Snapdragon Powers the Android in the Acer Liquid A1

While much of the online mobile community has been talking about the upcoming Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 to be released Q1 of next year, we now have the world’s leading laptop maker Acer beating it to its markets with the release the world’s first Android 1.6 smartphone powered by the Snapdragon – the Acer Liquid A1.

Top Class Features

The Liquid A1 can bask in the limelight before the XPERIA X10 or the HTX HD2 gets out.  In the meantime, Sony Ericsson fans dismayed at not having their eagerly anticipated X10 in time for the holidays just might opt for the A1 instead.  It’s a fine alternative alright.  Only short by 0.5 inches from what the X10 has, its 3.5” wide-VGA capacitive touchscreen looms quite large on its equally elegant and slim body just 12.5mm thick and weighing just 135g.  The A1 shares many of the features we’ve come to expect from a high end versatile smartphone.

This is a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G and UMTS on 3G with HSPA data connectivity at 7.2 Mbps for high speed internet surfing and downloading.  Local data connectivity is served with its WiFi 802.11b/g that has an added Acer Sync feature allowing you to synchronize your desktop with the handset over WiFi as well as over its Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR.  You can also sync between your address book, calendar and email with social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.  You can automatically upload your videos to YouTube and your photos to Picassa, making Google’s online media services a virtual remote backup for your media content.

Just like most other upscale smartphones, you get excellent imaging feature with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with geo-tagging thanks to its built-in GPS receiver. Apart from capable multimedia players, the A1 gets what Acer calls Spinlets apps that allow streaming audio and video content. It supports a choice of wireless stereo earphones with Bluetooth 2.1 A2DP support or any high fidelity headphones using its 3.5mm jack.

Rumours that its Snapdragon will be underclocked to 768 MHz are finally confirmed.  While this might easily be feared to cause underperformance when all the other Snapdragon handsets are clocked at 1GHz, there’s also speculation that Acer might have needed to detune the processor to give the handset a longer battery life with all those features tucked in.  You get 5 hours of talk time and up to 400 hours on standby from its 1350 mAh lithium-ion battery. Not bad for a full-featured high end smartphone. But you can expect Acer to come out with the next handset running the newer Android 2.0 OS.

Availability

Acer has managed to ship out the anticipated Liquid faster than most had expected, beating the world’s number one computer maker Dell’s Android MID to the finish line.  It comes just as the more awaited XPERIA X10 running the same Snapdragon and Android 1.6 OS won’t be released until the first quarter of 2010.

Release date is November 28 and can already be pre-ordered in some key European cities like Spain and mobile sites like Clove in the UK have it ready for pre-order at a mere SIM-free price of €286 (€328.90 with applicable taxes)- cheaper than initially thought. Sales package of the Acer Liquid A1 is said to come with a 2GB microSD card and you get a choice of body colors – red, black or white.

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