Acer Liquid Mini

Editor's Review of the Liquid Mini

We've already seen the Xperia X10 Mini and Galaxy S2 Mini, but it seems Acer is the latest to join the pint-sized smartphone parade. Essentially a scaled-down version of last year's Liquid Metal flagship, the Acer Liquid Mini lives up to its name, offering a dinky Android experience for those wanting to spend an equally small amount.

Design & Build

The Liquid Mini is good for those who don't want a bulky smartphone with its measurements of just 110.4 x 57.5 x 13mm, and at 109g, it's pretty light too. Build quality hasn't always been Acer's strong point, but thankfully the Mini feels solidly put together, and it's elegant rounded chassis makes it nice to look at.

Within its chrome-edged casing is a 3.2-inch touchscreen, which seems fairly small compared to the incoming wave of mammoth-screened Android smartphones. The lowely 480 x 320 pixel resolution proved pretty disappointing too, giving the display a washed out look.

Still, it's not all bad, as the Mini comes equipped with a capacitive screen, rather than the clunky resistive type often found on mid-range Androids. We found swiping through homescreens to be pretty whizzy too, boosted by the 600MHz innards.

OS & Interface

The Liquid Mini arrives running Android 2.2 (Froyo) out of the box, with no word on whether a taste of Gingerbread is on its way to the compact blower. However, a bump to Android 2.3 isn't necessarily needed, as Acer has customized Google's OS with the UI with its home-grown "Breeze" skin.

We're not usually a fan of custom-made overlays, but Acer's tweaked skin was surprisgly impressive. Breeze enables you to personalize your homepage, so that the top half features all your favourite apps, while other handy apps can be scrolled through along the bottom of the screen. Our favourite tweak however is the Cover Flow-style history, letting you scroll through your most used apps and most visited webpages. Acer's UI includes handy social networking integration in the form of SocialJogger too, perfect for those who spend too much time on Facebook.

Multimedia & Storage

As an entry-level smartphone, we weren't expecting much in terms of media, and unsurpringly, we weren't left eating our words either.

The Mini arrives sporting a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, which although sounds good on paper, is nothing to shout about. Although it does the job fairly well, the snapper is lacking both autofocus and flash, causing for dull-looking snaps in lowly-lit settings. Video recording is pretty basic too, capturing footage at 480p. Still, there is the added bonus of being able to upload your low-quality clips directly to Facebook and Flickr.

The handset boasts all the usual media widgets too, including a built-in media player, FM radio with RDS and a 3.5mm audiojack for boosting with your favourite headphones.

At just 512MB, the onboard memory isn't great, although this can be expanded via microSD to 32GB. The handset is sold with a 2GB in the box, too.

Everything Else

It may be an affordable smartphone, but the Acer Liquid Mini boasts both HSDPA and WiFi speeds for surfing the web. The onboard browser works well, although the low-quality screen is an ultimate let-down. Running Froyo, there's also support for Flash-based websites, getting a one-up on Apple's highly-specced iPhone.

We were extremely impressed with the Mini's battery life, as the pint-sized handset packs a 1300mAh juice-box, promising up to 8 hours of talk time.

Conclusion

While there's little wrong with the Liquid Mini, its lackluster screen and measly snapper make it decidedly under-whelming. If you're after an affordable Android smartphone, the Acer Liquid Mini will get the job done, but it just doesn't match up to similarly priced competitors.