Anu Passary
Taiwanese company Acer is heating up the smartphone war with three new devices: Liquid Gallant Solo or the E350, Acer Liquid Glow, and Acer CloudMobile.
The triple smartphone whammy is aimed at giving a fillip to the sagging fortunes of the company. Acer may be the fourth-largest PC maker in the world, but that success has not translated to the smartphone arena. Currently, Acer does not feature in the top five smartphone vendors, and its market share is so small that it falls into the "others" category of most listings.
In the past, Dave Chan, general manager of Acer's Touch business group in China, declared that "Acer will rank among the top 10 smartphone vendors within three years."
Whether Acer succeeds in uplifting its position in the smartphone pecking order and becoming an established player remains to be seen.
Check out the mobilenapps round-up of the three smartphones below.
Liquid Gallant Solo
Acer has not officially announced the Liquid Gallant Solo, also known as the E350. However, an official user guide of the handset, detailing its features, surfaced recently on Acer's official support site. The entry-level Android handset is a single-SIM version of the double-barrel Liquid Gallant Duo (which was up for pre-order on Expanys last month).
The 4.3-inch Liquid Gallant Solo packs a single-core 1GHz MediaTek processor, 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage. It will also sport a 5-megapixel camera and a 1,500mAh removable battery. The device runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. No information on the price is available, but tech gurus estimate that it will be less than the £149 price tag for Acer's dual-SIM version. The handset is expected to make its appearance at the IFA 2012 in Berlin.
Acer Liquid Glow
The Acer Liquid Glow was announced in Feb. 2012 at the Mobile World Congress (MWC). The smartphone recently went on sale in the U.K. and sports a £147.999 price tag for the SIM-free version.
Acer's latest offering has a 3.7-inch 480×800 touchscreen and is available in black and white color options. The smartphone packs a 1 GHz single-core processor, a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, 512MB of RAM, and 1GB of built-in storage space along with a microSD slot. It runs Android 4.0 ICS and also supports Near-Field Communication.
Acer CloudMobile
The Acer CloudMobile, which was unveiled at the MWC, is up for pre-order on Expansys and is expected to launch on Sept. 5. The smartphone has been listed for £284.99 (SIM-free version).
The award-winning CloudMobile sports a 4.3-inch fully-laminated display with a 1280x800 pixel resolution. The impressive 351ppi density makes the display even sharper than Sony's Xperia S's touchscreen. Additionally, the CloudMobile is less than 10mm thick and is designed using Acer's "sleeve DNA" with "soft, wrapping contours which enhance the handheld experience."
It runs a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM processor, which is clocked at 1.5GHz. The smartphone also packs in 1GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space, along with a microSD card support of up to 32GB. It also sports an 8-megapixel camera and runs on Android 4.0 ICS. The NFC-enabled smartphone also has a micro-USB port, DLNA and Dolby compatibility, Wi-Fi, and AcerCloud technology.
At £284.99, it is currently the cheapest HD ready smartphone in the market.
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