Acer is not one of the top names in the smartphone industry mostly because they don’t have as many handsets as the competition. One of their Android-running devices is the Liquid which features an attractive glossy white chassis that contrasts the black screen. We are dealing with a compact device that measures 4.52 x 2.51 x 0.5 inches and it tips the scales at 4.76 ounces. It manages to be quite light without feeling fragile.

The front of the device is dominated by the 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen display that has a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. Even though the colors do not pop off the screen as they do on more recent handsets, these still are quite bright and you won’t have any problems understanding what’s on the screen when under direct sunlight.

The touchscreen manages to be responsive enough but keep in mind that you will  have to apply more pressure in order to navigate between the home screens and browse through the lists. The bad news is that there aren’t any multitouch capabilities, not even double tap to zoom.

The UI is pretty much standard Android as you get three home screens that you can customize by adding widgets and shortcuts, plus there is a pull-out apps tray at the bottom of each screen. The shortcut button located below the display will return you to the homescreen regardless of the place on the phone, plus it also has touch sensitive buttons for search, menu and back. On top of the Acer Liquid sits the 3.5 mm headphone jack, while on the right side is the camera shutter and the volume rocker. On the left spine are the power/lock button and a miniUSB port.

The device is running as standard on Android 1.6 so it packs the usual Google services like Google Talk, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps and the official Android Market. Acer also throws in urFooz which allows you to create your own avatar that you can share on MySpace, Facebook as well as other networking websites. It also comes with more useful apps like NemoPlayer, Media Server and Spinlets.

The five megapixel camera of the Acer Liquid doesn’t have a flash and the application seems to be a little bit sluggish. Taking a picture also takes time which means that the photos as not as sharp as they should be. You have the possibility to geotag the photos and also record VGA videos at 20 fps.

It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 768 MHz and packs 256MB of RAM. It has a 1,350 mAh lithium-ion battery that should last for 5 hours of talk time or up to 16 days in standby.