IT Pro Verdict

The Acer Liquid Metal runs Android 2.2 and on top of that sits Acer’s Breeze skin. This delivers a rather different take both on accessing widgets and how a home screen is structured. You'll either love it or hate it. You can drop it and use vanilla Android if you’d prefer, though.The screen is vibrant and sharp, and although the processor isn't the fastest available it's fast enough. Plus, the price is rather lower than other leading edge Android smartphones.

By Sandra Vogel

Published 23 December 2010 In Reviews

Sweep the small, virtual raised corner that sits on each of the widget screens to get into the main part of the interface.

Here you are faced with a main screen divided into three sections. At the bottom are two rows of app shortcuts. Sweep upwards to see the full list ranged across horizontally scrolling screens. The two shortcut rows remain static at the top of the screen, and you can tap and hold to drag any app to this area so that it is available from the main screen.

The upper part of the main screen can be scrolled to the left and right. Scroll left and you can see recently used apps and service, arranged as a carousel of thumbnails. Scroll right and you can see thumbnails of media tunes, pictures and video. The central screen shows the time and date.

In between these two sections is the Android notifications bar. It is a thin strip, but tap it accurately and you get a scrolling array of information and settings options that relate to the contents of the notification bar. You can toggle Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, set alarms, check battery life, set up your portable Wi-Fi hotspot and more. Configuring the Liquid Metal as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot might not be possible though, depending on your network's policies.