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Welcome to the 2011 Acer Liquid Metal quick review. Initial released in 2010 the Liquid Metal was not until late 2011 when it was priced under $200 outright. As an Android OS based phone it comes with everything you need for your connected lifestyle. It has a strange name that implies its made of liquid metal but clearly it isn't. Besides that there are a few other things that Acer have done to Android which are a bit dubious in terms of functionality. Read on if your still interested...
In terms of construction the Liquid Metal is pretty good. It is made mostly of metal except for the front display which is a glass like material for a the capacitive touch screen. The back is split into two which is fine considering it has a replaceable battery - yay. It is smooth touch but we came away thinking it was a bit on the chunky side like the original Compaq iPaq (is you can remember what that was). However for the price and of course the hardware its packing on the inside it is forgivable.
Although the phone runs Android OS, although Acer has installed it's Breeze UI on top of the the standard interface. While Breeze UI is impressive to look and play with we think it just reverses the standard screen. In fact we found the reversal of the touch buttons on the bottom of the screen very annoying. Although you can turn off Breeze you can't change the button order which is a pity. So if you can live with it then this, the Liquid Metal could be for you. Overall it was stable and fast during during the test period and more impressive than the Huawei Sonic or the HTC Wildfire S.
The Liquid Metal has a good CPU that runs at 800Mhz and a separate GPU so it will run any game or app better than most. Most mid range Android mobile phones of late 2010 only have a single CPU which makes this Acer quite a bit better than the rest. The only problem the Liquid Metal has is on the 3G hardware side of things, namely is that it won't work on the Telstra 850Mhz network, but Optus or Vodaphone networks will work just fine!
Overall the Acer Liquid Metal is a very good mobile phone for the price, in fact it worked better than the equally price Huawei Sonic we recently tested. (The Sonic is noticeably slower) Regardless we are finding it difficult to write anything new about Android OS based phones as they can basically do anything you want. The only differences are the novel Acer developed interface 'enhancements' and physical design which none to date are standouts. The only other thing we can think of is branding or company history. Acer makes decent hardware so by association the Liquid Metal should be a decent phone until the next round of models releases. Taking all that into account, if you want cheapest and one of the best Android phones then the Acer Liquid metal is a great choice.
Specifications
- Acer Liquid Metal
- Network
Quad-band GSM 850/900/1800/1900
Dual-band 3G 850/1900/2100
HSDPA 14.4 Mbits data speed (download)
2.2 MBits data speed (upload)
- Design
Touch screen
- L115 x W63 x D13.5 mm
Weight 135 grams
- Display/s
External 3.6 Inch TFT 480 x 800
- Camera
5MP
LED Flash
- Video Camera
720p video camera 30FPS
- Connectivity
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth V2.1
- CPU
800Mhz
Separate GPU Adreno 205 running up to 600Mhz
- Memory
Up to 512MB available to user
MicroSD up to 32Gig
- Ring tones
MIDI, MP3, Video, vibration and others
- Features
A-GPS
Proximity
Compass
Accelerometer (G-Sensor)
Light Sensor
Music and Media player
Organiser/Calender
SMS, MMS, IM, Email
Speaker Phone/Hands free
Li-Po 1500mAh battery
Up to 550 hours Standby
Up to 11 hours Talk Time
- Price history
Under $199 AUS 2011 (Approx outright)