Messaging
I’ve been using different touchscreen phones for almost a year now so I had no problems touch typing here except when hitting the letter “o”. For some reason, it’s the only typing error I get on this phone. I don’t know if it’s because the keys are oddly spaced but downloading an app like Handcent SMS solves that problem. I have to point out that the built-in keypad is missing the Return key to get to the next line. Again, Handcent SMS app takes care of that.
Camera
The Acer Liquid E has a 5 megapixel autofocus camera at the back. It doesn’t come with a flash and has a few shooting options like White Balance, ISO and Color Effect adjustments. What’s odd here is that the volume rocker doesn’t work as zoom controls for the camera. You can zoom in or out using the onscreen buttons.
Here are some photos taken with the Acer Liquid E. Sadly, they look pretty washed out despite having good light.
The rear camera can record video in MPEG-4 and H.263 format and there’s no front camera for video calling.
Gaming
Gaming looks really nice on this phone’s gorgeous screen and the underclocked processor surprisingly didn’t affect the experience much at all. Well I was just playing Angry Birds. It wasn’t as snappy as compared to playing on an iPhone but it still runs quite smoothly. Those playing the game for the first time won’t notice it. It tends to get a bit warm when playing games for quite a while though unlike other phones and I guess this is the main reason why they didn’t use the full 1GHz its processor is capable of.
Acer Apps
There’s a handful of apps pre-installed in this Ferrari edition of Liquid E. Some like Sniplets (online music listening) and urFooz (avatar generation) you probably won’t use but others like RoadSync for your MS Exchange mail and Documents to Go are quite useful productivity apps.
Battery Life
The Acer Liquid E has a respectable 1350 mAh battery which would last you for a day and a half on average use which is pretty decent for an Android phone of this size. Only drawback is the miniUSB cable you need for charging. Most smartphones use microUSB so you can’t just borrow a cable from anyone.
Verdict
The Acer Liquid E by itself looks like a phone that was a bit late in the scene with the Android 2.1 OS and some missing features like DivX support, mobile internet tethering/hotspot and LED flash. Upgrading to Android 2.2 will give you mobile hotspot though. The Ferrari Special Edition gives the Acer Liquid E a fighting chance in the market with its very eye-catching design and matching accessories but is limited to race fans or Ferrari fans.
Overall, it’s a decent smartphone (not a camera) which can be made better if you upgrade it to Android 2.2. There’s the option though of rooting this phone to install the upgrade. The 768 MHz processor is not slow at all once you start navigating and using the apps. Handling is nice and the LED indicators on the top for missed calls and unread messages is a nice touch. Oh, have I already mentioned that the phone looks stunning? Well for a race fan’s point of view anyway.
Acer Liquid E Ferrari Special Edition Specs:
- 3G: HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps
- 768MHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon chipset
- Android 2.1 OS with Acer UI 3.0
- 3.5” / TFT / 16M / WVGA capacitive touchscreen display (480 x 800)
- 5 megapixel autofocus camera w/o LED flash
- Video playing & recording (MPEG4, H.263, H.264)
- 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, expandable storage up to 16GB via microSD
- GPS + A-GPS Support
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
- Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP
- MiniUSB
- 1350mAh Li-Ion battery
- Weight: 135g
- SRP: Php23,900 (standard Liquid E), Php29,990 (Ferrari edition)
