Acer Liquid Mini

Design
The Acer Liquid Mini looks great and its curved edges will stand out in any situation. The phone is black, but the top and bottom sides are sliver and so is the Acer logo which is placed above the screen. You can choose between 5 other color combinations: piano black, lime green, jet sliver, royal blue, and pink. Underneath the display, you will find four regular buttons, which you can use for basic tasks. This device weighs 3.1 ounces, which is about 109 grams, a decent weight for its category. The phone measures 11.04 centimeters in length, 5.75 cm in width and only 1.3 cm in thickness. The 3.2 inch screen makes the phone very easy to handle and it will fit in even the smallest pocket. On the other hand, a small screen means very small resolution: only 320 x 480 pixels, which is much lower than what you see on today’s Smartphone market. The TFT screen will respond to your touches through a capacitive touchscreen and even if the image quality is not exceptional, you won’t complain in most cases. On the right side of the phone, you will find the shutter for the camera and the volume rocker. On the top side, you will notice a lock key and a 3.5 mm headphone jack, while on the opposite side of the phone, a microUSB port is available for charging and data transfer.

Features
If you take a look at the price tag of the Acer Liquid Mini, you will be surprised to see that this phone comes with a 5 megapixel camera. You can activate it with the shutter button. The picture quality is quite impressive if you are snapping photos in the right conditions. On the other hand, if you are looking for a phone that can go against a professional camera, this isn’t it. If you want to go into video mode, the phone will offer you recordings of 720 x 480 pixels, which is again lower than most Smartphones, but not surprising considering the price you pay for it. On the bright side, you will get 30 framers per second, which is definitely a good thing.

The processing power is set at 600MHz and the phone has 512MB of RAM. Unfortunately, even with Android, this is not enough to keep things running perfectly smooth, so you might run into a few problems if you open too many applications at the same time. Movie playback is relatively smooth, so the only problem with the image quality is the lack of a larger screen. The 2GB microSD card offered by Acer is not nearly enough for storing movies, so you will have to buy a larger one if you want to take full advance of what this phone can offer. You can go up to 32GB, so you will have enough free space for quite a few movie and music files.

Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube are preinstalled on the Acer Liquid Mini, so navigating around town and check your emails can be done easily and without too much hassle. There are a few other apps you can use if you want to view documents or listen to music, but for everything else, you will have to go to the app store and start searching for the appropriate software. Once you start downloading what you need, you will be surprised to see that this small phone can offer download speed of up to 7.2Mbps in 3G. This is a great feature, so internet browsing will be a breeze most of the time. The only problems will appear because of the low processing power. This means that flash content can’t be displayed and your phone will slow down on heavy pages.

The touch screen makes up for many things that are wrong with this phone. Any action will register clearly, navigating through the menus can be done with no problems, and even texting is not an issue once you get used it. This is one of the best things about this phone, so if you just want a device that you can use on a day to day basis for a little bit of everything, this might be it.

Pros and Cons
In the end, the Acer Liquid Mini is definitely an interesting device to say the least. The design makes it look special among other Smartphones and the built quality is above average. If you want to go online, this phone won’t hold you back and you will enjoy the experience most of the time. You can also take some high quality pictures with the 5 mp camera and the video quality is not awful either.

On the other side, the screen is a little small and the image quality is far from perfect. If you decide to expand the memory card to 32 GB for watching movies, you have to make sure that 3.2 inches is enough for you and that you are happy with the low resolution and overall poor viewing quality. It is not the worst screen in the business, but many other Smartphones can offer better results in this department.

Conclusion
The Acer Liquid Mini is a great phone for the price you have to pay for it. You can listen to music, watch movies, take pictures, browse the internet, and navigate around the city and you will only have to ignore a few minor inconveniences. If the size of the screen is not a deal breaker for you, this phone is excellent.