Hasta La Gadget!

Generic form factor? Check. Default Android skin? Check. Sure, that’s nothing exciting, but the real draw of Acer Liquid’s gonna be its large, 800 x 480 resolution screen (the exact size of which we still don’t know) and its 1GHz Snapdragon chipset. Unfortunately for the guys at Pocket-Lint, they didn’t get to play with the Donut-powered handset long enough to really push those two selling points, but on the bright side they did discover a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and some ISO adjustment options, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and what appears to be a 3.5mm headphone jack. Perhaps more importantly, they nabbed some pictures of the thing powered on and in action. Jealous? Yes, yes we are.

Update: We finally have the first images (above) showing Acer’s customized Android UI and social networking integration (after the break) courtesy of HDBlog.it. It not quite the full-blown replacement a la HTC Sense, but they’ve clearly brought a new bag of tricks in an attempt to make the vanilla OS experience Acer-unique.

[Thanks, Josh]

Continue reading Acer Liquid slips through human fingers, but not before divulging new specs (updated)

Filed under: Cellphones

Acer Liquid slips through human fingers, but not before divulging new specs (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At long last, some apparently definitive details on Samsung’s i5700, the handset formerly known as Galaxy Lite and now reportedly called the Spica. Italian site Cellularmania has a pretty exhaustive hands-on gallery and a much-coveted list of specs for the lime green HSDPA Android vessel. We’re looking at a 3-inch AMOLED screen with 384 x 240 resolution, a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, 1500 mAh battery, accelerometer, GPS, FM radio… and yes, sad but unsurprising, it’s soft-rocking a 528MHz Qualcomm processor. Unlike our last glimpse, there now seems to be that requisite Android home bottom on the right side of the lower panel, but no such luck for any trackball. We’re also lacking price or release date details for any region, but at least for US enthusiasts, we’re pretty confident that you shouldn’t get your hopes up, given how the i7500 has been relegated stateside.

[Via Slashgear]

Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite renamed Spica, spied and specced in Italy originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The biggest thing about the Motorola CLIQ (aside from the phone’s unwieldy size) is that a company other than HTC finally got around to making an Android phone. The handset is Motorola’s first of what will likely be many entries in the space. The company, it seems, is putting all its eggs in the Google basket, hoping that open-source operating system Android will rescue the manufacturer from what has been, by all accounts, a few rough years.

Fortunately for Motorola (and the rest of us), it managed to get things right the first time. The CLIQ isn’t just Motorola’s first Android phone–it’s arguably the best handset to run the OS thus far. At PCMag, our reviewer gave the device our Editors’ Choice award, thanks to its terrific social-network-friendly skin on top of Android.

Motorola seems to really get the whole point of the OS: Unlike many other smartphone operating systems before it, customization is really the name of the game with Android. Motorola put Sidekick users directly in its sights with the device–a group that may well be a little less loyal to those devices, after this month–and has scored. The CLIQ’s success bodes well for the next Android device from the company, which by most accounts is due out soon for Verizon–which would also make it the first phone with the Google OS on that carrier.

Motorola may be pinning its comeback hopes on the CLIQ here in America, but it obviously has some rather large plans for the world’s largest carrier, too. An admittedly perplexing report has surfaced purporting that the creator of the iconic i776, er, RAZR, is fixing to distribute not one, not two, but eight OPhones to China Mobile next year. For those unaware, OPhone is an Android-based OS tailor made to operate on the aforesaid carrier and cater to its customers, and to date, quite a few other manufacturers have jumped on board over there. Sadly, no actual details about the eight Moto handsets were given, so it looks like it’s just you, a cup of joe and your hyperactive imagination for the time being.

Filed under: Cellphones

Motorola to introduce eight OPhones on China Mobile next year, celebrate intensely originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Palm and Motorola have taken very different paths to get where they are today; one began life as a scrappy Valley start-up founded by a tablet computing pioneer, the other traces its roots to all the way back to the early days of consumer electronics and the automotive industry. Yet somehow, through years (decades, even) of adventure, success, and misfortune, they’ve found themselves in exactly the same situation here in 2009: it’s do-or-die time. Palm, of course, has elected to try its hand at resurrecting the very thing that took it to superstardom in the first place — an elegant, tightly-controlled software platform of its own with hardware to match — while Motorola has thrown virtually all of its remaining weight behind Android in the hope that it can catch a little mojo from Google’s ecosystem.

For Motorola, it’s the wireless equivalent of stepping up to the roulette table, putting what’s left of your depleted life savings on red, and letting it ride just as you see security guards off in the distance coming to throw you — penniless — off the premises. It’s a gamble of the highest order, but it’s also a gamble Motorola’s painfully aware that it needs to take. North America’s only top-five handset manufacturer needs nothing less than magic (and a little luck) to earn its way back into the world’s wireless elite — and that risky play starts right here, today, with the CLIQ / DEXT.

So does the CLIQ pave the way to a New Motorola, or did the RAZR’s checkered legacy ultimately dig a hole too deep to escape? Read on.

Continue reading Motorola CLIQ review

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Motorola CLIQ review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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