Well, Android continues to get still more popular every day, most manufactures are wanting Android on their devices. You love how all manufactures require a part of the pie in the tablet market, well the like with smartphones these days. Acer, is stressful to make their report in this marketplace by expanding their smartphone lineup. With their new Acer Liquid Metal (MT) it features a 3.
1 capacitive t
Acer Liquid MTs design, well, is interesting. Its plastic with a chrome trim. The face and support of the device, are curved, which personally, I did not like. Its also a very thick device for these days, thickest I have seen so far. Its also a fingerprint magnet FYI.
The capacitive touchscreen was a big issue, it simply did not respond properly. It felt like you were touching a compact patch of ice that really, didnt do much. Unfortunately, with the Liquid MT, this is the most crucial part of the device, and it simply didnt go up to our expectations what so ever. Having the presence of the device curved (including the screen) just felt really awkward.
Below the test are four capacitive buttons for Home, Search, Back, and Menu. These buttons are commonly found on most Android devices these days. They worked properly, but same deal, the curvature of this device, just doesnt fit us. There is also quite a great gap between the blind and the buttons. Why? Instead of having this un-used space, it could be exploited to support a larger screen?
On the position of the device, you get the volume buttons, as good as the camera button. The top of the Liquid MT sports a power/lock button, a 3.5mm headphone jack. There are no buttons on the left slope of the Liquid MT. The seat of the device has a microphone port, and a microUSB port for charging/syncing.
In price of device notifications, the top of the device sports three LED notification icons, which light up and shoot for things like missed calls, unread messages, and low battery/charging. They arent too bright, so sleeping with your device isnt an issue ( 1 to Acer for that!).
The Liquid MTs camera is at the back. There is no front facing camera for this model. It features a 5.0MP camera with all the goodies (720p HD video recording, geo-tagging, face detection, and more). It took really clear photos which impressed me. Another thing I really didnt care near the Liquid MT was the battery plate. I ground it really flimsy, and hardly kept falling off. Dropping the device, opened the battery plate each time, even on a diffuse surface. However, behind this flimsy battery plate, you get a 1500mAh battery, which provides superb talk time/standby time. We tested it to the max, and got about 700 minutes of talk time. A SIM card slot and microSD port are also slow the plate, under the battery. The microSD slot supports up to a 32GB card, with a 2GB card provided.
The Acer Liquid MT has a 800 Mhz processor with 512 MB of ram. It comes with Android 2.2.1 Froyo. It is compatible with GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and has very fast information transfer speeds. Also supported are GPS, DLNA and Bluetooth 2.1. Also the Liquid MT sports a Wi-Fi card (b/g/n) and a built-in FM radio. The video player supports many codecs such as MPEG4, H.264, XviD, and WMV.
One thing I found with the Liquid MT is that calls arent really clearly at all. There really isnt any book to your calls. Speakerphone acted really bad, just wasnt loud or clear. It really isnt that full of a gimmick when it comes to calls, which is what a call is primarily for.
Due to the Liquid MT having just an 800 Mhz processor, lagging was an issue. We found that there were many instances of sluggish performance which could be piece of the Acer Breeze UI as well.
Web browsing was quick. The 800 Mhz processor, interestingly, was capable to bear heavily loaded pages. One nice feature was that the Liquid MT was capable to support Flash!
What I really wish Acer would do with the Liquid MT is fighting the curvature look, improve the touchscreen, and get rid of that aweful Acer Breeze UI. Keep things simple, and receive the standard Android UI please. It would be very nice if the Acer Liquid MT had things like the HTC Sense interface, but we recognize that will never happen.
Overall, even as a budget phone, I wouldnt suggest the Liquid MT. Reason being, it cant even perform calls properly (too low in clearness and volume). The test just doesnt cut it. As a MP3 player, or video player, it would be an awesome device. The Liquid MT just needs significant improvement. Overall score: 2/5.
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