Acer Liquid Metal arriving from future to terminate you in October

The Acer Liquid Metal smart phone is real, and will be coming out at the end of October.

An Acer spokesperson has confirmed that the Android 2.2 device will hit the UK at the end of next month, according to Electric Pig.

This likely confirms that the images of the phone we saw pop up on a Russian blog last week are real, and that it's based on the design of the Liquid E, with a trimmed aluminium case.

Other than that, the unconfirmed specs we could see include a 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen and 800MHz Qualcomm processor. It might also carry a 5-megapixel camera with an LED photo light, and Bluetooth 3.0, which doesn't suck as much battery as previous versions.

Acer, better known as a PC maker, has been releasing phones regularly. The Liquid E has shown it can do a decent Android phone, although it still continues its strange obsession with Ferrari-branded versions.

Rival Taiwanese company Asus is also trying to make an impact with smart phones, teaming up with Garmin to build phones with sat-nav built-in. Earlier in the year we saw an Android version. It's also set its heart on Windows Phone 7, with a leaked prototype running the upcoming OS spotted last week.

The Liquid Metal hasn't caught the imagination of the UK phone networks as of yet, with no availability announced. But this phone looks very sexy from the pictures, and with the Terminator 2 reference is a canny piece of marketing, perhaps taking a hint from Google with its Nexus One homage to Blade Runner.

Acer is a newbie to the smart phone arena, of course, and it remains to be seen whether it can make a name for itself and take people's eyes off phones made by the likes of HTC -- another Taiwanese company with a trackrecord of stunning Android handsets such as the HTC Desire.