The leader in desktop and mobile computers based in Taiwan has beefed up its flagship Android smartphone with the
Acer Liquid e which basically comes off as the twin of its earlier
Liquid in form and substance. This time, it gets a more updated OS in the Android 2.1 Éclair. With a clear upgrade path from the older 1.6 version to the new remains a mystery for Android smartphones running the older version, Acer has jumped the gun to deliver more the same hardware features but with the promise of the Android Éclair already ready and willing. It even comes in a choice of three colors – black red and white.
Updated Features
The new features attending the 2.1 Éclair includes a more optimized CPU speed which should bring the Liquid’s 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon at its peak performance. It gets an enhanced browser interface with HTML 5.0 support, MS Exchange and improved
Google Maps 3.1.2 running. On paper the new OS opens up a handset to features digital zoom for its imaging feature, Bluetooth v2.1 and a native support for multitouch input technology which the
Acer Liquid e has yet to fully support.
High End Features
Apart from the promised features that go with a higher OS version which could be had with future software patches to the OS, the Acer Liquid e is every inch, style and substance its older brethren, the Liquid without the “e” which originally had the A1 dropped.
It gets the same 3G network coverage on its dual band UMTS with HSDPA and HSUPA data speeds of 7.2 Mbps and 2.0 Mbps, respectively. It’s also your basic quad band GSM (850/ 900/ 1800. 1900) with class 10 GPRS/EDGE data speeds of up to 236.8 Kbps on the 2G network. There’s WiFi 802.11b/g and high speed local data connectivity via wired miniUSB 2.0 and wireless Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. SatNav functionality gets a GPS receiver with A-GPS support.
For display, it comes with a 3.5 inch TFT capacitive touchscreen with Wide-VGA resolution and 256k colors and equipped with an accelerometer sensor for auto rotate viewing as well as proximity sensors for auto-disablement of touchscreen sensitivity in a call. It images with a superb 5 megapixel snapper with autofocus, geo-tagging from its GPS receiver and VGA video capture at 20fps.
Multimedia loses the FM radio but gets the standard media content playback for audio files in the MP3, WMA, WAV and eAAC+ formats as well as video files in the MP4, H.264/H.263 and WMV codecs. There’s a speakerphone and a 3.5mm audio out jack for using your favorite high fidelity headsets. You also get the option to listen in wireless stereo with its A2DP profile support on Bluetooth.
Its onboard memory consists of 256 MB ROM and 512 MB ROM with practically unlimited entries in the phonebook and comes with microSD for up to 32 GB of external memory. Its Li-Ion battery rated at 1350 mAh when fully charged provides up to 5 hours of talk time and 400 hours of standby time.
The
Acer Liquid e is a socially aware smartphone like its predecessor with integration support for Facebook as well as media sharing with Flickr. It also comes preloaded with a document viewer for MS Office and PDF files. The standard email client, IM support and HTML browser are all there.
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