Acer has been working hard to put its name out there on the mobile phone map. Already known as a computing brand, its forays into the mobile world seem to have gone two steps forward, and taken one step back, but Acer has been slowly but surely making progress. And with the launch of the Liquid Metal it may finally have arrived with the big boys.

First impressions

Like its predecessor, the Liquid E, the Liquid Metal has a curved chassis, all smoothly coated with a metallic finish. And while the Liquid E felt a bit cheap, the Liquid Metal has the feel of a tougher handset. It has been designed to fit in the hand, and it does feel very comfortable to hold. It's called the Metal because of its trim and the aluminium back cover. While this looks great and adds a touch of class, it does get rather worryingly hot when charging.

The touch-screen is of the more desirable capacitive type and measures 3.6 inches. It reacts very well, and each time you press an icon or virtual key it answers with a short vibrating pulse.

User friendly

The Liquid Metal is the first of Acer's phones to run using Android's latest 2.2 Froyo incarnation. We'll get on to that below, but first we must say how much we like the user interface Acer has added. The Taiwanese mobile maker has really come at it from a new angle.

For instance, even if the phone is locked, it is possible to swipe between the five home screens, each of which displays a number of shortcuts and icons. This theory has been applied to all the phone's features - apart from the music player. This, amazingly, can be used by pressing play even if the device is locked - which leaves the way open for music to suddenly start coming from your pocket at inopportune moments! If you want to get to the main menu when your handset is locked, you have to peel open a dog-eared page at the base of the display. It's a novel and rather sweet way to unlock the screen and looks pretty good too.

Once you've unlocked your screen, you'll be presented with three home screens - one for time and date, one for media such as video, music and downloads and the third that offers 3D thumbnails showing most used or most recently viewed pages and features. Click on any of them and you'll be transferred back to that screen.

On all three home screens there are eight menu icons that sit along the base of the screen in two rows of four. The icons are customisable, so you can add your most used features, although many Android fans will be put off by the inability to drag and drop favourite shortcuts and icons straight into the home screen. If you want to get to the rest of the menu, you have to drag up the collection of eight icons. They will stay static, but anything below them is capable of being swiped from side to side, and apps you get from the Android Market will be added as appropriate.

Above the drag out menu is the notifications bar, which shows any emails or messages, and also allows access to Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS settings. It was a tad fiddly and we found ourselves opening the menu by mistake on more than one occasion.

Getting social

Acer has also made great efforts in achieving social networking integration. While other phones manage to synch all contacts, Tweets and Facebook updates into one news feed, Acer's innovative Social Jogger does it in its own way. When you're logged in to your numerous social networking accounts, a jog wheel on the right side of the display can be used to let you switch between them. It is even possible to add in a particular friend's feed if you so wish - although it seems a bit stalker-like to us!

But the jog wheel has another surprise - you can turn it manually, or you can set it to auto-turn at whatever speed you want, so your numerous photos, links and Tweets appear automatically. We did find the feeds a touch small, so you may find you have to click on some to read all of a message, but generally it's a really nifty attempt at doing something a bit different with social networks.

As we mentioned earlier, the Liquid Metal runs Android 2.2. This gives the added benefit of Flash video (you'll have to download an app from the Android Market first), and it is also possible to save apps onto a microSD card (which you'll need to buy separately). You can also turn your handset into a Wi-Fi hotspot. We've been told that with version 2.2, everything runs five times faster than it does on devices running Android 2.1, but we're not completely convinced about this. Sure, the Liquid Metal is no slowcoach, but in fact we found the A-GPS took some time to get a fix (this might be due to the 800 MHz processor on board). Having said that, navigation is an excellent facility, offering voice navigation for pedestrians and drivers (again you'll have to download a free app from the Android Market to facilitate this), and Google's latest mapping facilities.

The verdict

The Liquid Metal is definitely the best handset from Acer so far, but it does have a lot of heavyweight competition - in the shape of HTC, Samsung and Apple phones. While they all produce better-equipped devices, Acer has a few tricks of its own up its sleeve, most notably that the Liquid Metal can be had, SIM-free, for £299. When you take a look at the prices of its rivals - the Samsung Galaxy S is £400, the iPhone 4 £499 and the HTC Desire HD, £499 - the Acer Liquid Metal becomes even more desirable.