No matter how many apps you have running, a tap on the relevant button brings up the home speedily. Another advantage of a simple OS is start-up time. From hitting the on button to locking onto a cellular signal takes the Liquid just under 30 seconds while an HTC Hero running SenseMe takes nearly a full minute longer.
Browsing on the 3.5in screen is certainly useable
To date, the cameras built into Android phones haven't been much to shout about and to be frank the 5Mp device in the Liquid is no huge step forward. It features autofocus, geo-tagging, adjustable white-balance, some very basic effects and the ability to shoot QVGA video. With no flash, taking pictures in low light is pretty much out of the question, while the time between shots is a reasonable 6 seconds. As the sample images show, the Liquid takes adequate snapshots.
Sample Shots
Click for a full-resolution image
Click for a full-resolution image
Like every other Android phone under the sun, media file support extends to MP3, WAV, WMA and AAC audio along with MP4, WMV, H.263 & 4 video. All well and good, but a screen of this size and resolution does make us rue the absence of Xvid/Divx and AVI from the list. Speaking of digital media, on-board storage is a measly 512MB, but the Micro SDHC slot is good for cards up to 32GB. Yet, replacing either the SD or SIM cards involves removing not only the battery cover, but also the battery itself.
The media Spinlet offers various content
Alongside the included basic Android media players, the Liquid features nemoPlayer. This doesn't really add much in the way of functionality but it does come with a widget that lets you flick through your media by video or picture album or music album, with each album rotating out of the side of the screen. Its a nice idea, but it does occupy one whole half of the screen. A similar widget lets you access your web page bookmarks in the same format. Yet it's a shame you can't run both widgets on the same page, one on the left and one on the right.
COMMENTS
original iPhone...
was a masive pile of crap! No 3G, MMS, crap camera etc, and that 'POS with no redeeming features' got 85%?
Many of us?
"...many of us need nothing more than a good Twitter and Facebook application..."
Further, many of us don't even need that - particularly the first...
The phone? It's a bit ugly...
SenseMe
It's "Sense" UI.
And why does this phone get lauded for lacking it? At the end of the review it seems to get praise for lacking the previously mentioned as useful and nice shell that HTC provide for their phones.
Re: adnim
That sounds like a review of Android. I certainly hope the reg doesn't review Android each and every time they review an Android phone. As a "Technical Audience" isn't it safe to assume the readership either already knows the OS pretty well or can find out from other sources? This is a review of the Acer Liquid - not Android. The only OS related things we need to know are what version of Android is on it, how quickly does it run it and are there any customisations? The review covers that.
On the other hand, an in-depth review of Android or a "hackers guide" - a bit like the ones done for Linpus last year - would be very handy.
A review for consumers
As The Register is primarily aimed at IT professionals it would be nice to see in reviews of such devices more technical details. Like how easy it is to raise a terminal interface, can different user accounts with differing levels of privilege be created. What commands are available, is there a netcat equivalent for instance? How easy is it to strip the OS of bundled apps and install ones own? What shells can be run? Any scripting possible either shell or Python? It looks like a nice piece of kit, but how useful is it really beyond being a net browsing media playing phone?
I realise these details can be researched elsewhere and a certainly beyond the remit of a consumer review. However considering the demographic of El Reg readership such details would not be out of place.
