ACER LIQUID STREAM S110 ADVANCED AND SMART

It is always interesting getting an Acer smartphone to review. Where many other phone manufacturers seem to have a particular area locked down, Acer is the new kid on the block, attempting to put its own value slant on the market.

In this case, it is the Acer Stream S110, an Android 2.1 powered bit of kit packing enough features to put it on par with the likes of the hugely popular HTC Desire, which is both good and bad.

The Stream has essentially the same screen, an 800x480 pixel AMOLED 3.7-inch display capable of displaying 16 million colours. When watching the supplied Final Fantasy VII film clip, it was plain as day to us just how clear and crisp its picture is.

Taking our test game Replica Island for a spin was similarly impressive, the game looking as it should - bright and vivid. If you are intending on using your phone for films on journeys, you would be foolish to dismiss the Stream.

In fact, another little trick up the Stream's sleeve is Dolby Mobile, further enhancing its playback capabilities. Listening to La Roux’s In for the Kill via mid-range Sennheiser earphones presented us with one hell of a soundstage - the music beautifully reaching our ears. We heard sounds in songs we did not know existed, partially down to a 3.5mm jack allowing for real headphones.

Films were, again, all the better for the presence of Dolby’s sound jiggery pokery. As Bahamut - a dragon summon from the aforementioned Final Fantasy film - swept past the screen, the swoosh of its passing is delivered from left to right as it would in surround sound.

Obviously a mobile will always struggle to beat a dedicated 5.1 or 7.1 home system, but lugging that on a train then finding a power socket is not really an option, and in fairness, the combined efforts of the screen and sound are more impressive than we thought, easily immersing us into whatever we were watching.

So a new Android-powered handset from Acer popped up at IO last week -- the so-called "Liquid Stream," which would presumably succeed the Liquid and Liquid e in Acer's lineup.

AndroidGuys is reporting that the phone is currently running Android 2.1 (which we'd hope would morph into 2.2 by release) paired with a Snapdragon core and a 5 megapixel camera capable of 720p video capture, so it's the "5.0 Megapixel HD 720p" inscription on the back of the diagram in this FCC filing for a phone called the Acer S110 (along with the obvious similarity in shape) that's allowing us to deduce that these two bad boys are one and the same. Android France has it pegged for October -- and it's got 850 / 1900MHz HSPA, so we could theoretically see a few land