Acer Liquid Metal smartphone – A lot of potential, but not a lot of power
Vishal Mathur
For a price of just more than Rs 20,000, the Acer Liquid Metal offers good build quality and a different design, from what is available in the rivals. However, it will be interesting to see if it has the power to match the performance of the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S.
Look and Feel: Feels more expensive than it actually is.
The front has a glossy finish, in black colour. Part of the rear panel has a stainless steel finish, while the battery cover gets a touch of light, with an imprint design. The camera is near the top part of the panel, along with the flash. The tiny speaker is placed at the bottom, which is something rare. The top most panel houses the power button, as well as the 3.5mm audio jack. On the bottom panel is the micro USB port. The right side hosts the volume buttons and the dedicated camera key. There are no buttons on the left panel.
The 3.6-inch display is complemented by 4 touch buttons below it- for home, search, return and full menu. Touch based buttons make sense, unlike physical buttons. The Liquid Metal has a convex curve, on the front as well as the rear. The camera doesn’t have protective cover.
Features: A little less conventional.
The user interface used by Acer in the Liquid metal is called Breeze4.0. Upon unlocking the phone, it is a page-turner! Swiping right or left on the touchscreen will take you into multiple screens, and this is where all the widgets are. Weirdly, you cannot add or remove any widgets straightaway, something that other phone manufacturers allow on their UI. The dedicated widgets apps lets you do that
The top panel has the message indicator which lights up to let the user know, while remains hidden away the rest of time.
The UI used here is very unique. The notification bar, usually on the very top of the display, is actually in the middle and there are two layers of app icons below it. Open an app and the notification bar is moved to the bottom of the screen.
Performance: A mid-field runner, at best
The Liquid Metal has an 800MHz Scorpion processor. And because of that, there is a slowdown when multiple apps are open. Seems more so in the company of 1GHz processor powered phones.
The 3.6-inch screen (480x800 pixels) has a crisp and vivid display. However, in addition to the cramped layout, the curved design of the phone makes it quite difficult to type using the on screen keyboard. Surprisingly, this problem isn’t very visible on the landscape mode. The touch response is good though.
The Liquid Metal comes with Dolby Mobile sound enhancement, allowing users to manually set bass, trebly and other sound effects. You can really feel the improvement when you hook up a good set of headphones and earphones.
The 5MP camera does a pretty good job, both in normal as well as low light conditions. The 720p HD video recording is smooth.
The call quality is a mixture of loud and clear, which makes this comfortable to use even in a noisy environment.
The battery lasted one full day under normal usage load.
Our Take: New is not necessarily better
While the Liquid Metal looks different and has a unique UI, it loses out to the HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy S (S-LCD version) in terms of sheer performance.
You can consider the Galaxy S (S-LCD version) or the HTC Desire, which agreed are slightly old, but offer great performance still.
Specs
Quad Band GSM networks
3G capable
4G capable
800MHz Scorpion processor
3.6 inch display
480x800 pixels
5MP camera
720p HD video recording
MicroSD up to 32GB
Wi-Fi/Bluetooth
Android 2.2 preinstalled
Breeze UI
1500mAh battery
Pros:
Rather unique looks
Very good build quality
Good battery life
Dolby Mobile sound enhancement enhances audio listening via headphones
Camera much better than expected
Cons:
Breeze UI feels over-customized after a certain point
The curved chassis makes on-screen keyboard uncomfortable
A bit thick and feels heavy
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