Acer, the world’s third largest PC vendor, on Wednesday announced two of its most highly anticipated products with Google’s Android mobile operating system on board, the Liquid smartphone and an Aspire One netbook.
Acer Liquid is a touchscreen smartphone running Android version 1.6, formerly codenamed Donut and the latest upgrade to the software. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset inside the smartphone provides processing power and other capabilities.
The smartphone also includes a camera that tags photos with location information from the built-in GPS receiver, so people know where and when they snapped a shot. Songs and videos can be played on the handheld. Liquid is designed for Internet browsing, and allows high speed Web access through HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) mobile networks.
The smartphone will use a new user interface, Acer said in a statement. Few other specific details were immediately available about Liquid.
Acer chose Android over other varieties of Linux because it has the best connectivity of any Linux OS built-in, said Jim Wong, president of global product operations at Acer during a news conference in London that was broadcast over the Internet.
Acer also offered a further glimpse at its Aspire One with Android netbook.
The device will run both Android and Microsoft Windows, and users will be able to switch between the two simply by clicking to switch OS, Acer said.
Android will give people access to the Web on start up, with just an 18 second boot-up time. The OS shuts down in three seconds, Acer said.
Other details about the new netbook, including when the device might go on sale and how much it would cost, were not immediately available.
