Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Review of the Acer Liquid Mini

The Acer Liquid Mini is yet another mid-range smartphone to be launched that is running Android as an operating system - but this handset weighs in at ?199 so is it definitely worth a look at for those on a budget? As the name suggests, the Liquid Mini is the smaller brother of the Liquid - and has the same sleek lines, albeit in slightly smaller form.The phone is available in 5 colours, although this refers to the back plate, the front face is always black and the edges silver and the whole handset is so sleek that it's a smudge magnet. With curved edges both top and bottom, this makes the phone stand out just a little bit, which is just as well considering the competition.The screen size is a good 3.2 inches, and the touchscreen is responsive, but a screen this size needs a decent resolution and that's where it begins to fall down. A resolution of 320x480 coupled with displaying just 256 colours means that images, icons and type can be blocky and the screen brightness, even when adjusted to the maximum still appeared dim. Powered by a 600mhz processor, and, rather more impressively for a mid-range phone such as this, 512mb RAM is onboard too, it packs a decent punch for the price.The handset is running Android 2.2 (Froyo) with a choice of the standard user interface or the Vanilla UI (a fairly cluttered custom skin that slows the phone considerably) and only real experts can find differences between this and the latest version of Android - Gingerbread. I found switching to the standard interface improved my experience, but due to the weak processor, multi-tasking still slowed to a crawl.As well as the Android Market, the phone comes with a custom app called Jogger; a spinning wheel that integrates your feeds from both Twitter and Facebook, and this is a nice touch for the social networkers out there, although I did find that Twitter feeds took some time to come through. All your networking needs are also taken care of with 3G, WiFi and DLNA capabilities.Rather unusually for a phone in this range, Acer has chosen to use a 5 megapixel camera, where other manufactures have used only 2 or 3. Having said that, although you can take a decent photo in good light, there is no flash, and photos taken in mid-light were poor and grainy in quality which is a bit of a let-down.In conclusion, this is a nicely designed handset that fits nicely in the hand and pocket, and performs well enough for the price and for those that aren't intensive users. Its poor battery life and slow processor will annoy experienced smartphone users though, and there are better Androids in the same price range available, in particular the Wildfire from HTC.As with any mobile phone available, there are also a wide range of mobile phone accessories available too. Screen covers, protective cases and gel covers are all good investments to protect your phone and often can improve the cosmetic look, keeping it safe at the same time.

This article was written by Keith Bates on behalf of Wholesale mobile p

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