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We all raised our eyebrows at the Acer Liquid when it arrived, and we were especially excited by the premise of the first Android phone to rock a 1GHz processor.
Early tests we ran on it seemed to confirm our suspicions - it was nigh on impossible to make the phone crash or judder, such was the awesome processing power.
We liked
The Acer Liquid is a decent device to hold in the hand - while the plastic chassis is a little flimsy feeling, and the buttons a little low quality for our tastes, the overall shape and build is good.
When the phone is in comfortable territory, it pretty much flies along in terms of application management - we were able to run multiple programs at once with little hint of a problem.
We liked the spinny things at the sides too - being able to see your bookmarks and media files visually was a lot of fun and the kind of thing we were expecting from the Android platform.
And seeing RoadSync included was pretty cool as well - the ability to receive your work emails and calendar information expands the Acer Liquid's range from a simple mobile device into something that can actually be useful in your day-to-day working life.
We disliked
The problem with the Acer Liquid is that while the above elements are great, only RoadSync didn't cause us any grief when using the phone.
The messaging function was beyond irritating - the lack of auto-corrected text is irritating (despite a promise of such a feature in the settings), the bug that means you have to force the keyboard to open in threaded conversations is a real rookie mistake and we found ourselves not wanting to text on the Liquid.
And while most of the time the phone would function really easily and cope with most tasks, there were far too many instances of Android crashing and asking us to wait while it sorted out the issue - not cool on a phone with such a powerful processor.
Verdict
While most of the early promise of the Acer Liquid is realised, a lot of it isn't and that's a real kick in the teeth for a phone we had real hopes would be the dark horse of the Android world.
Perhaps a number of the issues can be sorted out with firmware updates - the HTC Hero managed to polish it's reputation with this, but the Nokia N97 didn't - and given the limited profile Acer has in the mobile world it can't afford such a slip if it's to get a good word of mouth review.
While the overall package is actually fairly slick and functional, this certainly isn't the phone to upset the natural order in the mobile arena, and we can only hope future Android handsets from Acer (many are promised in 2010) will manage to take things to the next level.
