Acer Liquid Android phone hands-on: Wi-Fi syncing and app store on its way

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Acer phones haven't done much to set our world on fire, since it bought E-Ten and started firing out smart phones, but the Acer Liquid might just change that.

This Android phone rocks the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which we've only seen with one arm tied behind its back in Windows Mobile phones such as the Toshiba TG01. With the much more luscious Android operating system, as well as Wi-Fi and 7.2Mbs HSDPA for fast downloads over 3G, we should be able to open it up and see what it can really do.

It'll also be the first Android phone to have a WVGA screen, thanks to the fact it runs the latest 1.6 Donut release of Android, which supports different resolutions.

Acer told us the Liquid will support two methods of syncing, which should keep your ducks in a row. The first is an enhanced version of the Google syncing found on all Android phones. As well as syncing your Google email, calendar and contacts, the Liquid will have the option to sync your Outlook email, calendar and contacts and automatically upload your videos to YouTube and your photos to Picasa -- essentially making Google's media services into a backup location for your vids and snaps.

Acer's also used its mastery of the PC to create a new kind of Android syncing we haven't seen before. Called Acer Sync, it allows you to pair the Liquid with any Windows PC over the same Wi-Fi network. It'll require you to install some client software on the computer, but it means you can backup and sync to your computer any time it's on the same Wi-Fi network as the phone, without a USB or Bluetooth connection. Acer wasn't able to tell us if it would back up your Android apps, which we think is a much-needed feature for Android fans, but it did say it would support pairing with multiple PCs.

We also heard that an Acer app store is in the works, to increase the handful of custom widgets and apps that come pre-loaded on the Liquid, such as streaming-music app Spinlets.

We can expect to see the Acer Liquid in shops in late November, but we don't know what networks it'll be moistening, or how much we can expect to pay.

Click 'Continue' for a wet and wild ride through the Acer Liquid.