Acer Liquid Express deals & review

The Liquid Express is a mid-priced smartphone that is available on the Orange network. Manufactured by netbook giants Acer, the phone boasts a slick design and a slew of nifty features including NFC. All of this is underpinned by Google's Android operating system.

This is a nice-looking phone, its sharp corners and sweeping curves enhancing its distinctive, compact design. The front panel is minimally styled; the 3.5 inch touch screen has three simple buttons underneath it, while the rear of the phone features a camera and the manufacturer’s logo in silver. The rest of the casing consists of a matte black finish. Volume controls are on the side of the phone, while the top and bottom panels hold the headphone jack and micro USB port respectively. The whole thing feels simple, clean and modern.

One feature that Acer have been promoting heavily with this phone is Near Field Communication (NFC). NFC is a new set of standards for radio communication between smartphones and other devices. Applications include contact-less payment, file sharing and network gaming. Pairing is a lot quicker than with Bluetooth or WiFi and communication is possible with unpowered NFC chips (or Tags) found in smart posters. NFC is not new technology; it builds on RFID standards that have been around for a number of years and early adopters of NFC include Nokia and Samsung. With new applications like Google Wallet (for contact-less payments), NFC is set to really pick up over the next year or two. The Liquid Express is also packed full of more traditional features such as WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, MP3 and Video Support. There is also a compass and an accelerometer inside for good measure.

The phone runs on a powerful 800 MHz CPU and comes loaded with Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). The 3.5 inch screen has a resolution of 320 x 480 and can display 256K colours. This is excellent for mobile gaming and viewing photos. The camera is a 5MP effort that also boasts geo tagging and an LED flash. It would have been nice to see a front-pointing camera as well though. The battery has a standby time of 20 days and talk time of 6.6 hours. All in all this is a nifty little phone that packs a powerful punch.

Like all Android devices, this phone is extremely intuitive and vastly customisable. With access to the Android Marketplace straight out the box, it’s easy to populate the handset with apps for whatever function you care to think of. The NFC feature, while captivating for the more technologicaly-minded, has yet to really come into its own as there are only a limited number of other devices that use NFC. This is set to change quickly though with large manufacturers like Samsung adopting the technology and even Apple looking at ways to include NFC in their products.

Samsung's Wave II and Galaxy W are both low-cost phones that feature NFC technology. The Wave does not run Android, so there are less apps available for it. In the higher price band, Sony Ericsson's Xperia Arc S has a much more powerful processor and an 8mp 3D camera, but no NFC capability.