update: here is a link showcasing Acer Liquid’s photo camera capabilities. All the photos were taken and then simply uploaded through the phone’s Picasa. The photo test went pretty well and as you can see the camera is above average under proper lighting.

It’s been more than a week since I’ve had my new phone, the Acer Liquid. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I had been inclining towards Acer’s smartphone (the Acer Liquid) despite competition from Motorola Milestone and HTC’s Google Nexus. The choice was made mostly due to the more than reasonable pricing of the Acer Liquid as well as better battery life.

Since battery life and virtual keyboard responsiveness have been issues of debate among reviewers, I will draw a line from the start and say that Acer Liquid’s battery life is better than Nexus and the Milestone, but only in the Asia (AAP) version of the phone.Also, the AAP version of the firmware has a great virtual keyboard. The European and American versions of the phone (EMEA), have an atrocious battery life and a horrible responsiveness of the virtual keyboard.

Needless to say, my phone comes from Asia (from Honk Kong to be precise) and I consider it to be a great piece of technology that’s only limited by lack of some of my favorite applications (no Android version of Yahoo Messenger at the time of my review, for example).

To start with, battery life! The battery on Acer Liquid counts 1350 mAh and on an average use (meaning about an hour of phone calls, a few hours of wireless access, a few minutes of gaming, several hours of music, couple of photos taken, an hour of GPS navigation through 3G) lasts a little more than a day and a half. For comparison, a colleague’s Milestone doesn’t last a day with the same amount of use. I don’t have access to a Nexus, but since the theoretical declared standby is nearly half that of the Liquid, I would consider the Google Nexus unusable under these conditions.

Also, both the Android settings and the Acer settings offer you many ways to preserve battery life (forcing 2G connections only, disabling GPS, disabling data through the mobile network and forcing it only through wireless connections, disabling wi-fi notifications of new networks, disabling wi-fi entirely, etc) all of them very useful, especially when you’re traveling and you may not have access to a plug/computer for recharging.

For some tips, I would suggest you to limit the use of 3G networks unless you’re navigating with GPS (3G has faster position updates and increased precision). Also, you should keep an eye on what applications you install. For example, I had a very bad experience with Twidroid (the most popular Twitter client for Android) which although it offers  you and option to not load the application at boot time (and thus keep it running), that option does not switch off and the application always loads – and even though notifications may be off, the application will still consume battery life.

The ergonomy of the Acer Liquid is the one thing I would consider a downside. First of all, it’s made of plastic, with a plastic back that you have to pull in order to access the battery, the SIM card and the SD card. I’m pretty sure that a harder shock or pull could tear the back casing apart. Also a great downside is that for accessing either the SIM or the SD card, you must always take out the battery (not only the back cover).

Aside from this, the 3.5mm jack is situated on the “top” of the phone, suggesting it is meant to be carried like that. However, in standby the clock is displayed on the bottom of the phone which means that everytime you want to check your phone you have to extract it all the way from the carrying pouch Acer provides (while phone and sms are notified by a couple of flashing lights on top – would’ve been nice for Acer to have added a clock there too).

On a more positive note, the on/off/standby is ideally positioned 3/4 way up on the left side of the phone, falling right under your index finger (if holding it with your right hand) or thumb (if holding it with your left hand). The volume controls are positioned opposite the on/off/standby switch, on the right side, so also easily accessible.

The camera button is positioned 1/4 way up on the right side, completely unreachable if holding the phone normally, but ideally accessible if holding the phone tilted at 90 degrees (landscape) which is actually the way the camera was meant to be used, allowing much better stability and accuracy.

Aside from this, Acer has given up any other physical controls, allowing for a bigger screen without making the Liquid very bulky. Surely, the 135 grams weight is also due to the all-plastic built, but to be honest, if you take good care of the phone then it’s a fair trade-off.

When it comes to functionality, the Acer Liquid is damn snappy! It’s SnapDragon processor runs only at 768 Mhz but it’s much faster than the Motorola Milestone. Also, when held in landscape mode, the virtual keyboard unleashes its power, allowing for very fast typing.

Here, Acer has no merits – it’s all in Google’s Android since Acer did not change anything. All applications I tried ran without issues, without exceptions.

Acer Liquid is definitely the bang for the buck in the Android world at this time. Good hardware, good software, all at a fairly cheap price. Right now, you can get Acer Liquid in its Asia version at a price of about $400 (400 US dollars). The European version is a bit more expensive but as I mentioned before, it has various severe issues which make it not worth the price.

Truly, I would only give up my Acer Liquid in exchange for Motorola’s Motoroi or Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X10, both of which have not yet been launched.