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With all this going on, battery life is likely to be quite an issue. Acer supplies the Acer Stream with a fairly generous 1400mAh battery, and it really needs it.
We found that we went from 100 per cent charge to 92 per cent charge in 20 minutes of video and stills shooting – about average, and much better than the Acer Liquid E, which practically gave up the second you switched it on.
However, that's just one example. We drained the battery in half a day during a session of very heavy fiddling with GPS, HDMI output and 3G data.
Most of our time with the Acer Stream was spent being pretty heavy on its power resources and, in everyday life, the average user is very likely to be lighter on the phone.
But, as with every other smartphone we can think of, you're going to need to budget for a daily battery charge, and if you're going to be using this regularly for video, then a midday charge might not be out the question.
However, this is no different to a plethora of other smartphones, the iPhone 4 and Samsung Galaxy S included, so it's not really a negative point.
Like any smartphone worth its salt the Acer Stream has GPS, and like a good Android handset it has Google Maps installed.
That gives you the ability for point to point navigation with spoken instructions right out of the box, rather than having to download them the first time you use Google Maps Navigation.
We found the GPS took a very long time to get its first fix, but thereafter it maintained connections well.
Comparison
The Acer Stream's most obvious competition is the Motorola Milestone XT720 and HTC Desire. Both are top of the range smartphones with a long list of high-end features.
The Desire lacks the rich multimedia capability of the Acer Stream, but it does have what we still consider to be the market-leading user interface, and the Android Market can fill any holes in the media performance.
The Motorola Milestone XT720 shares the Acer Stream's 720p video shooting. While results from both device are far from perfect, the more significant jerky bouts from the Motorola put it behind the Acer Stream in our view.
And we do like the Stream's integrated media player, nemoPlayer as well as the rather super MusicA service.
The Acer Stream is let down in respect of both its rivals by a screen which isn't as viewable in bright conditions, and that, for any serious video watching fan, could be a major disadvantage.
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