Acer Liquid Mini
In the world of smartphones, names like Acer and Dell are not much known. But they are there, undeniably, like silent sentinels, waiting and watching and bidding their time. Acer’s lineup, though modest, is quite diverse. Enter, the Acer Liquid Mini E310. The phone brings in a vivid splash of color into the drab world of all-black Android phones and does so in style. Hopes are high that the E310 will win over consumers with both looks and what’s running underneath the hood. The Acer Liquid Mini comes with an impressive feature set and an affordable price tag that places it smack at the centre of the budget smartphone lineup. The E310 comes loaded with a Qualcomm 600MHz processor, 512MB of RAM and a 3.2” screen.
Acer seriously jumped ship when it fit a 600 MHz processor in such a great phone. The processor virtually struggles to run the Froyo OS and we can’t even imagine what it would do if it had to run Gingerbread. Multi tasking and on screen animations can bring the phone down on its knees at times. The 512 MB of RAM cannot keep up with the weak processor. Call quality and signal reception are great, however. The standard Li-Ion 1300 mAh battery gives a stand-by of Up to 400 h (2G) / Up to 480 h (3G) and a talk time of Up to 8 h (2G) / Up to 6 h 30 min (3G).
The Acer Liquid Mini is a Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE supported phone. The screen is a 3.2” TFT touchscreen with a resolution of 320X480 pixels and a pixel resolution of 229ppi that accounts for outstanding clarity even in direct sunlight. The phone operates on a Qualcomm 600 MHz ARM 11 processor and an Adreno 200 GPU. The phone has 512 MB of RAM and ROM and comes with an external nicroSD of 2 GB. The operating system is Froyo and can be upgraded to Gingerbread, though we would strongly suggest you not to for reasons to be discussed later. The camera is a 5 MP fixed focus camera with no external flash. Video recording is semi-HD at 480p. It is actually a miniaturized version of the Acer Liquid Metal.
The Acer Liquid Mini is very much the “cut short” version of Acer’s previous and more powerful Liquid E. The phone looks a lot like the Sony Ericsson Experia Pro with a curved battery cover and chrome embellishments. The shape of the phone ensures great ergonomics and a matte finish gives an added grip. The phone is available in five different colors: green, blue, pink, black and silver. We liked the silver better as the color seemed to flow seamlessly from front to back merging with the chrome giving it a classy look. Most of Acer’s handsets tend to be nimble and flimsy but the Liquid Mini came across as a sturdy and solidly built mobile with good quality plastic. The front of the screen has the standard Android home buttons which are capacitive. A button on the top doubles as the power and the lock button. There is also a volume rocker and a shutter key at the side. The screen is great at 3.2” and a pixel density that comes close to the retina display of the iPhone 4. Viewing angles are great
The Acer Liquid Mini comes across as very appealing and jazzy with its curved shape, but as much as we loved it, we couldn’t overlook a slight stutter even in the main menu animations. However, the phone is cheap and if you are not into much multi tasking that the Liquid Mini works great as an actual phone. Display and other features are great, but then again, the negatives outweigh its positives. This is a phone for Android starters, not experts.