The Acer Liquid MT is a solid mid-range Android device. It comes with an attractive body that weighs only 135g. The front side has a 3.6 inch WVGA screen, with a bright 480 X 800 pixel display. This coupled with a 5MP camera, and 800MHz processor running Android 2.3, makes this smart phone quite a handful! Here’s an interesting peep into the mobile’s specs and features, offered by Mobile Magazine (http://www.mobilemag.com/2011/03/17/acer-liquid-mt-android-smartphone-revie/)
Quick Spec Sheet Check: As a speedy rundown of what else you can expect, the Acer Liquid MT ships with Android 2.2 Froyo, does the HSPA 14.4Mbps thing, and has integrated WiFi-N and GPS. Other highlights include the 5.0 megapixel camera (no front camera), 512MB internal memory, microSD expansion, and the special Acer UI.
A clever inclusion is at the very top of the phone where you find the 3.5mm headphone jack. It may look like any other piece of chrome, but hidden beneath that are three little icons: battery, message, and missed call. This way, you can see if you need to respond to an email or plug into the wall without having to unlock the phone.
A Phone in the Hand Beats Two in the… In terms of first impressions, the Acer Liquid MT is quite the hefty beast. By going with more of a metal finish and choice of materials, this smartphone is decidedly heavier than its plastic-clad counterparts. It just feels heavy and bulky in the hands, which isn’t helped by the sizable bezel around the sub-4.0 inch screen.
If you’ve ever held the BlackBerry Torch 9800 in your hands, then you’ll have a pretty good sense of how the Liquid MT feels. It’s heavy and it’s substantial, which may or may not be to your liking.
A Word on the Interface: I’ve had a shot at a few of the different manufacturer-specific skins for Android. HTC does the Sense thing, Motorola has MOTOBLUR, and so on. The Acer UI is no exception, but I’m not really sure it’s my cup of tea.
For instance, I’ve grown accustomed to holding down the “home” button in order to bring up some of my most recently used apps. That isn’t how this works. When you hold “home” on the Liquid MT, the Acer UI pops up with your missed calls, local weather and so on. Instead, you get back to the home screen, swipe to the side, and see the history of your activity. I suppose this achieves the same thing, but I prefer the “hold the home button” approach.
The app arrangement, on the other hand, is reasonable. You have two lines of four icons each that are “docked” to the bottom of the home screen. When you swipe up to see the rest of your apps, these eight icons remain “locked” at the top. The rest of your apps are then arranged on pages, not unlike iOS.
General Performance: Even though it’s not quite a gigahertz processor, the 800MHz Scorpion processor and Adreno 205 GPU are able to hold their own for most of the daily activities that you’d have on this phone. Angry Birds was smooth, YouTube playback wasn’t a concern, and everything ran quite smoothly.
It’s not really enough to make this phone stand out from the rest of the Android-fueled crowd, but it’s holding its own too.
Conclusion: The Acer Liquid MT has some interesting things going for it. The curved screen is an interesting approach and I like the “hidden” notification lights at the top. Performance is reasonable and it’s among the cheaper Android smartphones when you buy into a contract with Rogers. Having Froyo out of the box isn’t bad either, considering that only the Nexus S is currently shipping with Gingerbread.
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