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Acer Liquid e early review: Android 2.1 is a liquid asset

The Acer Liquid e has a silly lowercase letter name stuck on the end, but it also packs in Android 2.1, the latest Google operating system

Richard Trenholm
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
Richard Trenholm
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As Mobile World Congress draws to a close, we tried out the last of Acer's crop of new Android phones: the Acer Liquid e.

The Liquid e is the follow-up to the Liquid, except with a silly lowercase letter tacked on. The onscreen keyboard has been tweaked, the dictionary has been expanded... oh sorry, we nodded off there.

But we woke up again as the Liquid e offers Android 2.1, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system. Being an Android phone, the Liquid e includes all manner of Google goodness. The browser is Google Chrome, it syncs your stuff to the cloud with Google Sync -- and to your Acer computers with Acer Sync -- and Gmail offers push email. Google Maps and Street View are built-in.

The phone is dominated by the 89mm (3.5-inch) touchscreen, which is capacitive and zippy. The Liquid e looks like a slab of a phone, but it's actually comfortable to hold. It's all screen, which is particularly useful when you flip it into landscape orientation and fire up the YouTube player or type a message.

The processor is the same underclocked 768MHz Snapdragon chip in the Liquid, which is a shame. We always like a speed boost. A 5-megapixel camera captures snaps, and records them to microSD. There's a mini-USB port and 3.5mm headphone jack too.

Click 'Continue' to flow through our gallery of the Liquid e in action.

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Access functions by dragging the home button up from the bottom of the screen.
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Photos can be viewed in a wall of thumbnails.
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The accelerometer knows when you've turned the phone sideways, flipping pictures and the onscreen keyboard.
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The phone packs 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth.
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One of the apps built-in to all Acer phones is urFooz, which creates little avatar pictures to represent you on the Web.
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You can choose haircuts, clothes and all sorts for your urFooz fella. Crave is a Pisces.
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The Liquid e also comes in red.
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The application interface is the bog-standard grid of icons, which you can drag up and down with a finger.
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Save your favourite apps to the home screen for quick access, as well as easy access to options such as Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. These are set on top of fancy animated wallpapers, like this soothing view of softly drifting leaves.

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