Acer has had a few practice runs at making Android phones now and in China last week it not only unwrapped its first 1GHz Snapdragon superphone, in the Liquid line of devices, dubbed the Stream ‘ but it also integrated it into its entire product line with two key steps, a single integrated touch screen interface from PCs to ebook readers to phones, and something it calls clear.fi, a way of sharing content across all of them.
All future Acer products will have clear.fi, which while Acer has not fully explained it, seems to be a way of streaming content from one device to another in the home, with a simple drag and drop.
The Stream phone runs Android 2.1, has 512MB of RAM, 2GB of internal Flash, has an 8GB card bundled and uses a 3.7 inch AMOLED touchscreen and Dolby sound. The idea is that this is a HD video playback phone, which outputs up to 720p and has TV out via HDMI. Having said that, it’s a disappointment that it only has a 5-megapixel camera for creating its own video. The device is 11.2 mm thick and has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, HSPA to 7.2 Mbps, and GPS.
But equally impressive is the Amazon Kindle-like Acer LumiRead ebook reader launched at the same event, with a clear-fi or 3G module to download books. Acer has already signed agreements with Barnes & Noble, the US book company, to link to its eBook store, and with other German and Chinese eBook libraries. It plans French and Italian book deals soon.
Acer LumiRead has a 6-inch display, is just a few millimeters thick, holds 1,500 books and has a reflective e-Ink screen like a Kindle and comes with 2GB of flash and takes MicroSD cards. It also offers an ISBN scanner so you can scan ISBN codes on other books to create your own wish-list and use it to search online libraries. If this is cheap, it will sell big-time.
The new common touch screen format was shown off on the Aspire Z5710 All-in-one PC, the Aspire 5745P notebook and on the Acer Stream smartphone and will also now become standard on all of the Taiwanese manufacturer’s future devices.
The new user interface is said to have smooth animations, in a new fluid 3D interface and using ‘peeling’ gestures, and one tap app loads. It divides the screen into two logical spaces with shortcuts to most frequently used settings on one side and top of the Home screen dedicated to applications history, for quick return navigation.
The Stream also has the Nemo multimedia player pre-installed, Acer UrFooz virtual ‘look-a-like’, and Facebook and Twidroid integrated into the address book. It has a streaming application called Spinlets, from FUHU, a little like a Chinese version of Pandora, which runs inside a web page.
The earlier Liquid phones were a little disappointing with few operator deals, but Acer seems to have got its act together on this new generation and caught up with the new big hitters like Sony Ericsson X10 and HTC Desire and Incredible.
All these devices are expected this year or early next, but no prices have been announced as yet.