Resist Resistive

The E110 sports a 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen. Unfortunately, it’s quite disappointing. As it’s of the resistive variety, you’ll have to apply some pressure to the screen in order for it to register your input, and there’s no multitouch support. As resistive displays go, this one is pretty sensitive. But if you’re expecting the smooth, effortless, gliding experience afforded by a capacitive touchscreen, you might want to look elsewhere. The display is colorful, though the screen resolution is also very low, so everything looks rather blurry and viewing photos won’t be a very enjoyable experience.

The E110 runs Android 1.5. Criminally, there’s no access to the Android Market, so adding new apps to the E110 is out of the question. Seeing as access to the Android app store is one of the best things about the operating system, this is a real kick in the groin.

Acer has preloaded a few apps onto the E110. There’s a Facebook app and Twidroid for handling your Twitter account over a 3G network, both of which do a passable job of keeping you in the loop. The E110 features GPS, should you feel like tracking your progress on a long journey, and a Web browser that will suffice for a quick Google session, but really nothing more. There’s no Wi-Fi connectivity, so your Net-based activities will be limited to areas where you can get a strong signal, and won’t be as speedy as a standard broadband connection.

Navigation Woes

The menu interface itself isn’t too bad. There are five screens of widgets that you can scroll through using the touchscreen. The main menu is accessed by dragging an arrow icon up from the bottom of the screen.

One gripe is that the Call End button locks the phone when you use it for any purpose other than hanging up. On most other phones, the Call End button will take you back to the home screen, so this is something that could take some getting used to and will almost certainly prove annoying.

More frustrating than this is the tiny onscreen keypad used for inputting text. The keypad is really very small, and hitting the right part of the display is a trying process. Unlike other Android handsets, there’s no option to type in landscape mode.

The E110 sports a 3-megapixel camera. Its shots are of a reasonable quality, but the blurry screen won’t do them any justice. Additionally, the camera software is sluggish and changing settings takes a long time–probably longer than your friends are willing to hold a cheery pose. Similar problems abound when shooting video footage.

Hip To Be Square?

The E110′s design doesn’t exactly break the mould. The matte-black and gray finish on our review model (the E110 is also available in dark blue) lends it a business-like feel. The E110 may lack flair but feels solidly built, and at 13mm thick, will fit snugly in your pocket.

A meager 256MB of onboard storage is available. If you want to store anything more than a modest selection of photos and music, you’d have to plug in a microSD card.

The call quality is fine, and we didn’t notice any particular lack of clarity. As for battery life, expect no more than a couple of days’ use before the E110 needs recharging.

Conclusion

The Acer beTouch E110 isn’t very stylish and its low-resolution screen is disappointing, as is its inability to access the Android Market. As it stands, there’s nothing too smart about this budget smartphone. We’d recommend checking out the similarly priced but infinitely better-looking Samsung Monte.

By Luke Westaway

Design

For a smartphone with a large display, the Liquid is reasonably compact. It measures 115 x 64 x 13mm and weighs 135g. The build quality of the device is fair–it doesn’t feel flimsy, but creaking from the chassis can be heard when you flex it. Our review unit was white in color, so fingerprint stains weren’t painfully obvious on its glossy plastic finish. Those opting for the red or black versions of this model should have a feel of the finish at a store before deciding if oily smudges bother you.

The WVGA (800 x 480 pixels) 3.5-inch LCD on the Liquid shows text and images clearly. This is comparable in size and resolution compared with the Google Nexus One and the Motorola Milestone devices. It takes up most of the front face, with four touch-sensitive buttons below. Like many other Android devices, these are the Home, Search, Back and Menu keys. Unfortunately, there’s no directional pad on the Liquid. This, we feel, is a major oversight from Acer.

Though most functions and menu options can be accessed by tapping on the screen, there are occasions during text input when a directional pad is indispensable. A capacitive screen responds to fingertip touches and this is usually not as precise as a stylus tap because our digits don’t end with a pointed tip. This makes it hard to select an exact cursor location when editing text and, in our experience, it takes a few tries each time. The Apple iPhone achieves this by a magnifier that appears when you select text, showing you how you should adjust your fingertip position. But there is no such provision in Android, making the directional pad critical. Acer should have included a software tweak to alleviate this issue if it wants to avoid including a hardware trackball or navipad.

The power button on the Liquid is located on the right side of the device. On the left is where you’ll find volume controls and a camera shortcut. Charging and syncing are done through a mini-USB port on the base and audio output via a 3.5mm audio jack on the top. One complaint we had with the buttons is the flushed nature of the power button which makes it hard to find by touch at times.

One of the most interesting design features of the Liquid is the presence of three LED indications on its top edge beside the audio connector. These are invisible until you get/miss a call, receive a message or require charging urgently. The LEDs pulsate slowly and are discreet yet obvious enough so you don’t miss them when your phone is in silent mode during a meeting.

For memory expansion, the Acer Liquid has a microSDHC card slot that supports up to 32GB cards. This is found behind the back battery cover and requires you to remove the battery to access, which is troublesome if you have content stored across a few microSD cards.

Features

The connectivity features of the Liquid are comprehensive. You get HSDPA for downloads up to 7.2Mbps and HSUPA for uploads up to 2Mbps. Wi-Fi is built-in for use at hotspots and there’s Bluetooth as well as A-GPS for satellite navigation.

Equipped with Android 1.6, you get all the features expected from a smartphone running the Google mobile OS. This includes always-on Gmail, a Webkit-based browser and Android Market for downloading free apps (the paid marketplace is still not available in Asia). What sets an Android phone apart these days is custom software, something Acer has included in moderation. Unlike HTC’s Sense UI which almost takes over the entire Android interface, Acer has chosen to include just a few widgets, apps and tweaks to the address book.

The address book modifications are mainly to do with social networking services. In the case of Facebook, you can link your account with the contacts list. This will then try to match the names and let you see friends’ status updates within the address app. We tried it out and found it a little too fiddly to be useful. For one, names that weren’t an exact match didn’t get linked, so many friends didn’t get included in the setup. Even if a friend was linked to his Facebook account, the presentation of the Facebook element wasn’t obvious in the Contacts app. This is unlike the implementation on HTC devices which clearly put social-networking items in a tabbed interface. Furthermore, when we turned the phone off and on again, the Facebook setting was lost–frustrating because the original setup took quite a few minutes.

Flickr integration was also less than impressive, with an interface that shows a mini browser so you can find an upload email. While it may be useful for those who upload photos regularly, its integration with the UI just didn’t feel seamless and idiot-proof.

Acer included a few custom widgets with the Liquid. Two of these have a fan-shaped layout which is supposed to make it easy to access media files and browser bookmarks. Due to their shapes, they can only be put on the extreme left and right sides of the Home screen. We didn’t find them particularly useful though those who frequently browse through their music and video files may like the media playback widget.

One thing we did really like was the nemoPlayer application. This third-party player has a nice interface for image, music and video viewing. Furthermore, it allowed seamless playback of many video formats including WMV, though this was not listed in the user’s manual as a supported format. Other preloaded applications included a Twitter client, the official Facebook app and a camera effects program, to name a few.

While the software customizations didn’t knock our socks off, the good news is that Acer will be upgrading the Liquid to Android 2.0 in Q2. This will bring new features to the phone including native Exchange support, an improved keyboard and more features in the Contacts app.

The camera found on the Liquid is a 5-megapixel one with autofocus. This worked well and was reasonably responsive for a camera-phone. Image quality was fair as long as you don’t expect the sky.

Performance

Like many of the latest and greatest smartphones, the Acer Liquid comes equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 processor. What makes it different is that the manufacturer has underclocked it to 768MHz from its native 1GHz clock speed to conserve battery life. Comparing it with a Nexus One, we found the latter slightly more responsive. But don’t be mistaken, the Liquid’s no slouch and we expect users to find it fast enough for most situations.

Battery life wasn’t great, giving us 1.5 days of use on a single charge of its 1,350mAh battery. Call quality didn’t disappoint with voices coming through loud and clear and we didn’t face any reception issues. Though not exceptionally loud, the speakerphone worked well and will be useful in situations when you need both hands free.

Conclusion

With a retail price of S$788 (US$555), the Acer Liquid is just slightly cheaper than the Google Nexus One. At this point, if you are in Singapore or Hong Kong, we would say the Nexus One is a better buy thanks to its excellent design, Android 2.1 and most of all, the presence of a hardware trackball.

Of course, if you are not in Singapore or Hong Kong, or prefer to pay subsidized prices through an operator, the Nexus One is not an option. The Acer Liquid has that advantage and, generally, does most things right when it comes to smartphone features. It will be available in March from operators, check with your local telco for exact release dates. Our main reservation is the lack of a hardware navigational pad. See if you can live without it before taking the plunge. We suspect it may be a deal-breaker for some.

By John Chan