Acer broke on to the smartphone scene last year with a series of Windows Mobile handsets, and though some were okay (the S200 and F900, for example), others just seemed wilfully awkward and substandard (stand up E101, you know we mean you). The Liquid marks the computer company's first attempt at a phone powered by Google's Android operating system. With that, and a promisingly nippy Snapdragon processor on board, plus 5-megapixel camera, HSDPA 3G, WiFi and AGPS, could the Liquid be the one that marks Acer as a serious smart phone contender?

Handset

It certainly cuts a dash (which certainly couldn't be said about Acer's previous functional-looking handsets) with that black touch-sensitive screen and buttons offset by the glossy white (or red, or non-offsetting black) casing of its sizeable but relatively lightweight 115mm x 64mm x 13mm, 135g frame. Beneath the screen are four touch-sensitive buttons for home, search, back and menu. Around the sides are a power button video rocker and camera shutter button, while the top has a 3.5mm headphone jack and three concealed flashing indicator lights: charging, message waiting and call missed.

There's a mini USB power/sync port on the bottom covered by a plastic grommet and the back features the slightly protruding lens for the 5-megapixel camera and a loudspeaker. 

Operating system and user interface

The operating system is Goolge's Android Donut 1.6, which is something of a throwback since it's already been replaced by 2.0 Eclaire, though Acer has suggested there may be an update to address this.

It's standard Android too, not enhanced (or encumbered, depending on your view) with any of the additional user interface features which you'll see on various handsets from HTC with their animated Sense features. It does however have Spinlets, which offers music clips and pics, and makes them easy to share with your social network. A good idea, perhaps, athough the online library doesn't appear to be very well stocked at the moment, with less than a dozen artists available.

That aside, the Android Marketplace is expanding apace offering a good selection of additional apps, including social networking with Facebook and Twitter. There are three homepages which you can decorate with various widgets from the menu and those to left and right of the main one include carousels – one for media, the other for web bookmarks.
It's fast though. We didn't come across any examples of the lag that's the bane of so many smartphones. The combination of a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 processor running at 768MHz and a UI that's unburdened by extras leads to it being one of the fastest Android phones we've seen.

Screen

Another first for Acer besides the Android OS is the use of a capacitive touchscreen. This has very quickly been adopted as the standard for touchscreen smartphones which want to be taken seriously – it's much more sensitive and user-friendly than resistive touchscreens if done right.

Thankfully, Acer hasn't messed it up, delivering a screen that is sensitive enough to distinguish consistently between our brushes and presses, and doesn't require multiple stabbings of the screen to register our touch.

It's the same size as the iPhone's at 3.5in but comes in widescreen WVGA 800 x 480-pixel resolution. There's no multi-touch functionality allowing you to pinch to zoom or register super-fast typing speeds, but it's bright, clear and sharp, despite admitting to only a 65,000 colour display.

It could have done with one of those anti-oil coatings sported by the iPhone or HTC's Hero though – it's a bit of a fingerprint magnet.

Browser

The Android browser works perfectly well either over the 7.2Mbps HSDPA 3G network connection or broadband via WiFi. The screen flips quickly into landscape mode when you turn the phone on its side and you can press and hold to bring up the zoom controls and while there's no Flash support, there's at least a YouTube app on board for viewing videos on the site.

Camera

The 5-megapixel camera has autofocus but no flash. This might let the spec sheet down a bit, but since the flashes on camphones are more often than not virtually useless, we didn't miss it much.

Picture quality isn't exceptional but it's not bad either. Colours are a little less than vibrant but reasonably accurate, and if you're careful with your light you can get some decent snaps.

The camera starts up in a little under four seconds (not great, but not terrible) and can take snaps at two-second intervals, which is pretty good. There are options for geo-tagging, some colour effects and quick share options with your social networking apps. The QVGA quality video isn't as good as the still camera resolution, but its acceptable.

Media

That wide screen does a good job of displaying movies, and it can play 3GP, MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264 formats, though cruelly there's no support for DivX or XviD files. The back-mounted loudspeaker soon breaks up when you push the volume, and the sound through the supplied headphones doesn't improve things much, offering a tinny and compressed sound, though this is easily fixed by adding your own headphones via the top-mounted 3.5mm headphone jack or stereo Bluetooth link.

Audio files supported are MP3, AAC, AMR, WMA and WAV and play using Acer's nemoPlayer, which organises and plays tracks fine, though it lacks an equaliser to make the best of the sound.

There's only 512MB of onboard memory for your media files but you can bump it up to 32GB via microSD memory card, though unusually these days, it can't be hot-swapped – you'll need to remove the battery to change the memory card.

Battery

The battery held up pretty well and didn't appear to suffer the usual equation of powerful processor equals short battery life. We got a little over a day and a half of fairly heavy usage, which puts it up there with most of the better smart phones.

The Liquid is easily the best smart phone that Acer had yet produced, making up for a lack of interface frills with its processing speed and a good range of features. It's very fast, easy to use, and if it lacks a few of the design tricks of other Androids like an augmented UI or multi-touch screen, it still delivers all the benefits of Android in a good-looking, very capable package.