Acer Liquid E on Rogers review

Before jumping into a review of the Acer Liquid E, let’s take a really brief look at the history of Acer…

Back in the days when more PC users built their own machines, Acer was known for it’s computer component parts, such as motherboards, and branded graphics cards.  Although they branched out into pre-built PCs and laptops over a decade ago, it’s really been the past few years, when they’ve capitalized on the decreasing costs of components, and made a series of acquisitions, that have propelled them into the worldwide number 2 PC manufacturer spot, behind only HP.  Part of this growing success is the netbook space, where the Acer Aspire line absolutely dominates the market.

So when they bought smartphone manufacturer E-Ten last year, it looked like they were going to shoot for the growing mobile market as well, and worldwide they’ve released a few phones running both Windows Mobile and Android.  Their first appearence in the Canadian smartphone space, the Acer Liquid E on Rogers, continues Acer’s quality design for a low price philosophy.

Out Of The Box

I wasn’t sure what to expect when opening the box, but the initial impression was better than expected.  It’s a black slab of a phone, with nicely rounded for gripping, while the top and bottom are arched and angular.  With just the Acer logo and four capacitive buttons on the front flush screen, it provides for a pretty clean slate interface.  One of the neat design elements exists along the top edge, which besides housing the 3.5mm audio jack, has a series of 3 white LED notification icons: Calls, Messages and Battery.  These notifications flash, in a very elegant way, when appropriate, which is handy if you have your phone set to be silent.

In photos, the phone appears very plastic and cheap.  While the casing is plastic, in person it’s much more solid feeling.  It doesn’t have that ‘fit and finish’ of a higher end phone, but the design is solid

Under The Hood

The Liquid E sports a 1GHz Snapdragon, like many of the higher end Android smartphones, but it’s been hampered by Acer by underclocking it to 768MHz, though in regular use, it’s certainly not noticeable. It also sports the standard guts (WiFi, GPS, BluetoothIt and accelerometer).  That being said, it’s clear where Acer has made sacrifices to keep the cost low.  Though the Liquid E sports a 5MP camera, it doesn’t have a flash, and the RAM is pretty skimpy, at 256MB instead of the average 512MB that most other new Android phones come with. I’m not sure how much the flash and larger RAM would have affected cost, but these are probably the most disappointing parts of the phone.  It also sports a paltry 2GB SD Card from Rogers, which you’ll be wanting to replace right away with something more substantial.

The 3.5 inch screen on the phone is a crisp 800×480.  Though it’s flush with the rest of the front panel, there’s a small seam, to accomodate an included screen protecter.  This is another area where Acer is saving some money, as the screen is plastic as opposed to glass, which means that you’ll probably want to have that protector on there.  I wouldn’t say it’s as necessary as the days of stylus input, but if you’re in the habit of putting your phone in a pocket with keys or other objects, it could be a cause for concern.  The screen protector only minimally affects sensitivity, so it’s probably worth doing in any case.

Daily Use

When testing a new Android phone, I have a ritual of making sure that I have the same 3 email accounts configured, and auto updates every 30 minutes from Twitter (using Touiteur).  My experiences with Android 1.6 have universally shown that battery life is far from impressive, and always leads to recommending being prepared for charging.  In the case of the Liquid E, a combination of a barely noticeable underclocking and the inclusion of Android 2.1 without UI ‘enhancements’ made it a top performer in this department. Don’t get me wrong, it was begging for juice by the end of an average day, but unlike other Android phones, it still had the energy to beg, which is a rarity.

Unlike HTC’s Sense, or Motorola’s BLUR, Acer has decided to bank on using a more or less stock Android 2.1, with a few added pieces of software. This has both it’s pluses and minuses. On the positive, it’s snappy, and should be faster to update to future Android versions.  On the negative side, it’s Android. Though Android 2.1 alleviates many of the problems of earlier versions, it’s still not quite the integrated and elegant experience that something like Sense brings to the table. Of course, there are a number of 3rd party launchers out there to try out if that’s how you want to roll.

For those who do a lot of media on their phones, Acer includes nemoPlayer as a replacement for the mediocre Android stock app. I’ve never heard of the software before, but was surprised at how good it is at providing an all-in-one photo, music and video player. Although the phone didn’t come with a media sync option out of the box, it had no problem working with DoubleTwist to handle all the sync. NemoPlayer had no problem recognizing the media from DoubleTwist, and has a solid UI with a very Windows Media Center feel to it, and is probably all most users will need. The Liquid E also comes with a media player called Spinlets, which gives the user access to streaming online music

Though this may sound a bit like a broken record, the camera on the phone does a decent job when there’s enough available light, in darker situations, you’ll be wishing you had a flash.  In outdoor conditions, there was a bit of overexposure, but nothing outside the norm.  VGA video recording was no great shakes either. The resolution is there, but like many phone videos, suffers a fair bit from the wobblies in capture.  It does seem to react fairly well to changing lighting conditions.

Signal strength was pretty solid on the device. In testing from outdoors to the elevator in my building, it held up to the hallway, and dropped when the elevator doors closed.  That’s better than average, though not as good as my every day HD2, which can survive the elevator ride nine times out of 10. The 3G performance from Rogers was similarly solid when it comes to data, and with the built in Android browser was definitely a superior experience to phones hampered by Android 1.6, including the more expensive Xperia X10.

Google Navigation

Near the end of the review period, Google Navigation was released in Canada, and the Acer Liquid E was the first phone I had a chance to try it on.  If you’re not familiar with the software, you can probably guess that Google Nav leverages Google’s Map and Street View information to provide a replacement for a dedicated GPS device.  I have to say that the software worked as advertised, and had no problem performing it’s task.  Relying on remote servers to provide maps would be an issue for long distant trips where there may not be a data connection, but for many, it may just do the trick.

Since it has Street View built into it, Google Navigation would make a great ‘on foot’ traveling companion, as finding locations becomes much easier when you have a photographic reference in your hand.

Final Thoughts

The Acer Liquid E may not have the high class fit and finish of the iPhone, or many of HTC’s Android offering, but the design itself is simple and to the point, without a lot of flourish.  This also applies to the software, as the basically stock Android UI doesn’t have the polish of a phone running HTC’s Sense.  It is, however, unencumbered by the sometimes superfluous and resource intensive add-on of some manufacturers.  It seems new Android based devices are released on an almost weekly basis recently, but the Acer Liquid E is currently the best bang for your buck from a Canadian carrier. It has the right internals to be a high end smartphone, without feeling like you’ve made any sacrifices. Even if it were evenly priced with other more expensive Android phones from any Canadian carrier, I’d probably go with the Liquid E.

The Acer Liquid E is available from Rogers for as low as $49.99, on a 3 year Rogers voice and data contract. It qualifies for Rogers ‘Social View’ data plans, which allow unlimited access to Facebook through the pre-installed app, and other sites, such as Twitter, through the browser. It is also one of the supported phones for Rogers On Demand Mobile, which allows you to watch the FIFA World Cup football games live.

UPDATE: After double checking on a friend’s Liquid E, it in fact has 512MB of RAM, not the 256 I mention earlier.