video files on the Acer CloudMobile S500.

Videos are displayed as thumbnails, along with their name and run time, and you simply tap on one to play it.

In the case of videos from Google Play, there's also an option to download them to the device, though if you prefer you can stream them.

It's a basic player, with options to play, pause, jump forward or jump back in a video, as well as an option to share it via MMS, Bluetooth and more.

But that's all you get - there aren't any settings to tweak.

Play Music is a slightly more full featured offering.

You can make playlists, sort music by recent, genre, band, song or album, and turn shuffle on or off, but that's about it.

Once a song is actually playing you can pause it, jump forwards and backwards or skip to the next track.

There are also music controls on the notifications bar and lock screen so you don't have to stay in the app.

You can access Dolby Mobile from the notifications bar once a song is playing, and this enables you to change the treble and bass levels, as well as picking an equaliser setting.

Dolby Mobile is on by default, but you can turn it off altogether - not that you'd want to, since it provides a noticeably richer audio experience.

Playing music through headphones gives you access to an extra screen of options, with equaliser, bass and surround sound settings that seem independent of Dolby Mobile.

Gallery gives you access to all of your photos. You can make albums, and since it's a Google app, it can be synced across multiple devices, so you need never worry about losing pictures.

The final Google offering, Play Books, is an attractive e-book reader.

You can purchase books from Google Play, and the app enables you to use bookmarks, a choice of themes and the option to have a book read aloud.

While a phone is never going to be the ideal device to read a book on, the stunning screen on the Acer CloudMobile S500 makes it better than most.

Beyond Google's offerings, Acer has included some of its own apps. There's Video, which is perhaps even more basic than Play Movies, but it gets the job done.

It gives you a list of all the video files on the device, and you can play them by tapping on them, and... that's about it.

Then there's Music, which - you've guessed it - is a basic music player.

It enables you to sort music by artist, album, genre or song and create playlists, but there aren't any settings to speak of.

It doesn't even give you access to the lock screen or notifications bar music controls - those seem to be restricted to Play Music, which is a bit of a pain.

However, you can still tweak the Dolby Mobile settings.

Continuing the theme, Photo is a basic gallery app. It presents you with thumbnails of all your images, which you can tap on to pull up.

You can also play a slideshow, share them and delete unwanted ones, but that's it, and once again there aren't any settings or editing tools built in.

Though the Video app doesn't have any editing tools built in, you can find these elsewhere, in the form of Movie Studio.

This enables you to splice videos, images and audio together, to for example create a long, multiple scene video or simply add music to a clip.

It's fairly basic in terms of functionality, but not bad for a bundled free app.

The Acer CloudMobile S500 also comes with the standard YouTube app, giving you full, easy access to the millions of videos available on the popular streaming service.

Additionally there's an HD Channel app, which simply pulls HD content in from YouTube.

It's a good way to find videos that make use of the handset's gorgeous screen, but YouTube itself is a much more fully featured app.

There's also an FM Radio, which has a basic visualiser to jazz it up.

But more importantly it enables you to choose whether to play music through headphones or the handset's speakers (though headphones need to be plugged in either way).

You can also auto-tune stations and save favourites.

It's a good-looking, easy to use app, but as with most of Acer's offerings it's pretty basic.

You can't record, there's no information on what's playing and no integration with Shazam or anything similar. It also crashed once while we were using it.

Finally, there's Equiview, which if you happen to have an Acer projector will enable you to wirelessly stream images from the phone across to it.

It's an app that definitely has business users in mind, but since it's limited to Acer projectors, it will probably be useless to most people.

All in all, the Acer CloudMobile S500 has an impressive number of media apps and options. But it becomes less impressive once you delve into them and find that a lot are pretty basic, and that in many cases multiple apps do the same thing.

Still, there are always more options on Google Play, and the Acer CloudMobile S500 is a great device to experience media on.

With its fairly large, high resolution screen, videos and photos look stunning, while Dolby Mobile ensures that music sounds pretty decent. The curved edges make it comfortable to hold for extended periods, too.

And with support for MP3, WAV, WMA, eAAC+, DivX, XviD, MP4, H.264, and H.263 files, it should be able to play most of the media you'd want to throw at it.

And there are always plug-ins and other apps from Google Play to cover any files that it won't play. It also supports DLNA streaming.

The only real concern is the lack of built-in storage. The 8GB will fill up fast, and for a phone of this price we'd expect 16GB, to be honest. The microSD card slot makes expansion possible, but it's still a shame that there isn't more storage onboard.

The battery in the Acer CloudMobile S500 is rather on the small side, at 1460mAh. To put that into perspective, the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes with a 1750mAh battery, and we weren't exactly bowled over by that.

With that in mind, it's no surprise that the Acer CloudMobile S500 fails to deliver on the battery front. We were regularly reaching for the charger halfway through the day, and heavy 3G use can run the battery down in just a few hours.

Acer hasn't published what the battery duration is for calls or standby, but it's not likely to be very impressive for either. Doing anything on the phone drained its battery fast, and if you plan on anything more than light use you'd be advised to carry a charger with you.

For a phone that seems aimed at business users, this is all the more disappointing, since you really can't afford to run out of juice if you're relying on your phone for work.

In our own battery test we fully charged the phone, turned the screen to full brightness, put Wi-Fi on, turned on push notifications on all email accounts and social networks, and then ran a 90 minute video.

By the end the battery had dropped to 56%. That amounts to just over three hours of video on one charge, which just isn't good enough.

Sure you can extend that by turning the brightness down, but it's still a poor performance compared to most of its competitors.

On the connectivity front, the phone gives you Wi-Fi b/g/n, 3G, Bluetooth 4.0, micro USB 2.0, NFC, DLNA and Wi-Fi hotspot support.

It's a good selection of options, and they're all pretty easy to set up. Combined with its cloud support, it gives you about as much connectivity choice as you could hope for in a package this size.

Connecting the handset to a PC is a simple case of plugging it in with a micro USB to USB cable. Once done, it mounts itself as a drive and you can just drag and drop media on and off the phone.

If you're using a microSD card then another option is to remove it from the phone and plug that into the PC, which again enables you to access it like a hard drive.

Of course, plenty of things can be downloaded straight onto the handset from Google Play and other sources, while many cloud services are supported too.

The Acer CloudMobile S500 ships with the standard Android mapping options, which is to say it comes with Google Maps.

That almost goes without saying really, since we'd be shocked to find an Android device that didn't.

The reason we'd be shocked, beyond the fact that Google make both Android and Google Maps, is that it's just such a good service.

It would be madness to release an Android device with anything else.

It's accurate and detailed, with listings for businesses and landmarks, traffic information, transit lines and terrain and latitude information.

It's got detailed routes for pedestrians, motorists and public transport, and it even has built-in access to Google Street View.

But you probably know all this, because there won't be many people reading this who haven't accessed Google Maps in some form or other.

It also comes with Google Navigation - again that's pretty standard, but worth mentioning.

Because although it's still in beta, it's an impressive sat nav service that so far hasn't failed to get us where we want to go.

The Acer CloudMobile S500 also seems to have a very fast GPS signal, locking onto our location in no time.

There are a number of alternative mapping and sat nav options available from Google Play if you want them.

These include premium services such as TomTom, but for most users the bundled apps should more than suffice.

The out-of-the-box apps experience on the Acer CloudMobile S500 is a bit of a mixed bag.

On the one hand it comes with a huge number of media apps, which we've covered on the Media page of this review, but on the other hand it's dropped the ball a bit in other areas.

There isn't much in the way of other apps, just basic things such as a calculator, alarm clock and calendar (which can, in its favour, be synced with your Google calendars).

There's no notes app, which we came to miss almost immediately, and there's no timer or stop watch either.

As with everything else, you can always download one, but these are basic things that we'd expect it to come with.

What it does have is a whole suite of cloud services, which in Acer's eyes is seemingly its main selling point.

But even that is something of a bittersweet experience.

Documents, pictures, videos and music can all be synced with your AcerCloud account, enabling you to access them on a PC or other Android device.

That sounds great, but in practice it's rather problematic.

Take documents, for example - there's a cloud-connected Docs app that enables you to view documents, presentations and spreadsheets on your phone, but you can't create them there.

Instead you have to create them on a PC and then sync them across.

Given that there are numerous fully featured office suites available for Android, it's frustratingly limiting that you can't create new documents with the Docs app, or sync documents to it if they were created on the phone.

In fact, the Acer CloudMobile S500 even comes with Polaris Office, which is a competent suite of tools for viewing, creating and editing documents.

Polaris even supports Dropbox and other cloud services, yet because the documents haven't come from a PC, they can't be synced to AcerCloud.

Other media isn't quite so limited, but it also didn't always seem to sync up properly, and there doesn't seem to be any way to manually sync things from the handset - either they get uploaded automatically or they don't, and you have to make do without them.

Oh well, it's a bit hit and miss, but at least you can generally access things you've done on a computer on the go.

But hold on a minute, you are running Windows 7 right?

Because if not then (unless it's an Acer PC) the cloud service isn't compatible, rendering the syncing of documents obsolete (since you can't sync documents without a PC), and hampering all its other uses.

Heaven help you if you've got a Mac, because Acer certainly won't.

If you do have compatible devices, then when it works it works quite well, but with Dropbox, Box, Evernote and other cloud services already supporting Android and many users already entrenched in their services, Acer's offering becomes a hard sell.

Looked at as a nice extra or simply a bullet point on the box it makes sense, but as the key selling point of the Acer CloudMobile S500 it really doesn't.

It's too little too late. Maybe if Acer makes it more widely compatible and more reliable it could become a compelling service, but for the moment it hasn't tempted us to jump ship from our other cloud accounts.

With the CloudMobile S500, Acer seems to be making a genuine push to compete with the major smartphone players.

It's got an absolutely gorgeous screen, a formidably fast processor and a premium build. Not only that, but in an effort to stand out from the crowd, Acer has heavily integrated its AcerCloud service into the handset, making it more connected out of the box than most other phones.

All that and a price tag well below the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S3 and the iPhone 5.

But it's not a flawless effort. The battery stops it in its tracks, while AcerCloud isn't quite all we hoped it would be. Add to that a fairly insubstantial 8GB of internal storage and a contacts screen that stinks of laziness, and there are suddenly quite a few caveats to any recommendation we could make for it.

We liked

The Acer CloudMobile S500 has one of the best screens we've ever seen on a smartphone. It's incredibly sharp and really shows up the competition.

It's also very fast and powerful, and looks like a premium handset through and through. This is Acer's flagship phone, and in these areas it really shows.

The great screen also makes it brilliant for web browsing and watching videos, while Dolby Mobile helps with the sound quality, making it an admirable music player too.

It's got an accurate keyboard, a decent camera and a few nice extras such as Polaris Office and video editing software.

We disliked

The battery is easily the single biggest problem with the Acer CloudMobile S500. It's just not very good, and will really struggle to even get you through to the end of the day. That's a serious issue, since a smartphone with a dead battery is just an expensive paperweight - at least until you find a charger.

AcerCloud is also a real letdown given that the handset is called a 'CloudMobile'. As a bonus feature it's fine, but just don't buy it expecting a complete cloud solution, because you won't get one, and you might still find yourself heading to Dropbox when it comes down to it.

Only having 8GB of internal storage is a bit of a shame too, when other phones at this price tend to come with 16GB, though at least it supports microSD cards.

Also, while it's undoubtedly a premium handset in look and feel, its appearance won't be to everyone's tastes, ultimately coming off as slightly bland.

Final verdict

The Acer CloudMobile S500 is a fairly impressive handset. The screen is absolutely stunning - one of the best around in fact, and certainly better than others in its price range.

The dual-core 1.5GHz processor can tackle pretty much anything you throw at it. The phone looks expensive and feels good in the hand, and it comes with a pretty solid 8 megapixel camera.

But it's not all good news. The battery is a huge letdown and Acer really dropped the ball with its cloud service, particularly given that it's the headline feature.

It's a shame, because both of these seem like easy fixes - ship it with a bigger battery and remove some of the restrictions from the cloud service and suddenly the Acer CloudMobile S500 becomes a real powerhouse, worthy of the name.

But that's not what happened, so the phone we got is good, but not great.

The screen is the star of the show here, and while the Acer CloudMobile S500 drops the ball in a couple of key areas it's still an impressive handset. Just make sure you keep a spare battery in your pocket.

An online retailer has listed the Acer Cloud Mobile release date as September 5, which means we could finally see the Ice Cream Sandwich handset in three weeks time.

We reported yesterday that the Acer Liquid Glow was now on sale and that the Cloud Mobile was about to launch in the UK, with September mused as its arrival.

Now online retailer Expansys has revealed on its site that it expects stock of the Acer Cloud Mobile on September 5 – although it seems this date isn't set in stone quite yet.

Subject to change

We contacted Expansys and a spokesperson told us: "this is the latest information from Acer regarding the handset, and we hope to speak to Acer again today about it."

The Cloud Mobile is currently available for pre-order on the site, priced at £284.99 SIM-free, which will get you a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB internal storage, 4.3-inch 720p display, 8MP camera and Android 4.0.

We have also contacted Acer about the Cloud Mobile and we'll update this article once we hear back.

From Expansys

The Acer Liquid Glow and CloudMobile were announced way back at the start of the year, but they are only now making their way to market.

Online retailer Expansys says it now has stock of the black and white versions of the Acer Liquid Glow, available at just £147.99 SIM-free.

For your money you'll get a strong array of specs, including a 3.7-inch display (480x800), 1GHz single-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of internal storage, 5MP camera with LED flash, Android Ice Cream Sandwich, NFC and microSD slot.

Budget contender

On paper, the Liquid Glow is a decent handset and takes the fight to the likes of the Huawei Ascend G300 and Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 – but we'll reserve judgement until we get the handset in and put it through our in-depth review process.

Expansys also has the Acer CloudMobile up for pre-order on its site, with an asking price of £284.99 for the 1.5GHz dual-core handset, which sports a 4.3-inch 720p display, 8MP camera and Ice Cream Sandwich.

According to the retailer, stock of the Cloud Mobile will arrive in September – although there's no official word on this yet, so it could well be subject to change.

We've contacted Acer to get some clarification on the availability of both handsets, and we'll update this article once we hear back.

From Expansys via GSM Arena and Phone Arena

Acer's Liquid Mini is yet another smartphone running Android. Yeah, Yeah, we know. Been there. Done that. Well, hold on, though. This is a £199 smartphone, so it might appeal to tightwad... those on a budget.

It's small in size so it is good for those who don't want a huge device. And it sports Acer's bespoke Android skin, which is helpful for some people, not so good for others.

The user interface is very similar to that we've already seen on the rather more expensive Liquid Metal, which is currently selling for around £299, and the multimedia-friendly Stream, currently going for rather less at around £240. In price terms the Liquid Mini sits more comfortably against the likes of the LG Optimus One.

The Acer Liquid Mini is available in five different colours, and these have fancy names: royal blue, piano black, lime green, jet silver, light pink. The colour relates to the backplate and long edges. The top and bottom edges are always silver, the front black.

The top and bottom edges are curved slightly, and while this has no effect on usability, it does make for a slightly unusual appearance. That's just as well since, in general, the Acer Liquid Mini looks very familiar.

Under the screen there are four touch buttons for Home, Back, Menu and Search functions. Unlike in some more expensive Android smartphones, these aren't dimmed out when the screen is off. They're always present, though a bright white backlight does kick in when the screen is turned on.

Three of the edges contain buttons and connectors, but the left long edge is entirely blank. On the right sits a pair of volume buttons and a shortcut for the five-megapixel camera. On the top is the power switch and a 3.5mm headset connector. The bottom has a micro-USB slot.

The plastic backplate has a soft finish, which makes it feel comfy in the hand and helps with grip.

The OS of choice is Android 2.2, and you'll find GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and HSDPA all lurking under the hood.

Cost savings have come into play in the choice of a fairly low-spec 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 processor, relatively low 480 x 320 screen resolution and shortage of built-in storage at 512MB. But you get a 2GB microSD card, and at least the screen is capacitive, and Acer has thrown a protective sleeve into the box.

On the whole, then, it seems Acer has made some compromises to meet its price point. The question we have to ask is, are they the right ones?

Acer Liquid Mini review: Interface

Acer uses a skin for Android that we've seen before, called Breeze, though it has been slightly tweaked this time round. It's a little convoluted, but if you like the concept you'll certainly be able to fly with it.

Switch the handset on and you'll be in the Lock screen, which presents missed call and message notifications, and tells you the date and time. Bottom right of the screen is the name of your network operator, and bottom left is what looks like a curled over corner.

Tap a notification and you can slide the box that appears to go immediately to missed calls or to messages.

Alternatively sweep that folded corner at the bottom left and you are taken straight to the main screen.

This is where things get interesting. The screen is divided into three sections. At the bottom there are two rows of quick shortcuts to apps. Sweep this area upwards and you're into the main apps listing, ranged across three screens, through which you horizontally sweep.

At the very top of the screen is the notifications bar. Acer had toyed with putting this above the shortcuts area in the Liquid Metal, but it's back where you expect it to be now. But the nifty alert bubbles remain.

Tap the notifications bar and up pop bubbles offering access to additional features. Sweep with a finger to move between them. You can set alarms, make connection settings, and see recent notifications. And more bubbles appear as you use some apps, such as during media playback.

Now, that middle section has a hidden secret. Sweep a finger to reveal a new window on the left where you can see your recent usage history as a carousel of thumbnails. Moving through these to get to recently used apps is a delight. Sweep to reveal a new window on the right and you're into the media browser, where you can access photos, videos and music.

You want to know about widgets, right?

Well, you can set up five screens of them. There's a small widgets icon on the main screen, or you can tap and hold the Home button when you're on the main screen to get into the widgets screens.

Now you can scroll left and right to see widgets, and use the plus button at the bottom left of the screen to choose new widgets from a list.

Just as we've found before with Acer's use of these widgets, it's a bit of a round-the-houses system, but it does work, and if you look on the bright side you get five widgets screens plus a flexible Home screen and an interactive Lock screen - all of which work pretty well, if a bit fiddly at times.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Contacts and calling

Twitter and Facebook are handled by Acer's somewhat quirky SocialJogger. You sign into accounts and then the Acer Liquid Mini is ready to start picking up posts.

Once you're into the SocialJogger, posts are shown on a carousel wheel that you can move through by finger sweeping. Rather bizarrely, if you choose 'Auto Play' from the menu the carousel slowly rotates through messages so you don't even need to sweep.

You can add 'pages' to the social jogger showing only specific people you follow on Twitter or Facebook friends, helping you to focus on what's really important. You switch between these by swiping a very thin bar towards the top of the screen. This is a nice feature, but to be honest we find SocialJogger a bit clunky.

And rather bizarrely, if you want to add Facebook and Twitter contacts to contacts, you need to do this separately by going into Contacts, Choosing to Add Account from the menu, and then signing in for a second time.

Do that, though, and you can add status and pictures from Facebook. Our review handset consistently reported a sync error with Twitter over several days, so we can't say how it handles Twitter data or what the process of linking is like.

When in contacts, tapping to get to the Facebook profile of someone takes you straight to their wall, while the contacts listing picks up any available phone numbers.

You can search contacts by tapping into a little search box, but we found the autocorrect system kicked in rather too readily, so that searching for people with oddly spelled names wasn't easy.

The Contacts app enables you to mark people as favourite and access a straightforward dialler that's designed exactly like what we've seen on other Acer smartphones.

We didn't have any problems with voice calls. The in-call menu is easy to manage, and volume was good. People we called said we sounded fine, and we didn't experience any problems with dropping signal strength either.

Even better, the dialler screen supports smart dialling, and this is by far an easier way of searching through the contacts in the Liquid Mini than trying to fiddle with the search tool mentioned earlier.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Messaging

With Twitter and Facebook dealt with by SocialJogger, you might think that's those two done and dusted. But you'd be wrong.

For the newcomer to Android, the Acer Liquid Mini offers a confusing array of options. There are Facebook and Twitter widgets too, the latter in both large and small variants, and a SocialJogger widget. It's a bit of an overload.

The good news is that in all cases widgets offer easy scrolling through messages and a simple tap opens up a fuller screen so you can compose replies.

SMS is well catered for by a good client that shows threaded messages. It might not look very stylish, but it does its job, and it picks out the numbers in SMS messages offering a 'Call' option on the menu so you can quickly follow something up by phoning.

The keyboard, though, might prove to be a bit of a problem. The Acer Liquid Mini has a smaller screen measuring just 3.2 inches, and as a result the keyboard is a little cramped in widescreen mode and very cramped in tall mode. Sausagefingers need not apply.

Mobile email is supported, of course. Your Gmail comes into its own inbox, the rest is handled by an email app that you configure with details for any or all of your POP accounts. In many cases you only need user name and password.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Internet

The Acer Liquid Mini has a 3G connection with HSDPA offering 7.2Mbps downloads. Add that to the Wi-Fi that supports 802.11 b and g connections, and you shouldn't have any trouble accessing the internet.

As usual, the web browser offers full page views of sites, though the 3.2-inch 480 x 320-pixel (HVGA) screen is obviously a bit limited in terms of how much detail it shows, and if you look at a fullscreen page you probably won't be able to read much.

The browser sports a familiar double-tap to zoom feature, and if you zoom into pages there's good text reflowing so that you don't have to pan around too much to read text.

The browser supports multiple windows and opening a new one is as easy as hitting the menu button and choosing 'New window'. Bookmarks are similarly easy to use. Each one is saved as a tiny thumbnail, and you can add one by tapping an icon on the main viewing page.

Drop into bookmarks view and as well as seeing bookmarks themselves you can see a list of your most visited websites and your browsing history.

Unfortunately for fans of embedded video, the Acer Liquid Mini has dodgy Flash support. We weren't able to stream video from the BBC website, for example. But at least there is a YouTube client and that worked fine.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Camera

The five-megapixel camera is flashless and lacks autofocus capabilities. It can be activated by a side button, which you need to hold in for a bit rather than simply press, or through a Home screen icon.

You can cut down on storage size by reducing the quality of JPEGs the camera saves, though we can't really see the point. Exposure can be set as centre weighted, spot metered or frame average, which adds a little more utility, and you can fiddle with the ISO settings too, should you want to get technical. Geotagging is also an option.

There are various colour effects – mono, negative, sepia and aqua – and a rather useless digital zoom. When you've taken a shot, you can view it in the gallery and choose between a number of sharing options.

Click here for full-res version

OUTDOORS: Taken early on a fairly sunless morning, this shot shows how bad the Acer Liquid Mini camera can be at capturing enough light. Zoom in and the pixels are dull and fragmented

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CLOSE UP: Indoors in a dimly lit cafe, this close up makes our snack look inviting

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INDOORS: Indoors in a well-lit shopping centre, a normal mode shot is perfectly acceptable

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BLACK AND WHITE: In the same shopping centre we tried the mono mode to good effect

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NEGATIVE: Negative shooting mode adds a little fun to proceedings

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SEPIA: Sepia mode gives a photograph that air of oldness

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AQUA: We can never really understand why cameras include an aqua mode. Do you want your photos to look like they were taken underwater? Us neither

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ZOOM: And here's why you should never use the digital zoom feature on any camera. We're at full stretch here, and it shows

Acer Liquid Mini review: Video

The Acer Liquid Mini also captures video, of course, but not too much should be expected from it. The maximum resolution is 720 x 480 pixels, which isn't too bad, but you have none of the shooting effects such as aqua and sepia that exist in stills shooting mode. At least you can flip between the default MPEG4 to H.263 if you choose.

Shot quite early in the morning, the first video is pretty poor. The sky tones are too pinkish and the lens simply can't let enough light in to do a decent job.

There is a slight jerkiness to this moving tram in the second video, but on the whole it's is passable for quality.

Indoors, in a reasonably well lit room, the attempt to capture some fairly close-up footage in the third video suffers from a lot of blurring, since the Acer Liquid Mini moves around in our hands due to the smaller and more difficult to handle dimensions.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Media

There's quite a bit going on media wise with the Acer Liquid Mini, though nothing particularly new. There's barely any internal memory – just 512MB, in fact – so you're going to need a microSD card to store music and video, and Acer supplies a 2GB card to get you started.

The music player is basic looking, but functional, with playback controls offering what you need.

When you're listening to music, there's a little control bubble available in the notifications bar, so that you can fiddle with playback from within any app.

The loudspeaker delivers a fairly poor quality, tinny sound, and its volume isn't great. The Acer headphones do a reasonable job, but the flat, in-ear buds never stay in our own ears very well. In short, the music player does a job, but not spectacularly well.

Video playback has to be done via the Gallery. The screen quality isn't really good enough for hugely vibrant rendering, and the screen is too small to double up as a frequently used video player, but we found it coped fine with the MP4s we threw at it.

There is an alternative for media playback in the shape of Acer's own Nemo Player which brings music, photos and video together in one place.

It has a slightly nicer looking skin and the added advantage of going online to Gracenote and finding information about playing tunes. That's really handy if you don't have album art available.

There is an FM radio on-board, too. It'll autoscan, and you can save stations individually and make a favourites list. RDS support is good, and with supporting stations you get a ticker of what's playing. You can't record from the radio, though.

As well as all this there's DLNA in the shape of an applet Acer calls its Media Server. This will send photos, video and music stored on the Acer Liquid Mini to compatible devices. It works fine, but it is a shame Acer doesn't bother to include any information on how to set it up.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Battery life

With a 1300mAh battery driving everything forward, you can't expect the Acer Liquid Mini to last for ever. On standby, with almost no use being made of it, it went for days without seeming to lose any battery charge at all.

But start asking it to do things and it's a different story. We went from a nearly full charge to needing to recharge in six hours after thrashing the 3G, Wi-Fi and music player.

We reckon you'll probably need to recharge daily, as with any other smartphone, and if you're a power user – by which we mean you actually use features like GPS and 3G data a lot – and don't have ready access to mains power, then you may need to look elsewhere for a smartphone with better battery life.

For the record, Acer gives a quotation of 6.5 hours 3G talk, 8 hours on 2G, and 480 hours of standby on 3G, 400 hours on 2G.

We've mentioned already that the Acer Liquid Mini has all the necessary connectivity accoutrements to count as a smartphone. GPS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even DLNA.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Maps and apps

You won't get an Android 2.2 phone that lacks Google Maps, and it is right here complete, of course, with satellite and street views. You also have the new 3D mapping that is starting to roll out in some places. Birmingham, for example.

There's a separate app for Google Maps navigation and you can use the usual features to help you get around, including spoken destinations so you don't even have to bother with tapping at the small keyboard.

The GPS was fast when we used it in fairly non-built-up areas – we certainly had no complaints.

Like many other users of Android, Acer tries to add value with its own apps.

We have familiar critters like the media streaming service Spinlets and the rather useless avatar creator urFooz. There's also a nice little weather app that delivers a full week forecast and some news updates.

Documents To Go is here too, but only for viewing, not editing files.

Acer Liquid Mini review: Verdict

The Acer Liquid Mini does a fair job of offering a range of Android features in a small format. There isn't anything startlingly new here, though, and what you do get is cramped into a relatively small screen that doesn't really cut the mustard for things like web browsing and video playback.

Whether or not the quirky Android skin appeals to you will be a matter of personal taste. It's growing on us the more we see it.

We liked

The hardware design is attractive, and we like the choice of chassis colours. We'd have liked swappable backplates even more, though, Acer.

Acer provides a slipcase in the box. This is a real rarity and it does very well for keeping the Acer Liquid Mini clean and scratch-free.

We like the way the Nemo Player pops online and gets album art for our tracks. This means all we needed to do was copy a few tracks onto an SD card and then get their album art later. Simples.

We disliked

We were miffed about the lack of streaming video support via websites. Really that's a must these days.

We don't really see why Acer feels it necessary to offer two media playback apps or quite so many Facebook and Twitter options. It's just designed to make life difficult for newcomers to Android.

Acer really should provide instructions for using its media streaming DLNA service in the box. There's a printed quick start guide, but it doesn't cover it.

The 600MHz processor also let things down a little at times, running a tad slower than we'd have liked. Instant response to taps just wasn't always there.

Verdict

The Acer Liquid Mini is yet another mid-range, middle of the road Android smartphone. It doesn't do anything spectacularly well, and if you're able to stump up a few more quid and still want Acer, we'd advise you take a look at the Acer Stream instead.

If you were thinking the Samsung Galaxy S2 was too big, try this out for size. It's a 4.8 inch phone that's only a couple of inches shy of the Galaxy Tab.

While it's not massively wide as you can see, the Iconia Smart would find it easier to make conversation with a Dell Streak 5 than any of the new breed of super-Androids.

The buttons at the bottom are actually highly tactile and you can get a really decent press on them. Despite initial reservations, we actually rather liked them by the time we'd finished playing with the handset.

Not everything about this handset is Smart as you'll see shortly but, despite its size, it still feels and looks like a phone rather than, say, the Dell Streak 5 which really does feel like a mini tablet.

Packing Android 2.3.2, the Iconia Smart is probably as big as you'd want a phone to be without considering it a tablet and an Acer representative told us that the idea of a tablet-style phone was indeed what had been used for the design.

Indeed, the phone really does defy its huge size and even the weight isn't stupendous - it's 185g. OK, so that's a lot more than your average smartphone, but still.

It also has specs to burn, with a full six-axis gaming control, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and a stunning 1024 x 480 pixel display. Obviously it's not quite in the class of Samsung's Super OLED Plus display, but it is impressively bright and Android looks fabulous.

There's also an 8 megapixel snapper with LED flash on the rear in addition to a 2 megapixel front cam (rubbishy plastic block not included). And that's a headphone jack on top as you'd expect.

The device also features the increasingly prevalent Dolby Mobile tech for improved sound.

And finally there's the camera and volume up/down buttons.

Acer has stuck with the same UI as the Acer Stream for the new Acer Liquid Metal, and if you hated it before, you'll probably still hate it. But the Liquid Metal costs £299 SIM free, while the Stream costs £329 as we write. Acer promo codes currently available are worth checking out to save more.

The relatively low price puts the Stream on a par with the likes of the Motorola Defy, or, if you look outside the Android arena, the Nokia C7 which will set you back a little, but not a huge amount more than £299 SIM free.

Unlike the Android 2.1-toting Stream, the Liquid Metal runs Android 2.2. The processor has also changed, down to 800MHz from the Stream's 1GHz.

The Stream has a 3.7-inch screen, the Liquid Metal a 3.6-inch one, though both offer 800 x 480 pixels. Both have b, g and n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and HSDPA, though the Stream tops out at 7.2Mbps download with the Liquid Metal going to 14.4Mbps.

The Liquid Metal has a very different build ethic from the Stream. Where the latter was all metal-look, media buttons and sleek lines, the Liquid Metal, despite its name, is mostly plastic, chrome, and curves.

Well, apart from a sliver of stainless steel on the back. The stainless steel adds some strength to the chassis, and has an etched finish that looks great. It is a deep, chocolate brown in colour and we rather like it.

But it does seem very out of place when set against the sides and front of the chassis. The sides are chrome coloured, the front black. It's a mish-mash.

And there's something else a bit odd about the chassis: it's curved in a couple of different ways. The back has a noticeable curvature so that it (theoretically) sits better in the hand.

We can't see the point, really. It makes no difference at all to the feel of the Liquid Metal in the hand, and when you prod at the screen with the device on a desk, it rocks annoyingly from side to side.

The other curve does have a purpose, and a very good one. The front of the chassis bows outwards so slightly that you'll probably not even notice it. But the curvature has the effect of making the 3.6-inch screen look somehow bigger and brighter than it has a right to. It's jolly clever.

We do like the screen, actually. Though it's a smallish LCD at 3.6 inches, its 800 x 480 pixels make it able to show plenty of detail, and it's bright and vibrant.

As far as the sides and front are concerned, the Liquid Metal is almost – but not entirely – conventional. Under the screen, there are four touch buttons for Android Home, Search, Back and Menu functions.

On the top edge, you have the 3.5mm headset connector and on/off button. The left edge is clear, the right edge has the volume rocker and camera button, and the bottom edge has a micro-USB port. All very normal.

However, on the top edge there are also three white lights, which illuminate when you have messaging notifications, missed calls, and when you're charging the battery. They show up well when it's dark, but then you might not care about the notifications at such times.

Acer has come up with a name for its Android skin – Breeze. We aren't sure you'll think it's a breeze to use, though. You'll either love it or loathe it. If the latter is the case, you can switch it off and revert to vanilla Android.

Breeze relies on a two-tier approach to getting about. When you switch the Acer Liquid Metal on, the Home screen shows the time and date, missed calls, notifications and the weather.

You can flick left and right to move through five Home screens, each of which can contain widgets. Nothing odd there. But you can't put shortcuts onto any of these screens with a tap and hold. You have to be in what we think of as 'layer two' of Breeze to do this.

You get to this by dragging a curled up corner of the screen on the bottom left.

You can long press the home button to get to the add widgets area, or you can drag upwards on the row of four application shortcut icons at the bottom of the screen to see a full apps list, and tap the Widgets app at the bottom of the screen.

It is a bit of a round the houses way of fiddling with widgets, and it seems to us that it takes some of the spontaneity out of personalising your Android device. If you're keen on ever-changing widgets, it might be a step too far.

That 'layer two' Home screen has a few tricks on offer, too. It comprises three separately controllable elements. We've already seen that you can drag the four shortcuts upwards to reveal the full apps menu.

When you do this, the four app shortcuts that were at the bottom of the screen move to the top. The full range of additional apps are set across horizontally scrolling screens. Any you want to be in the set of eight that are always available can be dragged into position where they'll swap with the app that was previously present. A quick tap on the back button takes back you to the 'layer two' Home screen.

Just above the four apps shortcuts is the Android status and notifications bar, which is more usually at the top of the screen. Tapping it brings up a host of scrolling menus and options. The bar is narrow, so you have to be careful to tap it accurately. You can do things like fiddle with connection status, see notifications and set alarms.

If you've got music playing, there's even a small playback controller.

Quite oddly, this notifications bar often moves to the very bottom of the screen when you're in an app. This feels strange if you're used to other Android devices where it sits at the top of the screen.

The greatest bulk of the 'layer two' main screen is given over to the upper two thirds of the screen. This initially shows just the date and time, but sweep left and you can see a carousel of recently used apps, sweep right and you can see carousels of music, movies and video on the device.

You can't personalise what these carousels show, but they do give you quick access to history and media, so are till quite handy. But the whole thing feels like an overly complicated way of getting round the Acer Liquid Metal.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's not a lot of excitement where messaging is concerned.

When it comes to creating a message, be that a SMS or an email, typing in text on the capacitive screen was easy especially in wide mode where the keyboard is large and there's a small haptic feedback and some good predictive text to help.

Incoming message notifications appear on the notification bar and you can tap the icon to see the full message in a bubble window.

The main lock screen also gives you a message notification, and if you tap the notification and then slide upwards on screen you are taken straight to the messaging window where you can compose a reply.

It is a shame the conversation view is rather bland, but it works well enough. If you've got photos of people in the Acer Liquid Metal then you get to see those instead of the mono-colour Android logo.

On the more interesting side, there's a variety of support for other messaging options, with easy set-up for both web and corporate mail - simply pop in your username and password, and in the majority of cases you're good to go.

The 3.6-inch screen doesn't sound like an ideal size for web browsing, and indeed if the internet is key for you, then you might think about looking for something with a larger screen.

But in fact, the 800 x 480 pixel screen is sharp and vibrant, and while you can't see enough detail to read text on a crowded, complex web page, you do get enough of an overview to work out what you want to zoom in on.

The good old double tap to zoom in and out works smoothly, and once you've zoomed in you're usually close in enough to text to be able to read it – and the text reflows too.

If you want to zoom in further you've got pinch to zoom, and this too is smooth and efficient. Really, the 800MHz processor was not troubled by manoeuvres around web pages.

Flash 10.1 is supported, and we streamed video from the BBC website with just a little slowness over Wi-Fi and a bit of jerkiness at the start of playback sessions. The main bulk of playback sessions were unproblematic.

However here's an oddity. When you first switch the Acer Liquid Metal on having deboxed it, you're invited to install Flash for yourself.

Now, at this point you won't have logged on to a wireless network, so we suggest skipping, and popping into the Android Market later to make the download. But we can't understand why Acer didn't take this little chore off our hands.

There's a YouTube client on board, and it was a real star. Fast, clear, sharp, we found ourselves wasting a lot of time watching videos.

A real plus point is the fact that sound delivered through the Acer Liquid Metal speaker is quite loud and good quality.

The five-megapixel camera on the Acer Liquid Metal has a few tricks up its sleeve, such as an anti-shake mode, smile shot and face tracking in stills mode.

The range of stills effects is limited to mono, negative, sepia and aqua, so there's nothing really fancy on offer, though there is a macro mode for taking the odd close-up and an LED light to help a little with indoor shots.

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INDOORS: The reasonably bright lighting of a shopping centre delivered fairly well-lit images, but you can see a huge white mass in the ceiling and the focus isn't all that wonderful

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POOR FOCUS: Problems with focusing were consistent in all our shots. This outdoor scene is pretty poor for a five-megapixel camera, with lots of the tree badly out of focus. Again the sky is a large white mass, giving more credence to our theory that the camera doesn't deal with variations in lighting very well

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GREY: More focus issues here, and while the colours of the playground equipment are fine, the sky is quite a poor mishmash

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DETAIL: We were fairly close to this subject, and the focus is, for once, fine. But the mirrored tiles of the mosaic reflected a bit of light even on our very dull winter's photography day, and again the lens fails to deal with the fluctuation

The 720p video on the Acer Liquid Metal is a little jerky to start with, but becomes smoother as the phone gets into its stride. The same problem with dealing with brightness variation that the stills camera has persists here.

You've got two media players on the Acer Liquid Metal for your own music. The standard player locates music, finds album art where you've got it available and gives you serviceable, if not spectacular, playback controls.

As an alternative, nemoPlayer brings together music, photos and video in a slightly nicer looking interface.

However use nemoPlayer and you get neither access to the music control widget nor to the control tool that sits on the notification bar on the main screen. You have to be playing tunes through the standard Android music player to have access to those.

But if you're in nemoPlayer, you do get access to Dolby Mobile equaliser settings, and separate equalisers for both audio and video, and you don't get that through the standard Android media player.

Our sample MPEG 4 videos played perfectly through both the nemoPlayer and the Gallery app. You're a bit spoiled for choice, and the abundance of options might be a bit confusing for some users.

There's no FM radio. This isn't a dealbreaker, but we're so used to seeing FM as an added extra that its absence does jar a little.

As a final element to media services you've got UPnP for media sharing and Acer's somewhat lacklustre Spinlets service for media streaming. We've never really found Spinlests very exciting.

Admittedly there is more streaming content in Spinlets now than there was when we first saw it as a fresh, bright and new service, but the range is limited. If you really want media streaming then Spotify is the one to beat.

Oh, and there's something else to add to the media mix. Shake control. Yes, we know. The last thing you probably want to do is shake your Acer Liquid Metal left to move on to the next song and right to move to the previous song. But if you really want to, you can.

You can also shake to stop an alarm sounding.

A 1500mAh battery powers the Acer Liquid Metal and does a pretty good job. We aren't sure where Acer gets its estimated 11 hours of talktime from, but we found that it did a little better than the norm in everyday use, getting us through nearly two full days between charges, where one day had minimal use and the other day was closer to average.

Now, admittedly our 'average' might not equate to your 'average', but we're confident that a medium-to-heavy user will get through a day without having to rush off and find a mains outlet.

The Acer Liquid Metal has an app called Social Jogger which has its own widget. Its role is to bring together Facebook and Twitter feeds. Very annoyingly, if you've already signed into both apps for contacts syncing you have to sign in again for sync with Social Jogger.

Once you've done this, Social Jogger brings messages from both sources together in a rather weird user interface that has a round dial wheel to the left of the screen, which you use to move between posts.

Social Jogger can't show the whole of a tweet at once – you need to tap it to get a full screen rendition, which is very annoying.

It's easy to write something though. You just tap into the box at the bottom of the screen, choose Share, then decide whether you want your pearls of wisdom to go to Facebook or Twitter.

Once you've got Twitter and Facebook set up in Social Jogger, there's also a nice widget that delivers info to one of the 'level one' widget screens.

You've probably already guessed that Google Maps is present, alongside A-GPS, and we found the Acer Liquid Metal good at maintaining a GPS fix. Despite what we said about the battery earlier, you probably won't want to use the GPS for long point-to-point navigation sessions, because it's a real power hog.

If we sit the Acer Liquid Metal next to its own stablemate the Acer Stream, we think we like the Stream more. A bigger screen, faster processor, more pleasing physical design and FM radio give it a lift. But then, it's a little more expensive.

Looking further afield, the (soon to be) Android 2.2-toting HTC Wildfire is still a good buy and considerably less expensive than the Stream, while the Samsung Wave, though not an Android handset, might be a viable alternative for some people.

Our top alternative choice, though, has to be the Motorola Defy. With its toughened glass, water resistant design and generally shockproof credentials, it adds in Motorola's MotoBlur social networking system and gives the Acer Liquid Metal a good run for its money for a roughly similar price.

We liked

The screen, while small, is clear and sharp, and very responsive. A definite plus.

Facebook and Twitter are integrated into contacts, and it was great to be able to start making calls and posting on walls within minutes of powering up. Note, though, that the contacts app refused to pick up our Twitter contacts, indicating an early glitch.

Sound quality is relatively good thanks to Dolby mobile, and video playback smooth. We could easily fritter away time on YouTube.

We disliked

We aren't too sure we like the physical design of the Acer Liquid Metal a great deal. That curved back causes desktop usage problems without having a strong plus point.

The user interface, despite being called Breeze, is a bit of a pain to get used to. Some people may like it, but we found it rather convoluted.

The camera seems to have trouble focusing and dealing with light variations. Maybe it was just a problem with our sample, but if you really care about your phone's camera, give it a try before you buy.

We didn't appreciate having to install Flash for ourselves or to needing to sign in to Facebook and Twitter twice.

Verdict

Acer has followed up its Stream with another smartphone that doesn't quite live up to expectations. The price is attractive, and the screen is very good, but there are some irritations too. We aren't sure we like Breeze as a user interface, the camera needs some work, and for all its social media integration we don't appreciate how convoluted the process is.

This is a step in the right direction for Acer, but we still struggle to see how this phone really differentiates itself from the rest of the Android crowd. Its mid-range price and standard specs are pretty consistent in the market these days, and although Breeze is a different UI, it's hardly a Breeze to use.

Acer CEO Gianfranco Lanci has talked about the company's plans for a 3D tablet or even a 3D phone following the growing trend in 3D gaming.

The laptop giant has unveiled its tablet range – including the novel dual tablet Iconia – but the company is keen to make 3D a bigger part of its plans.

In an interview with All Things Digital, Lanci talked up the company's investment in 3D technology and believes that it can now be stepped up.

"If you think about gaming, 3-D gaming has becoming quite popular," Lanci said in an All Things Digital interview.

"If you think about a 3-D tablet, you can play games. We are working on 3-D on a lot of things.

Same on phones and tablets

"I think we are going to do the same on phone, even on tablets," he added.

Lanci is surprised that more laptop manufacturers haven't taken the 3D route stating: "When I look at notebooks or hardware, the number of companies doing innovation are not too many.

"I think we are one of the few companies left focused on innovation. This is maybe the reason why you don't see it."

Acer's phone strategy has yet to really ignite, but the company's growth into a major player in laptops – vying for market leadership – makes it very much one to watch.

Although the Iconia may have raised a few eyebrows, with a chunky form factor and £1,500 price tag, many will be eager to see if the company can bring 3D to the realm of the tablet, and compete with the likes of Sharp in pushing a 3D mobile phone.

Via ATD blog

Acer has announced a new smartphone with some high-end tech specs - but decided against giving it a name.

The new 'next generation smartphone' has a massive 4.8-inch screen, taking it into Dell Streak territory, where it also runs Android, but with no mention of which version of Google's OS it will come with.

It comes with a 1024 x 480 resolution display as well, making it technically the highest-res smartphone out there, although whether this is a big phone or a small tablet has yet to be decided - and the pixels per inch still won't match the iPhone 4.

Curiously it's got a 21:9 ratio display, something we've not seen since the iconic LG Chocolate BL40 last year.

With dimensions of 141.7 x 64 x 13.3mm and a 170g weight, it might be a little hefty in the pocket, although the width will attract some of the more style-conscious out there.

Snapping and all that

There's an 8MP camera bolted on the back with single LED flash, and a 2MP front camera for video calling. DLNA technology lets you stream media from your PC, and an HDMI connectivity cable.

A 6-axis gyroscope, like that seen on the iPhone 4, will make gaming a lot more fun - although the lack of Android games that support this function are at a premium at the moment, so Acer's claim of 'a perfect games console' is a little optimistic.

So is the claim that 'the LED backlit display uses the same technology as TV showing super bright and vivid images' - which feels a little like saying the metal chassis is made the same way as your car.

We've decided to call this smartphone the Acer River - we've had the Liquid and the Stream, so it's easy to see the water-themed corollary Acer's going for here.

Don't forget - TechRadar named it first.

The Acer Liquid Metal has finally been announced: the company's attempt at keeping up with the big boys in the Android smartphone market.

The new Liquid Metal comes with Android 2.2 right out of the box, as well as Acer's Breeze UI, which offers additional widgets even from the lock screen - first seen on the Acer Stream.

Spec wise it's (sort of) up there with the best, with a 3.6-inch capacitive LCD screen and a 5MP camera with AF and LED flash on the back - also capable of capturing video at 720p HD.

The processor is only a Qualcomm 7230 800 MHz offering, which we'll be interested to see if it can live up to Acer's promise of 'lightning fast navigation'.

Signal booster

To that end, 3G signal has been boosted to HSDPA 14.4Mbps and Wi-Fi to include 802.11n (where the connections allow, this means browsing up to five times faster than other devices, according to Acer).

We're hoping the battery holds on better than the others in the Acer Liquid series, as the rest of the family was notoriously poor in this area.

But we're impressed with the UK price: a top end smartphone for £299? It might not be beating the Orange San Francisco for budget-friendliness, but that still means it's a cheaper option than a lot of the others on the market right now.

The Acer Liquid Metal will be offered in two variants: brown, with a UK release date of mid November, and silver, which is set to land in December.

We've seen a number of smartphones launched this year from Acer including beTouch models running Android and neoTouch models running Windows Mobile.

There has also been the Liquid E, an Android 2.1 upgrade of an earlier handset which we thought had potential but which failed to live up to its billing.

Acer keeps forging ahead with new launches, and the latest, the Stream, looks on paper to be a stunner.

Alongside the essentials of 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS, we have a nice large 3.7-inch AMOLED screen with an 800 x 480 pixel resolution, 1GHz processor, 720p video recording, HDMI out, a 5-megapixel camera and really nice-looking build quality. All this could see savings via the Acer promo codes out there now.

And while Acer barely touched the Android user interface on the Liquid E, the Acer Stream is fully skinned. This is potentially a worry because Acer has not been wonderful at skinning operating systems in the past.

But we were hoping from the outset that the Stream might be able to rival HTC's super Sense user interface.

In the end the reality lies between the two. HTC Sense is still the one to beat, but Acer has made a pretty good job with skinning on the Stream.

As you'd expect from those specs, the Acer Stream doesn't come cheap. At £399 SIM free, it's actually a shade more expensive than the HTC Desire.

Of course, it's brand new, so its price may fall and come into line with the Desire over the next few weeks.

Even before getting to the software, there are things to like about the Acer Stream. The physical design is streets ahead of what we've seen on recent Acer smartphones.

There is a metal-look finish to the border of the front, with a black screen-surround that houses four touch buttons.

However, it's got a very 'industrial' feel to it - like the phone is bigger than it needs to be all round, with a very chunky chassis.

These buttons perform the usual Android functions – Home, Search, Back and Menu. The Home button, in a circular surround, glows red when the Stream is charging and green when the charge is complete.

All the buttons have a white backlight when one is pressed, and there's a teeny bit of haptic feedback at that point too.

Where the Acer Stream differs from other Android handsets is in the presence of three further, physical buttons at the very bottom of the front chassis. Marked with arrows these are media controls and provide previous/rewind, play/pause, and next/forward functions.

They work when you're listening to music, so you can control playback while in another app, which is very useful.

They also work while you're watching video over the HDMI output, but not when viewing still images.

The edges of the Acer Stream are only very lightly peppered with buttons. The bottom is completely clear, the top has a 3.5mm headset jack.

On the left, there's the main power button and a volume rocker, both of which are extremely thin.

The right edge houses an equally thin camera button and, under a rubber hinge with a central pivot, the micro-USB power/PC connect cable and mini-HDMI port.

One slight grumble about the side buttons it is that the micro-USB and HDMI ports are a little fiddly to get to, because the rubber cover gets in the way.

Acer has given the Stream a skin that sits on top of Android, and it's done a pretty good job.

When you switch the handset on there's a main screen that offers you access to further home screens by horizontal sweeping. This is actually the lock screen, but it has five discrete screens onto which you can put the standard array of Android widgets.

However, you can't tap and hold on any of these screens to add widgets as you do with, say, the HTC Desire.

To add widgets, you have to move into the main screen by pulling at a tab in the bottom left corner of the display.

Then you can either hold down the Home button or tap the apps button and run the Widgets app.

With either method, you can then scroll through the Home screens and put whatever widgets you like onto whichever screens you like.

It's very convoluted and, frankly, a little unintuitive.

The main screen that you get to when you lift that aforementioned tab has an array of eight shortcuts on it.

Stroke upwards to reveal the full apps list and you'll find these eight shortcuts are the first two lines of the full apps list, and they remain static. The four rows below that scroll horizontally, giving access to the full array of apps.

Above these four shortcuts is a bar offering the time, signal strength and battery status.

Tapping this bar enables you to make changes to the settings and see more info. Depending on where you tap, you'll either see clock/alarm info or connection settings and battery status info. Sweep left or right to see what's missing, tap to change the settings.

And there's still more. Tap and hold on the portion of the main screen above these shortcuts and you can set wallpapers and sounds.

Sweep left and you can see a usage history enabling you to switch to apps you've recently used. Sweep right and you're into Acer's media widget, which gives access to photos, music and video.

As you can tell by our discombobulated explanation, the way of interacting with the main Home screen is a little complex – miles away from the simplicity of the Samsung Galaxy S or the iPhone 4.

It isn't as fast or intuitive as sweeping through just one set of home screens, and we think maybe Acer could have simply upped the number of Home screens from five to seven. That way, it could have forced its History and Media screens into two of them, rather than having two separate arrangements.

As you get further inside the Acer Stream you see more detail in terms of customisation. For example the Gallery app, which provides access to your photos and videos, has a rather nice visual menu that leads to a thumbnail display.

The Acer Stream will pull contacts in from a range of different apps, but it can't do quite as much as other social networking handsets can.

It'll gather your Facebook friends, and any that you've got squirreled away in Google, as well as pulling in corporate contacts via Exchange.

But if you're a fan of Twitter or MySpace and have contacts there too, there's no simple tool for pulling those in.

Entering contacts manually is not too much of a pain since the look and feel of the user interface is quite friendly.

It's a shame you can't tap the photo icon and pop straight into the camera to take a picture of any new-found friends though.

Instead, tapping the icon takes you to the photo gallery, assuming you've already got a photo in stock.

There's nothing especially fancy about the dialler at first glance, though when you tap the menu button you see that you can get access to speed dials, although they are a couple of screen presses away.

Messaging

Messaging is straightforward and the capacitive touchscreen means the keyboard works well in both portrait and landscape modes.

It switches between the two modes very quickly, and the predictive text system seems very good at second guessing what you want to type. However, despite being adequate at text entry, the keyboard isn't great - you'll be frequently reaching for the backspace key, especially in portrait mode..

But this is still light years ahead of the Acer Liquid E, which used the default Android keyboard, complete with irrational auto-correct choices – we're glad it's been upgraded.

What we really don't get, though, is the little icon that's to the left of the Space bar. Tap it and you can change the text entry language.

It seems a bit odd to have this accessible every time you type out a text. And, because it's next to the Space bar, it is easy to hit by accident. Do that, and it is eight taps (to get through all the languages) before you're back at English again. Grrrr!

Even before we switched the Acer Stream on, it looked like web browsing was going to be a pleasure. A capacitive 800 x 480-pixel display is always begging for pinch to zoom support, and this was present and correct.

And the impressive performance doesn't stop there. The 1GHz processor, here to help primarily with things like video playback, works wonders at rendering even complex pages like the TechRadar home page quickly.

The pinch to zoom support is superb, with fast reactions to our fingers gliding over the page, so again we've no complaints there.

And text reflowing support is included, so whether you're in portrait or widescreen mode, you can read all the text on a page without needing to fiddle about scrolling too much, although it can take a while to re-jig the words into the smaller space.

When it comes to entering URLs, the bottom row of the keyboard reconfigures to offer you 'www.', '.com', dot and forward-slash buttons, so that getting these bits and pieces typed out is as fast as it can be.

That's good as far as it goes, but '.co.uk' is still a bit of a fiddle to enter, though.

There is no Flash support, so watching embedded video from the likes of the BBC website is out of bounds.

At least the YouTube client worked, with smooth rendering of video on the sharp and clear screen.

When it comes to other uses of the internet there's a Facebook client and TwiDroid app for your Tweeting needs already on board, although you'll probably want to upgrade them to the better versions as soon as possible.

The familiar Acer add-ons of urFooz and Spinlets are present, though. The former is a silly app that enables you to create custom avatars, while the latter is designed to stream media for free.

We've never really been too enamoured of Spinlets, and this latest experience was not a lot different, but it's something else to explore at the very least.

Acer's paper specifications don't make the camera sound industry-leading, just quoting its 5MP stills resolution and the 720p video recording.

And, in truth, there aren't a huge number of tweaks and fiddles you can achieve with it. Having a side button for quick launch is handy, and the macro mode is capable of some stunning shots.

But when it comes to settings there's not a lot going on. There's no panorama shooting mode, and not even a flash to liven up indoor shots.

And there's one more gripe. Although the AMOLED screen is sharp and bright indoors, when you're outside and trying to frame photos it can be pretty difficult to see, especially if there's a lot of sunlight around.

There are HD (1280 x 720) and Full HD (1920 x 1080) still shooting modes to accompany the more usual 5MP, 3MP, 2MP, 1MP and 0.3MP modes, and there's also a mode to shoot at 800 x 480, which is called wallpaper mode and photographs at the native screen resolution.

(Click here for full-res version)

This shot, taken in shade, looks okay at first glance, but check out the left-hand grassy area and the further away parts of the water. These are the areas with the brightest light and the camera doesn't cope well here. Also, the purple flowers are something of a blur.

(Click here for full-res version)

In general, everyday photographs were a little bland as far as colour goes. On a fairly bright sunny day, the exposure on this photograph isn't quite what it could be. There's a lack of detail in the brickwork, for example.

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(Click here for full-res version)

The difference between using 5-megapixel and Full HD (1920 x 1080) shooting modes is clear here. Look at how much more foreground is in the HD shot, and also at how much thinner the photo is.

(Click here for full-res version)

The macro mode produced some absolutely stunning shots. We'd be happy to get a print of this one – the colour reproduction and detailing is superb

The 720p video shoots at 24 frames per second. It had the same problems coping with available light as the stills camera did, so video looks a bit washed out.

And there's another, arguably more important, issue in that video is jerky. The jerkiness exists through the whole video, rather than coming in bursts as it did on the Motorola Milestone XT720, which also shoots 720p.

As we've already noted, any content shot on the handset can be sent directly to a device with HDMI support. There's a port on the Acer Stream, and a cable is provided. You can control video playback using the buttons on the front of the Acer Stream.

Quality is comparable to what you see on the screen – jerkiness present but not wholly unwatchable by any means.

Music and sounds are key features of the Acer Stream and there are several features to help you make the most of them. Of course, that large 3.7-inch, 800 x 480 screen is a good start.

The nemoPlayer brings together video, sounds and photos in one place through a pretty neat interface that makes it easy to find what you're looking for. It could come in most handy when streaming content to a larger screen via that HDMI port.

Watching video is quite an enjoyable experience as long as you're inside. Outdoors, we found the screen to be quite reflective and it became difficult to see in bright sunlight.

However it oddly had trouble synchronising the audio and video on the sample video on the 8GB microSD card, but was fine on movies we popped on there ourselves.

NemoPlayer also won't resize some Mp4 files from 4:3 to 16:9 (despite that being the native resolution) yet will in the standard Android video player. Odd.

There is an FM radio with RDS and the ability to record directly from broadcasts, which is a nice touch.

The Acer Stream will auto scan to fill 18 presets and you can even choose between three themes for the radio.

There's a link to the MusicA service, which finds the tune you are currently listening to and gives you album and artist info as well as linking in to YouTube videos.

It worked for us first time and was pretty quick too, which is impressive. It saves all results in a history file so you can go back and check on previous 'finds' whenever you want to.

The music player is fairly standard Android fare, except that Dolby Mobile is on hand to help enhance sound quality.

This gives you access to equaliser-style settings that really did enhance the quality of audio output through the average set of earphones provided by Acer.

As well as being able to tweak treble and bass settings, you have access to a number of settings for both music and video sounds.

Streaming is also sadly woeful - despite reports the Acer Stream packs DLNA to send and receive media to different devices in your home network, it seems this isn't the case - just UPnP, which very few of your everyday gadgets support.

For a phone so named, this is a real shame and very much an opportunity missed.

With all this media functionality on offer, plus the ability to record that 720p video, you are going to need some serious storage capacity on hand.

Well, the Acer Stream packs 2GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot for adding more. Our review sample came with an 8GB card to get things started – although 10GB isn't that much for something that's supposed to be a media marvel.

So there's plenty of storage for media right out of the box and if you really want to go to town you can currently add up to 32GB of storage with a microSD card.

With all this going on, battery life is likely to be quite an issue. Acer supplies the Acer Stream with a fairly generous 1400mAh battery, and it really needs it.

We found that we went from 100 per cent charge to 92 per cent charge in 20 minutes of video and stills shooting – about average, and much better than the Acer Liquid E, which practically gave up the second you switched it on.

However, that's just one example. We drained the battery in half a day during a session of very heavy fiddling with GPS, HDMI output and 3G data.

Most of our time with the Acer Stream was spent being pretty heavy on its power resources and, in everyday life, the average user is very likely to be lighter on the phone.

But, as with every other smartphone we can think of, you're going to need to budget for a daily battery charge, and if you're going to be using this regularly for video, then a midday charge might not be out the question.

However, this is no different to a plethora of other smartphones, the iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S included, so it's not really a negative point.

Like any smartphone worth its salt the Acer Stream has GPS, and like a good Android handset it has Google Maps installed.

That gives you the ability for point to point navigation with spoken instructions right out of the box, rather than having to download them the first time you use Google Maps Navigation.

We found the GPS took a very long time to get its first fix, but thereafter it maintained connections well.

Comparison

The Acer Stream's most obvious competition is the Motorola Milestone XT720 and HTC Desire. Both are top of the range smartphones with a long list of high-end features.

The Desire lacks the rich multimedia capability of the Acer Stream, but it does have what we still consider to be the market-leading user interface, and the Android Market can fill any holes in the media performance.

The Motorola Milestone XT720 shares the Acer Stream's 720p video shooting. While results from both device are far from perfect, the more significant jerky bouts from the Motorola put it behind the Acer Stream in our view.

And we do like the Stream's integrated media player, nemoPlayer as well as the rather super MusicA service.

The Acer Stream is let down in respect of both its rivals by a screen which isn't as viewable in bright conditions, and that, for any serious video watching fan, could be a major disadvantage.

The Acer Stream has a physical design which makes it look like a quality product.

With separate button controls for video playback, it shows that it's taking a no-nonsense approach to this aspect. And there's some good software on board that provides great added value to Android.

Everything isn't rosy in the garden, though. For example, we feel the user interface is a bit convoluted, and the screen suffers outdoors. The camera, too, though great on paper, did let us down a bit in the real world.

We liked

There is a superior quality to the hardware design of the Acer Stream which puts it very much in the same league as the HTC Desire and the iPhone 4. Acer has not always paid this much attention to hardware design, and the effort here really pays off, although it remains a little too chunky.

The high resolution screen is super when it's in the correct conditions, but in bright sunlight it just doesn't deliver the goods, which is a real pity.

The ability to send content to a larger screen via HDMI is a real plus. You won't use it a lot, but when you do it'll be a great boon.

There's plenty of internal storage at 2GB, and the 8GB microSD card provided gives this a boost.

The Dolby Mobile equaliser makes a real difference to sound output for both music and video.

We disliked

The user interface feels a bit convoluted. We're sure that it wouldn't take too long to get used to, but we wonder whether its almost dual-layer approach isn't a bit more complicated than is really needed.

The camera isn't what it could be. We'd have liked more options, especially a panorama mode, and the 720p shooting was too jerky for our taste. And there's no flash, which is a cardinal sin for a high-end handset like this.

Battery life, as ever, could be better. There's no getting away from the fact that a high-end smartphone like the Acer Stream cries out for a lot of power, and if you use it to its full potential you're likely to need fairly regular access to mains power – although it's a country mile better than the Acer Liquid E.

Verdict

The Stream is the best smartphone we've ever seen from Acer. The hardware is well-designed and there is a lot of good stuff under the hood. But there are also many negatives. No flash for the camera, jerky 720p video recording and no DLNA streaming, along with a disappointing screen that flails in bright sunlight.

None of these problems are insurmountable, and we can't wait to see what wonders Acer might produce if it concentrates on sorting out these niggles.

However, while a decent effort, we can't see why you'd take it over some other handsets on the market at a similar price, so make sure you have a really good play with this somehow before you fork out.

Acer has announced the arrival of the neoTouch P300 and P400 smartphones, both of which are packing Windows Mobile 6.5.3.

First up is the P300. This smartphone is touted to being 'stylish' with the ability to combine both your personal and business life in one handset.

While any business/personal combination usually spells trouble (especially after 15 eggnogs at the work Christmas party), Acer assures us that the P300 has a strong emphasis on 'efficiency, reliability and security'.

Cutting through the bumf, this means that there is Flash and WindowsMedia Player 10 support for those who want to have a little downtime and Mail, Microsoft Exchange Server Support and Microsoft Office Mobile applications for those who really, really need to read that email.

A Qualcomm 7227 processor running at 600 MHz is inside the device and web search comes in the form of Bing. For those who aren't that pleased with touchscreen QWERTY, you'll be pleases to know that the device has real QWERTY keyboard for you to type out all of your missives on.

Screen-wise, the neoTouch P300 has a 3.2" high-definition (HVGA) touchscreen and there's a 3.2-inch camera on board for those who want to take images.

Couple this with a micro-SD hub, Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth connectivity as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack and the P300 seems to tick most boxes.

The P400 is not only 'stylish' like its P300 bed-fellow but also 'smooth', according to Acer.

Also equipped with Windows Mobile 6.5.3, the P400 is endowed with Mail, MicrosoftExchange Server Support and Microsoft Office Mobile applications.

Again the Qualcomm 7227 processor running at 600 MHz is on board as is Bing and Internet 6 mobile.

In fact, most of the specs are exactly the same as the P300, except that the P400 has a lack of a real QWERTY keyboard.

Both the neoTouch P300 and neoTouch P400 have a UK release date of May, with pricing to be announced.

Interestingly, if you are looking for the handset in the US or France it will be called newTouch and not neoTouch.

By bringing the fastest Android phone on the planet to market, Acer has good reason to be proud of the Liquid S100. Packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and super hi-res screen, there's a lot to get excited about on this phone.

Acer might be a relative unknown in the mobile world, but that hasn't stopped it making an impression with first the Windows Mobile NeoTouch S200, and by bringing top-end specs and the Android OS, the Liquid S100 will be seen by some as even better.

But one constant problem with Acer phones from the past is that despite bringing some nice parts, they often fail to be anything more than average in general use. So can the Liquid change that?

The phone looks pretty basic out of the box, with a white plastic shell encasing a 3.5-inch screen, but with the large amount of plastic border around the display, it doesn't look anywhere near as big as the iPhone or Samsung H1.

The four touch-sensitive buttons at the bottom offer basic Android navigation, and the hieroglyph look is pretty neat.

The left of the phone houses the power/lock button, and the right has the volume and shutter buttons. Pressing the former is pretty easy one handed, but the chassis creaks a little from time to time.

Weirdly, Acer has decided to go for a miniUSB slot on the Liquid, which seems a little old fashioned. The slot is located on the bottom of the phone, and when charging, a little white battery indicator appears on the top of the chassis, next to the 3.5mm headphone jack, which was a neat touch.

The phone has a single speaker on the back, next to the camera, which is adequate but pumps out basic 'chav on a train' sound quality.

Pulling the battery cover off is a worrying experience – it seems digging your fingernails in at the top and pulling rather hard is the way to do it, and it feels very much like you're going to snap something off.

Overall, the feel of the phone is a little cheap – the plastic of the white chassis and silver buttons makes it feel a little toy-like.

In the box

Acer offers a simple range of accessories in the box – a miniUSB connection lead and separate charger are a nice touch, and the bundled ear phones are decent enough, doubling as a hands-free kit too (although without media control). We're still yet to learn how to use screen protectors on a mobile yet without adding a million bubbles to the screen, but you get a few of these in the box too.

There's also a 2GB microSD card, as well as an adaptor to turn it into a full SD card too. This is pivotal, as the phone won't save any media or photos to the 512MB inbuilt memory for some reason.

Acer hasn't played around too much with the interface on the Liquid S100, and that's something we like. HTC's Sense UI overlay is good because it adds so much to Android, but with the Liquid, simplicity works.

This means you get the basic three home screens, one either side of the main display, and the simple bottom drag tab for menu options.

Pulling down from the top will give you access to email, SMS and other notifications, and thanks to running Android 1.6, you can also hit the search key from anywhere and use local or wider search to find content on your phone or the net.

The main difference from Acer is the scrollable wheels at the sides of the home screen, with the left offering music, photos and video, and the right a collection of your internet bookmarks as scrolling thumbnails – this is a great feature in terms of both aesthetics and function, and exactly the sort of thing open-source Android is great for.

The capacitive screen is slick and responsive – you won't feel a lot of difference between this and the HTC Hero. And the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor doesn't disappoint on the home screen – you can swipe away to your heart's content without a hint of judder.

But, we've got a conundrum here – why does the Liquid have a Snapdragon processor, but then limit it to 768MHz? Presumably it's capable of 1GHz as it is on the Toshiba TG01. It surely can't be a battery issue – and seems like a waste.

Unlocking the phone is a simple power-menu key combo, although it would be nice to be able to light up the display by pressing any button to check for messages or the time.

The rest of the Liquid pretty much follows the vanilla Android road map, with the simple system of the application running as you'd ask it to and the physical menu key offering additional functionality, such as settings or navigation options.

However, more often than we could cope with the Liquid gave up on trying to process an application, with the 'problem with X, Force Close or Wait?' option a regular visitor to our screens – not what we'd expect from a phone with such a powerful processor pushing things along.

Android 1.6 brings some neat upgrades, such as a more comprehensive battery power meter, but we hope that the Liquid will get the forthcoming Android 2.1 upgrade, otherwise it's going to feel dated pretty quickly.

Google has brought an irritating problem with Android – when you start the phone up and synchronise your Gmail account, all your contacts are automatically thrown at the phone. This would be great, but unless you've spent a good three hours sorting through them, it's a veritable mish-mash of nonsense.

Of course you can choose not to see these, but there are always some you need to keep, and that makes life a little harder when trying to organise your contacts book.

Android's contact list is pretty basic – slide up and down to find the person you're looking for, grab the tab on the side to move through quickly and alphabetically, or just type a name in through the search box to open things up and find it easily.

Contacts are listed with photo and personalised ringtone and so on – and we were pretty excited to see the ability to link social networks with contacts as well. However, sadly the problems within the Acer Liquid system were too great to ever see how this worked as trying to synchronise Facebook or Flickr within the phone led to the application throwing up an error message and asking us to close it down.

So it means we're back to only seeing the Android contacts menu, which isn't all that bad in fairness. We're not fans of the tabbed system which is used for everything calling-based, but it is nice to be able to choose your favourites and have them in a separate list to offer quick access to those you call and text the most.

The dialler is nicely laid out, although it would have been nice to have some smart dialling on offer, as it's not always easy to navigate through to your favourite friends using the contacts tab, which can be a little hard to grab and slide.

And when you've added in Google contacts, it's nigh on impossible for the Acer Liquid to manage to sort them all alphabetically for some reason, with it spiriting away a portion of your friends to a hidden, impossible to find location.

Calling on the Acer Liquid is OK - the call quality isn't brilliant but it's stable enough, although we had trouble finding the speaker hole with our ear in that expanse of plastic at times.

Coverage was good enough to function in most places, although it dropped out fairly regularly when in a moving vehicle - in fact, it wasn't even worth bothering with at times. We've tested other devices in the same situation, such as the HTC HD2, so we know it can be done well.

Messaging on the Acer Liquid S100 is a, well, difficult experience if we're trying to put it in a balanced way.

The thing about using the messaging functions on the phone is that while the Android system is good and can handle elements like threaded conversations and improved contact integration, there are some companies that can't seem to get the basics right when it comes to text entry, and Acer is one of them.

The Acer NeoTouch S200 was one such device, with it's impossible-to-use Windows Mobile keyboard, and while the Liquid's is miles ahead of that, it's still sorely lacking.

For one, when you're trying to reply in a threaded conversation, trying to press the 'Tap to compose' screen just doesn't work - if we hadn't known the trick of holding down the menu icon on the touch sensitive row to force the keyboard open, messaging would have been impossible.

And while the Acer Liquid does support predictive text (like on the HTC range, where it works out which word your fumbling thumbs were trying to type) it's nowhere near as good, with it basically capitalising the letter 'I' and putting the odd apostrophe in here and there.

But most infuriatingly, if you try and write 'and' or 'an' the Liquid will decide you actually want to write 'Android' instead and insert it in.

On the plus side, the Liquid does have RoadSync as standard, which means that you've got access to Exchange email instantly. We're big fans of this being offered, as it makes any Android phone instantly more useful as a device. The interface and synchronisation are good, as is the calendar support, so a big well done to the company for including that.

The web browser on any Android phone is always good, and the Liquid is no exception. The excellent capacitive screen, while not multi-touch to offer pinch and zoom, is tip top for navigation around the mobile and full web, which is once again delivered speedily on the Acer Liquid.

We're still massively confused as to why the Liquid hasn't beefed up its processor to the full 1GHz capability, but at least when browsing the internet it doesn't show.

Instead, pages are generally loaded very quickly with minimal lag and few incomplete sections, and the mobile web pages, such as those from the BBC, are an absolute breeze.

As with all Android phones, we like the way Google has put this browsing experience together - being able to share the page you're looking at directly to Twitter (through the excellent Twidroid) is a great example of how to interweave APIs, and the ability to see your history and bookmarks visually is a nice touch.

We also like the fact the web browser on the Acer Liquid remembers your most visited pages, meaning you don't have to go trawling back through the history to find that page you forgot to bookmark.

And while there's no Flash player on this phone (boo) it means you're less likely to visit those sites that you might not want your partner to find you've been trawling through when she has a play with your shiny new phone - every cloud...

As you can imagine on a phone that comes from a company with no photography heritage and at this price range, the photography options on the Acer Liquid aren't that great. Sure, the headline specs are good enough - 5MP, autofocus and so on - but the absence of flash, LED or otherwise is a bit of a downer.

The photo processing also falls a little short in our eyes as well - not only does it take an age to shoot a photo, but it also doesn't manage to capture it quickly enough. This often leads to a bad case of blurry pictures when you move the camera away from the subject when you think the photo has finished being taken.

The options for snapping away are good enough, with the ability to mess around with the ISO settings, the white balance and the effects (we're big fans of 'Posterise' which adds a certain Andy Warhol effect to your photos). However, it's not going to trouble the likes of Sony Ericsson and Samsung who are at the head of the mobile photography game.

To be fair to the Acer Liquid, there still aren't any decent cameraphones on Android, so it's a bit harsh to say that it's a negative point as yet. But we do miss the little review pane in the top corner of the photo-taking screen where we could check out our latest snap.

Video is similarly only OK - taking something in QVGA resolution isn't going to cut it here, which is why the option to take video in VGA mode is a welcome sight.

We can't find any published specs on the frame rate it records in, but the video we shot in good light was a little choppy, so again this isn't going to be a great substitute for a dedicated device.

The coolest thing about using media on the Acer Liquid is the ability to scroll through your files and whatnot from the home screen, as we mentioned above. Less good news - the Acer Liquid eschews the standard Android player as the default media application.

If you've read any of our other reviews of Android phones, you'll note that there's a distinct lack of love for them, but what's been bundled on the Liquid is an even worse option, which surprised us.

The substitute is Nemo player, an application that bizarrely wants to crash the phone every time we used it to open a video. Want to watch more than one in succession? You can't. Want to watch a three minute music video smoothly? You can't... you just get a choppy, out of sync effort that frankly we found awful.

Of course, you can always look at the videos through the Android video player, and this is a nice option to have, with the playback smooth enough and, while not as clear as other programs on other phones, perfectly passable.

However the problem is the Acer Liquid's little scrollwheel on the side of the home screen is set to use Nemo Player, and there doesn't seem to be any way to change that. This means that if you want to use the one feature of the phone that uses the cool Android home screen overlay you'll have to put up with poor playback.

Music is a little better, as despite the Liquid using the Nemo player again, it has at least managed to eke some better performance out of the device with a large and easy-to-use interface - although we're not sure it adds much on top of the default player.

Music playback on the Android OS is satisfactory - upgrades over time from Google and the rest of the Open Handset Alliance (the group behind Android's development) have made it into a useable program thankfully.

A set of four large buttons take you into a finger-friendly media player, with album art a prominent part of the display. Sadly there's no way to update this cover art from the program itself, but it's not a deal breaker.

There's the usual other range of Google goodies on board for media too, with the top being Google-owned YouTube, which is well-implemented. You can watch videos in high quality with ease, and the interface loads quickly with minimal search lag.

If you're going to download something to make the media better on the Acer Liquid, the first place you should go is beeb Player. Essentially an unofficial port of iPlayer, it allows streaming of current programs over the internet, although there's no download option, but we expect to see it in the official application whenever it appears.

The Acer Liquid is surprisingly devoid of native applications when you turn the phone on for the first time (compared to its peers), with only RoadSync catching the eye thanks to the way it extends the Liquid's functionality so much through corporate connectivity.

Google Talk is also included as part of the Android firmware, and offers a simple way to communicate with your buddies over the chat service. You can switch between windows of friends relatively easily, but there's no ability to add the video chat functionality from this service over the internet.

Acer has added Spinlets to the Liquid as well, which initially seemed pretty cool - music from albums that you could stream for free from your device. However, the range is limited to around 10 albums, and we only recognised music from The Killers - hardly the Spotify slayer we were hoping for.

File viewer Documents To Go also gives the Liquid another business edge, with the ability to view Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint presentations. Datawiz has been sneaky in putting this onto the Liquid S100, as you can't edit docs on the go until you buy the full version.

And, of course, there's Google Maps, which is complete with StreetView as well. This works very well on the Acer Liquid, with pictures loading up fast when you move into the map to scope out an area before you get there, and navigating across vast terrain in the 2D mode also rendering quickly.

When thinking about applications on the Acer Liquid, we do think it's important you download a third-party application manager from the Market, as this will help conserve the battery life (which is crucial, as you will see later on in this review). There are a few good free ones, so just try them out and see which takes your fancy.

Given the expanding nature of the Android Market app store, we're not sure this and future Android phones will need a vast amount of inbuilt applications to be rendered a decent device - the core things from Google are there and for us that's all we really want out the box.

If we were ranking the problems of the Acer Liquid S100 in order, the battery life would likely be right at the top. Simply awful, the battery on the Liquid gives up easily within the day and will begin dropping sometimes within minutes of being disconnected from the charger.

We're not sure what's taking up so much power, as when we consult a third-party application manager there's always very limited memory available for new programs.

We suppose in a good way, turning off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth doesn't actually help the cause at all, but it does add to the mystery of the poor battery life. At least this means that it's possibly just a rogue piece of code within the system that's pulling the battery meter down too fast, and this could be updated in the future.

We never thought a phone would be able to have a worse battery life than the Samsung Galaxy, but barely three months later, the Liquid has arrived to take that crown.

RoadSync is also the best bet with this phone when it comes to organisation - the calendar function synchronises with your Exchange server to communicate all your important meetings and suchlike, and Google calendar does the same for your (probably) less important ones.

What is odd is that you can't synchronise the two - a dual calendar surely is easy to implement, but Acer hasn't managed to do that here, adding to the irritation.

Android phones are well specified when it comes to connectivity, and the Liquid is no different. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS are included by default, and while there's no inbuilt tuner, an FM radio can be downloaded from the Market.

GPS is a little disappointing on the Liquid, as it takes a while to connect to the satellites, and pretty much gives up when in a crowded city at times.

We've had a few handsets that can lock on to your GPS signal from indoors - so we'd have hoped this would have been included in the Liquid as well.

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are good enough at finding other devices when you need them to - there's no way to send your pictures over the latter, which we still find a strange thing to leave out (although Apple does it with the iPhone too).

PC software with the Acer Liquid is non-existent - it's pretty much just a case of you plugging the phone into your PC, waiting for it to have a think about being connected and then being allowed to transfer files across in mass storage mode.

There doesn't seem to be any dedicated software to allow you to use the Acer Liquid as a mobile modem, and the CD in the box is nothing more than a dedicated user manual.

Acer Sync seemed to be the place to go to connect to your PC - but the interface only offered us the chance to synchronise with Google in the way Android already does, so this seemed a redundant icon.

However, being able to interact with the file system on both the phone and the memory card is vital, and pretty much all we need the connection for (although the internal storage level is rubbish) so we can't criticise this feature too much - although it was irritating not to be able to use the phone as a mobile modem at times.

We all raised our eyebrows at the Acer Liquid when it arrived, and we were especially excited by the premise of the first Android phone to rock a 1GHz processor.

Early tests we ran on it seemed to confirm our suspicions - it was nigh on impossible to make the phone crash or judder, such was the awesome processing power.

We liked

The Acer Liquid is a decent device to hold in the hand - while the plastic chassis is a little flimsy feeling, and the buttons a little low quality for our tastes, the overall shape and build is good.

When the phone is in comfortable territory, it pretty much flies along in terms of application management - we were able to run multiple programs at once with little hint of a problem.

We liked the spinny things at the sides too - being able to see your bookmarks and media files visually was a lot of fun and the kind of thing we were expecting from the Android platform.

And seeing RoadSync included was pretty cool as well - the ability to receive your work emails and calendar information expands the Acer Liquid's range from a simple mobile device into something that can actually be useful in your day-to-day working life.

We disliked

The problem with the Acer Liquid is that while the above elements are great, only RoadSync didn't cause us any grief when using the phone.

The messaging function was beyond irritating - the lack of auto-corrected text is irritating (despite a promise of such a feature in the settings), the bug that means you have to force the keyboard to open in threaded conversations is a real rookie mistake and we found ourselves not wanting to text on the Liquid.

And while most of the time the phone would function really easily and cope with most tasks, there were far too many instances of Android crashing and asking us to wait while it sorted out the issue - not cool on a phone with such a powerful processor.

Verdict

While most of the early promise of the Acer Liquid is realised, a lot of it isn't and that's a real kick in the teeth for a phone we had real hopes would be the dark horse of the Android world.

Perhaps a number of the issues can be sorted out with firmware updates - the HTC Hero managed to polish it's reputation with this, but the Nokia N97 didn't - and given the limited profile Acer has in the mobile world it can't afford such a slip if it's to get a good word of mouth review.

While the overall package is actually fairly slick and functional, this certainly isn't the phone to upset the natural order in the mobile arena, and we can only hope future Android handsets from Acer (many are promised in 2010) will manage to take things to the next level.

The Acer neoTouch is the third smartphone we've seen from the company since it acquired phone manufacturer E-Ten last year, and the first to feature the Windows Mobile 6.5 OS.

The front of the handset is dominated by the 3.8-inch display, with a robust glass coating that offers a quality feel. With a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, it's a sharp screen, and colour reproduction is very impressive.

Most of the phone's functions are carried out using the touchscreen, with a stylus stored in the top right corner.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system is better than older versions of Windows Mobile, with larger, finger-friendly icons and more intuitive menus, but delve a little deeper and you'll still find lots of tiny options where you'll need small fingers or to use the stylus.

It also lacks the slickness and aesthetic appeal of rivals such as Google's Android OS, although at least the phone's 1GHz processor makes it a fast and responsive device.

The onscreen keyboard is fine for short text messages, but it lacks the excellent text correction software found on rivals such as the iPhone, HTC Magic and HTC Touch Diamond 2. As such, you'll have to prod very precisely at the small onscreen buttons, otherwise mistakes are frustratingly easy to make.

Triple connections

Wireless connectivity is impressive, with 3G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all built in as standard. These let you browse the internet on the move and also connect to home and office networks.

Google Maps software comes preinstalled and, with assisted GPS included, you'll also be able to use the neoTouch as a satellite navigation device. Other pre-installed software includes Office Mobile –with portable versions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint – letting you get to grips with work applications on the move.

Acer has stuck with Microsoft's Internet Explorer's web browser, rather than the excellent Opera browser found on other smartphones. That said, the large screen still makes it easy to browse the web wherever you are.

The 5-megapixel camera features a dedicated shutter button on the side, automatically switching the phone into landscape mode for shooting. Image quality is disappointing, however, with colours lacking vibrancy and noise present in darker conditions. That said, there is a bright LED flash, helping slightly with night-shots.

Limited memory

The 256MB of user memory is limited, but there's also a microSD card to add further storage space. Those adding memory cards to store their music collection will be happy to find the inclusion of a regular 3.5mm headphone jack – making it easy to use your own headphones.

Battery life is disappointingly average, lasting for only a couple of days between charges under moderate use.

Overall, the neoTouch S200 isn't a bad phone. It is well made and offers a large screen, but with few stand-out features, it's difficult to recommend over the best in class.

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Acer has clearly had a good sit-down planning meeting with some creative types and decided that its forthcoming range of phones (the L1, C1, E1 and F1) just aren't exciting enough, so it has embarked on a renaming spree.

The new names are all a little odd, but the best of the bunch has to be the Acer F1, the 3.8-inch touchscreen flagship phone, which will now be dubbed the Acer neoTouch, according to online retailer Clove.

And the rest are part of another exclusive group -- the C1 will be called the beTouch E100, the E1 the beTouch E101 and the L1 the beTouch E200.

No idea

Don't ask us what the names mean -- we have no idea and as they're only currently being reported by Clove, we're waiting to hear if they will be the official monikers.

A number of eyebrows were raised at Acer when we spoke to them about a flagship phone being named the F1, especially as the company has close ties with Ferrari and has released a number of branded products with the car maker.

But no matter what it's called, we're looking forward to a closer look at the F1 / neoTouch with its 3.8-inch touchscreen, Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system and 1GHz processor on board.

Acer has already confirmed to us that the phone is coming in the next few days, so we'll hopefully bring you a good review of the phone in the near future.

Via Clove

The Acer M900 is the third handset of the quartet announced by Acer after it took over the Glofiish brand of Windows Mobile smart phones last year and it's the chunkiest of the bunch thanks to its slide-out QWERTY keyboard.

But while its box-like proportions won't win any beauty contests, it's still a well-specced device for a relatively modest price, with quad-band network connectivity, 5 megapixel camera, 3.8-inch LCD touch screen, A-GPS, Wi-Fi and FM radio.

It also livens up the basic Windows Mobile 6.1 OS with the Acer Shell user interface, which looks good and is easy to use without the need to resort to the stylus.

Acer's first phone, the DX900, had a quirky feature in the shape of its dual SIM capability, and the M900 also has an attention-grabbing conversation piece with its fingerprint sensor, of the kind you're more likely to find on some laptops, which protects it from being accessed by anyone with the wrong fingerprint.

Design

Like the other Acer phones we've seen thus far, the M900 is no beauty queen. Sober and functional are the watch words, which is all well and good on a business-oriented phone, but when the likes of HTC and Nokia are producing phones with both business smarts and style, that approach is starting to look a little dated.

The M900 is the biggest of the bunch, due mainly to its slide-out QWERTY keyboard, measuring 119x62x17mm and a pocket-sagging 188g – it's quite a handful, and is even slightly bigger than HTC's recent brick, the Touch Pro2.

Fortunately, Acer bundles it with a leather belt clip, which should help save your suits any unnecessary wear and tear

Around the sides are a power button, a programmable key which defaults to voice control, hard reset button, camera shutter button, mini USB socket, microSD card slot with plastic cover and a jog wheel. On the bottom is the slot for the stylus, which is metal, telescopic and of pretty good quality.

On the front is the impressively large 3.8in touch screen, with speaker, VGA camera for video calls and a light sensor above it, while underneath there's just enough room for call start and stop buttons, back button, GPS services shortcut key and a touch-sensitive nav pad cum fingerprint sensor (more on that later).

There's a chunky flash of chrome-look trim running all the way around the sides and there's a metallic back plate for access to the battery and SIM card. Just above this on the back is a large protruding roundel which contains the 5 megapixel camera lens, LED flash and loudspeaker.

The Acer M900's large 3.8in TFT LCD resistive touch screen cuts quite a dash, and it's bigger than most of its rivals like the 3.6in HTC Pro2, or the 3.5in iPhone. It offers 800x480-pixel resolution and it's sharp, bright and clear, though the option to save on the not terribly impressive battery life by dimming the screen is well worth taking

There are two programmable soft keys at the bottom and you can adjust the scroll speed of the touch screen as well as set exceptions for various programmes but you can't change the sensitivity. This is a shame, because it's really not as sensitive as it could be, and we found ourselves having to make several presses to activate apps and links on too many occasions.

Keyboard

Other recent QWERTY keyboard phones like HTC's Touch Pro2 or Nokia's N97 allow you to angle the screen for the optimum viewing/typing interface angle, but the M900's having none of that malarkey – it simply slides out, rather sharply, and expects you to get on with it.

On the face of it, this keyboard should be a bit of a cracker with four lines of well-spaced, backlit keys, including direction arrows, plus two additional soft keys at either side and indicator lights for the Fn and Caps functions. They're arranged in a gently curved crescent and there are 41 keys in all. The number keys are doubled up on the letter keys and are accessed by pressing the Fn key.

It looks great, but the keys aren't as responsive or as well-defined as we'd hoped and we couldn't always tell when we were striking the right keys. Having to press two keys for a full stop or '@' never goes down well with us either.

The M900 is big on security, and features a fingerprint swipe and PIN combo via the Golden Finger settings. You can set the device to automatically lock when it powers on, or at various increments between a minute and two hours.

There are also options to create a Private Folder to keep secret files and to offer extra protection for your PIM data, which you can access via a password of 4-12 characters.

The fingerprint recognition requires four swipes of your thumb to set up but on our sample it took a lot more than that before it recognised us. If you get into trouble, you can override the fingerprint option with the four-digit PIN, which kind of makes it redundant, when you think about it.

The fingerprint sensor doubles as a touch sensitive nav pad and in this mode it's actually very versatile. It's adjustable via the settings menu to be either four-way or eight-way, as well as emulating a mouse or joystick. The trouble is that we found it a bit too small and too deeply recessed to work accurately, though there's a control panel to adjust its sensitivity or to disable it altogether.

Interface

The M900 brings back the Acer Shell interface we last saw on the X960. Briefly, it's three home pages in one, each of which can be reached by brushing across the screen.

They're laid out in a picture format like an office, with a desk featuring widgets for your call log, emails, text messages and calendar on the first screen, then contacts, music player and gallery, and finally internet browser, settings and Quick Menu.

The widgets will incorporate elements from your gallery items, so the picture frame will show one of your latest pictures and the music player will feature cover art from one of the tunes in your library.

The Quick Menu allows you to set up 36 shortcuts as large, thumb-friendly buttons, which means you can get quite far into the X960's functionality just by using your thumb, and without the need to resort to the stylus, which tends to be essential with the underlying Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.

Processor

Like the previous Acer phones, the M900 has a Samsung S3C 6410 533MHz processor backed by 128MB of RAM. We'd have liked a bit more to be honest, (the HTC Touch Pro2 boasts 288MB of RAM) and it struggled on occasion, with noticeable delays when we had several applications running at once.

The M900's camera is a step up from the X960, offering 5 megapixels instead of 3.2. It's not bad for a WinMo handset, though not really in the same league as the likes of Sony Ericsson's C903 or Nokia's N97, though it easily stands comparison with HTC's Touch Diamond2.

It takes about four seconds to start up – not great but not bad – and offers auto exposure, three focus settings (centre, face detection and multi-zone – you can flip between these using the jog dial), anti-shake and multishot (three, five or nine pics in quick succession) options.

It can deliver a maximum still photo resolution of 2560x1920 pixels and there are effects such as sepia, greyscale, negative and mirror, four white balance settings, and a 4x digital zoom, operated by running your thumb up or down the nav pad.

FOCUS: the camera has trouble focusing, with pictures appearing washed-out

COLOURS: the camera is unable to capture what we would call 'vivid' colours

OVERALL: it's a decent effort but certainly no compact replacement

Pics taken in good light were surprisingly sharp, though light and colour balance occasionally goes awry and edging soon breaks up under magnification. The LED flash is fairly bright, but as usual, is only worth bothering with if you're within a metre or so of your subject.

Maximum video resolution is 640x480 pixels in 3GP format which drops the quality considerably, especially in anything less than excellent light, with quite a lot of noise and occasional screen lag too.

All in all, it's not a bad camera for this kind of phone, and our main problem with it was really the positioning of the shutter button, which encouraged us to keep sliding out the phone's keyboard every time we pressed it.

The Acer M900 matches its brothers for connectivity options. It's a quad-band GSM handset with HSDPA 3G fast internet connection (up to 7.2Mbps), Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) and Bluetooth 2.0 with stereo A2DP. It's very well connected in other words, and we had no trouble either linking to our Wi-Fi or finding Bluetooth-enabled devices in our vicinity.

Media

Media playback is via Windows Media Player as well as Acer's own, basic music player. Widescreen movie trailers can be scaled up to fit the width of the screen, though you'll still be left with black bars top and bottom, and there's no option to pan and scan.

Good quality video clips look great on the screen though, with a fair amount of detail in the black levels and speedy rendering.

The large speaker on the back was surprisingly quiet, though it offered a fairly clear and full sound, and didn't appear prone to distortion. Just as well since the supplied headphones sound horribly tinny and compressed, and there's no easy way to upgrade them since there's no 3.5mm jack plug. Format-wise, it can handle MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, AMR, SP-MIDI, MIDI, MMF, AWB and RMI audio formats, with 3GP, MPEG4, WMV, H.263 and H.264 for video.

Internet

Unlike HTC's WinMo handsets, there's no preloaded Opera browser (though it's the work of a moment to download it), just Internet Explorer 6.

The resolution switches to landscape when you open the keyboard (though there's also an accelerometer on board), and you can use the jog dial to help you move around pages, as well as brushing the screen with your finger.

Zoom is via the onscreen menu however, rather than anything more immediate, which is a bit fiddly. All in all, it's not a bad browser, especially with the QWERTY keyboard for inputting URLs and data, but there's room for improvement.

A-GPS

The A-GPS function is supported by Google Maps and it had no trouble finding our north London location or directing us to our chosen destination.

It's accessed by a dedicated key on the front of the device and offers all the usual features including traffic updates, satellite and street view but there's no sat nav option preloaded, though this being a Windows Mobile handset, download options are available from all the big sat nav names.

Other features

The M900 comes with a full version of Microsoft Office comes on board, allowing you to read and view Word, Excel and OneNote docs, as well as view PowerPoint presentations.

Memory

There's 256MB of memory on the handset itself, which won't take you long to fill up, but this can be boosted to 8GB via the microSD card slot, though there's no card supplied.

Battery

Battery life wasn't bad for a WinMo smart phone and we just about managed two days of moderate use from a full charge, though we were careful with our use of Wi-Fi and dimmed the screen a little to stretch the charge. Still, this included phone calls, browsing, music and video playing.

Comparison:

The Acer M900's nearest recent rival is HTC's Touch Pro2. Both are hefty Windows Mobile touch screen devices and the M900 is 3mm longer and wider, though both devices weigh the same. Both are quad-band devices with HSDPA 3G, plus Wi-Fi, A-GPS and slide-out QWERTY keyboards.

The M900 manages an extra .2in of screen and has a 5 megapixel camera rather than 3.2 megapixels. But the Touch Pro2 has a better slide-out QWERTY keyboard – it has an extra line of keys and is easier to use. It has a better browser too, with a zoom slide for easy navigation. Also, the Pro2 has a superior battery and its processor and RAM allowance served us better than the M900's. So despite the M900's superior camera, bigger screen and lower price, we prefer the HTC Touch Pro2 because it's more satisfying to use in the long run.

We liked:

As with previous Acer phones, the M900 looks good on paper, but doesn't quite cut the mustard in practise.

It has all the features you could hope for in a WinMo smart phone, including an impressively huge 3.8in LCD touch screen, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, a five megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, A-GPS and HSDPA 3G. There's even an innovative fingerprint sensor cum nav pad for novelty value.

Acer has made the effort to brighten up the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS with its own thumb-friendly shell which means you can avoid using the stylus until you're fairly deep into the menus too. Everything's in place, in other words, but somehow, it's less than the sum of its parts.

We disliked:

The touch screen wasn't really responsive enough, and we had to resort to using the stylus to get to links and apps that should have been easily accessed with our thumb.

The fingerprint sensor was fiddly and unreliable to use – it took us many attempts to get it to recognise us – and when using it as a navpad it proved tricky and unreliable, even after some practise.

The QWERTY keyboard looked the business, but the keys didn't give sufficient feedback for us to feel confident using it. It also tended to run slowly if we weren't careful about how many apps we were running at any one time

The camera at least is one of the better models we've seen on a WinMo phone, but it's certainly not as good as other 5 megapixel snappers we've seen on models from Sony Ericsson or Nokia.

Verdict:

Like the other Acers, it's a chunky workhorse that feels like something of a throwback to an earlier age of ugly, functional smart phones.

It's very well specced, but the reasons for its lowish price point become clear with extended use. If the HTC Touch Pro2 is too pricey for you, the M900 is worth considering, but prepare to be just a little bit disappointed.

According to the oh-so-eccentric rumour mill, Asian computing firm Acer is will be launching an Android-powered phone in September of this year.

The Philippine Business Mirror has claimed it spoke to Acer and that the company has confirmed the phone is coming this year.

Surprisingly the A1, as it will apparently be called to fit in with the E1, L1, F1 and C1 Win-Mo 6.5 handsets announced last month, will feature a touchscreen and will be among four other phones launched at the same time, which fits in nicely with the roadmap Acer gave us at its recent event.

Needs some salt

The source for the Philippine Business Mirror has declined to be named, so it seems these rumours should be taken with more than a pinch of salt, although Acer did refuse to rule out switching to Android at its recent event.

Add to that Engadget Mobile's 'roadmap' sketched out by a rep in Barcelona last month, and you've got a pretty tasty rumour, although you then have to wonder if the phone will actually be any good... we'll worry about that if it ever surfaces.

The likes of Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola have all pledged to join the Android party, although it appears that Samsung's effort, pictured recently at a Dutch trade show, will be the first to emerge from the big hitters.

HTC's Magic will also be available from Vodafone by May too, so Acer will have to get cracking on its phone if it hopes to ride the wave of Android fanaticism that looks like coming to the mobile world.

From Philippine Business Mirror via Engadget

Acer has shown off prototypes of its next slew of smartphones at an event in London, with the pick being F1, a full touchscreen costing up to £445 and released in the second half of 2009.

The F1 (its codename, with the proper title to be applied closer to launch) will sport a high resolution screen (which we assume will be HVGA) with home screen widgets and gaming capabilities.

It will also use a 5MP camera with LED flash, and has four simple buttons at the base of the screen for navigation, including call / reject and a home screen link.

The Acer L1

The L1 also uses a touchscreen but incorporates a slide-out keyboard as well, and is designed for 'simplicity', according to Acer, although it didn't give out many details as to why this label is applied.

There's a 3MP camera on the back with an LED flash, and it uses a four way directional button on the front as well as a touchscreen. It also has an accelerometer, presumably for gaming and orientation, and will likely cost £265.

The C1 is designed to be the phone that 'facilitates users' move up to smartphones' according to Acer, with its being dubbed 'My First Mobile Internet Phone'.

It will likely cost up to £49 and will feature a touchscreen and a jog wheel and the ability to pack in two SIMs, either on EDGE or 3G. It comes in a variety of colours and packs a 3MP camera, albeit without flash.

The other 1

The final handset, which we've learned will be called the E1 but wasn't mentioned, will retail for slightly less than the C1, and there aren't too many other specs out there about it, other than like all the others in the 'X-1'family it will roll out with Windows Mobile 6.5, and will launch a month after its brothers.

Acer also announced it would be bringing six other handsets later this year, and even better: they might not be running Windows Mobile. The possibility of Android was raised, and Aymar de Lencquesaing, senior corporate VP for Acer, refused to rule it out.