Acer Iconia Smart hands-on (photos)

In late November, Acer introduced an unnamed 4.8-inch Android smartphone; it's finally got a name and we were able to get hands-on with the Iconia Smart at Mobile World Congress.

The Acer Iconia Smart is defnitely an attention-grabber with its 4.8-inch touch screen and large size. With a 1024x480-pixel resolution, the display looked sharp and gorgeous, but we were sure that the handset's bulkiness would be a turn-off.

However, we were pleasantly surprised when we picked up the smartphone. Though the Iconia Smart is quite long, it's not that wide, so it's easy to hold and use as a phone. The overall construction of the phone feels quite solid as well.

The smartphone is also relatively thin. Here on the right spine, you get a volume rocker and a dedicate camera key.

The left side features an HDMI port and a Micro-USB port.

A power button and a 3.5mm headphone jack sit atop the device.

The Acer Iconia Smart is equipped with an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash and is capable of recording 720p video. There is also a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video calls.

The Acer Iconia Smart ships with Android 2.3 and runs Acer's own user interface and suite of applications. Compared with some other manufacturers', Acer's UI isn't too heavily customized, and it includes some neat features like the carousel of your favorite Web sites as shown in Slide 2.

Acer says the Iconia Smart provides a PC-like Web browsing experience and supports Flash Player 10.1.

With such a large display, the landscape keyboard is quite spacious.

Here's the keyboard in portrait mode.

The Iconia Smart is optimized for multimedia use with a 21:9 screen aspect ratio and Dolby surround sound. It also has a six-axis sensor for gaming.