Acer announces Liquid Glow smartphone

The folks over at Acer have revealed details about a new Android 4.0 smartphone, ahead of its first appearance at this week's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

The Liquid Glow will be the latest in a long line of powerful and yet affordable handsets launched by this manufacturer in recent years and it looks like it could do just enough to differentiate itself from the reams of other Android mobiles emerging at the moment.

Annoyingly, Acer has not confirmed what kind of processor will be powering the Liquid Glow, although it should be at least a dual core chip, given the capabilities of Android 4.0.

However, we do know that the phone will have a 3.7 inch touchscreen display, a five megapixel camera and NFC (Near Field Communication) technology onboard.

NFC looks like it will be employed not just to make contactless payments, as is the case with other Android handsets, but to enable a feature called Android Beam. This looks like a wireless sharing portal which will let you transfer media files, contact details and even applications, direct from your handset to that of another user.

The Liquid Glow is likely to enter the middle of the market and is being targeted to appeal to a younger audience, as the list of available colours includes hues called Sakura Pink and Alpine White. A black edition will be launched as well, although even this basic colour is said to mimic a cat's eye.

Acer will be allowing the world's media to put the Liquid Glow through its paces at MWC, but it looks as though the handset will not be arriving in the UK until the middle of the year, which means we are still a few months away from it becoming available domestically.

Any hint that manufacturers are working on Android 4.0 models which are not going to top the market in terms of processing power or price is a good thing, because it will be beneficial for the platform to reach as many people as possible, so that its preceding iterations are less dominant.

Expanding upon the capabilities of NFC chips is also desirable, since at the moment it is still a niche technology, which will take some time to become integrated with the mainstream consumer market. Adding the ability to share content could go a long way towards ingratiating NFC with consumers.