Yesterday, our Italian Tom's Hardware team took lead on a meeting with Acer and was shown the recently announced CloudMobile (S500) and Liquid Glow (S330). To be clear, while the company is well established in the PC market, Acer isn't an established name when it comes to smartphones. CloudMobile and Liquid Glow are supposed to change that preconception.
As its name suggests, CloudMobile is a smartphone that will use Acer's Cloud service, which was introduced back at CES. For those less familiar with the concept, it's similar to Apple's iCloud. In the same way, Acer Cloud allows you to sync data (music, pictures, documents, and videos) CloudMobile with an online server. If this allows you to manage your latest content without having to physically connect your phone.
On the hardware side, the CloudMobile is a midrange Android ICS-based smartphone. It sports a 4.3-inch IPS LCD HD display (1280×720 pixels) 1.5GHz Qualcomm's dual-core MSM8260A Snapdragon, 1 GB of RAM, 8 MP camera, and 16 GB of internal storage. Generally speaking, the latter should provide enough capacity to sync with the Cloud service, but if you need more space, you can reach up to 32 GB via the microSD card slot.
Liquid Glow has a peculiar name and is more budget-minded product, which helps to explain why it employs the same MSM7227A SoC in the Lumia 610. However, Acer pegs clock speed at 1 GHz, whereas Nokia's set its chip at 800 MHz. Like CloudMobile, Liquid Glow also uses Ice Cream Sandwich, but it's slightly physically smaller than the CloudMobile, sporting a 3.7 WVGA display. Considering this is a budget-oriented product, that's to be expected and easily explains why it features 512 MB of RAM, 5 MP camera, 1 GB of internal storage, and NFC chip.
On the performance side, the MSM7227A really isn't in the same realm as the flagship MSM8960 or even the midrange MSM8260A. However, it still capable of providing a fluid Android 4.0 experience. Just don't expect rock star gaming capabilities.
Acer isn't likely to sell these smartphones by the truckload, but it's a good start for a company trying to forge a name for itself in a new market. Though, it's going to a little bit of time before we can actually test these products out. According to the company, we'll have to wait till August before either phone becomes available.
Acer CloudMobile (S500)
Acer Liquid Glow (S330)
