A phone powered by atoms

An affordable smartphone with good performance, the Acer Liquid C1 is also the first smartphone based on Intel Atom processor Z2420 to be released in Thailand ahead of the rest of the Asia Pacific region. It was certainly the first Intel Inside smart phone I’d tried and it was quite an experience. 

The Z2420 (code-named Lexington), which was introduced by Intel at CES in early January, is fast and has a clock speed of 1.2 GHz. Acer says it’s the first manufacturer to introduce a smartphone based on the new Intel Atom processor.

The C1 features a fast and responsive 4.3-inch IPS touch screen with 960 x 540 pixel resolution. It comes with a 8 megapixel main camera that’s capability of shooting 5 frames per second in burst mode.

It has only 4 gigabytes of onboard storage though so you will need to get a large microSD card for additional storage.

The C1 runs on Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

The Liquid C1 supports all 3G operators in Thailand. I tested it on TrueMove H’s 850 MHz HSPA+ 3G network. The phone uses an Intel XMM 6265 slim modem with quad-band capability that supports up to 21 Mbps data download.

During the test, I downloaded and installed apps as well as updating my apps very fast. Checking my Hotmail and Gmail accounts was quick and painless and I had no problem updating my Facebook wall or checking friends’ Facebook status. Checking into Foursquare was also fast and I was able to capture and upload my snapshots to my Instagram account in no time.

Web pages were rendered fast. The Liquid C1’s menus and touch-screen were very responsive and scrolling of the screen was very fluid. It played videos smoothly as well.

The C1’s 8 megapixel camera has good quality for a mobile phone, especially in well-lit environments. The camera’s scene mode includes Portrait, Landscape, Night-portrait, Fireworks and Sports. It also allows you to select five colour effects – Mono, Sepia, Negative, Grass, and Sky. You can manually adjust exposure settings with options of plus or minus up to two stops in increments of one stop.

The Liquid C1 also comes with AcerCloud app to allow you to use free cloud storage and cloud-base linking services from Acer.

With the AcerCloud service, you can install more related apps so that you can access documents, photos, videos and other files from a main computer that is linked to Internet. First though you will need to install AcerCloud software and assign it as your main AcerCloud desktop computer.

Acer Liquid C1 can also function as a good MP3 player. I tested it with my Sony premium in-ear headphones and I enjoyed the music quality. Its equalizer setting lets you to choose from several settings, including Classical, Dance, Heavy Metal, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, and Rock. Each setting also lets you further select 3D effect and bass level.

Acer Liquid C1 retails for Bt9,990.

 

      Key specs

 

_ OS: Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich

_ Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz; 3G (HSPA+) 850/900/1900/2100 MHz

_ CPU: Intel Atom processor Z2420 (1.2GHz)

- Modem: Intel XMM 6265 with quad-band capability

_ Display: 4.3-inch IPS qHD touch screen (960x540, 16:9 ratio)

_ Cameras: 8 megapixel main camera at 5 frames per second, AF & LED, 0.3 megapixel front camera

_ Storage: 4GB onboard storage, expandable with microSD up t 32 additional GB

_ Connectivity: Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g/n (/n HT20), GPS / Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, micro USB

_ Battery: 2,000 mAh

_ Dimensions: 127.3 x 65.5 x 9.95 mm.

_ Weight: 140 g