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Rogers Acer Liquid E vs Sony X10

by MJSchmidt (aka magicman) http://www.iwantmyonepointsix.com

Rogers started the so-called "Android Revolution" in Canada with the HTC Dream and Magic, two venerable Android devices that have sadly taken different paths. Despite the challenges Rogers faced with Android, and Android customers, they forged ahead with the platform, investing in it as a staple of their device lineup. They've told us repeatedly (and in person) that they are committed to, and excited about, Android, and to that end they've brought to Canada two of the newer (sadly not the newest) Android phones; The Sony Xperia X10, and the Acer Liquid E.

I've had the opportunity to play with both at great length (2 weeks with each) and though the X10 has been available for a while now, wanted to wait to bring you a dueling review, pitting the devices against each other. There is much to recommend about both phones, but some disappointments as well. In the end, you may be surprised by my choice.

First off, let's dispense with the specifications of the two devices.

Sony XPERIA X10 - Android 1.6 (as of 06/27/10)

• 4.7 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches     • 4.0 inches (480 x 854 pixels WVGA TFT capacitive touchscreen, 65K colors)

• 384 MB RAM     • 1 GB ROM     • 16 GB microSD included (up to 32 GB)     • Li-Po 1500 mAh Battery

• Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor     • 8 MP camera with LED Flash

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Acer Liquid E - Android 2.1 (as of 06/27/10)

• 4.52 x 2.5 x 0.5 inches     • 3.5 inches (480 x 800 pixels TFT capacitive touchscreen, 16K colors)

• 512 MB RAM     • 512 ROM     • 2 GB microSD included (up to 32 GB)     • Li-Ion 1350 mAh Battery

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 8250 768 MHz processor     • 5 MP camera (NO Flash)

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1. The Look

Where the X10 is a "fashionable" phone, the Acer LE is a "gadget" phone. If the X10 is "Star Wars" the Acer LE is "Star Trek".

The Acer LE is the Sci-tech "gadget tech" to the "future-chic" of the x10. All black, no shiny metal stuff here. It does not look as overly large as the X10 does. Feels "tall" but "narrow" where the X10 felt like it used all it's space from side to side, even though it didn't. This is most evident in the screen. Because of the black space to either side of the screen, it has the affect of making the screen look really narrow. It fits comfortably enough in the hand, and is fairly easy to use as far as its design goes. This phone will not stand out in crowd, or be noticed really as anything other than another large form smartphone. Of course maybe all-black, stealthy, and "under-the-radar" is what you want?

The Xperia X10 feels like a “big” phone in your hand, though the dimensions aren't that much different from the Liquid E (it's a bit taller). It also "feels" thinner. Despite its size, however, it’s surprisingly light! The Xperia X10 looks like a nice phone. while aesthetics are subjective (like art and music) I think most people will like having and showing off this phone. It has very nice lines, a beautiful big screen, and classy/modern-looking silver/steel highlights. The back cover has a nice slightly “rubberized” (is that the best word?) feel to it. The X10 is a "sexy" and "fashionable" phone compared to the Acer LE.

Advantage: Neither - Looks are subjective. If you want sexy and stylish, the X10 has it. If you want sleek and "techy" go with the Acer LE.

2. The Screen

The X10 has a beautful big screen! 4" of colourful awesome. Great for watching video and looking at photos. If you look close though you can see that the icons aren’t actually “sharp”. They look just the slightest bit “fuzzy” around the edges, but only if you look close. However, I did notice it, so others might as well. There are times when the screen seems a little bit too sensitive, and I was accidentally launching apps without meaning too. That can be annoying!

One other gripe, the X10's screen is so nice and big you can be excused for thinking (erroneously) that there will be more space for icons and widgets. There isn't. This is a shame, because (since they use their own UI anyway) you'd think they might have taken advantage of the extra space to let you have an extra row for icons! Instead, it looks like you have a "gap" between icons and widgets that can seem a little weird. Also, the notification bar at the top seems small compared to other Android phones.

The Acer Liquid E has a 3.5" screen, and as mentioned above, the black plastic to either side has the affect of making it seem narrower than it really is. Don't get me wrong, it's a perfectly good screen, but it won't blow you away compared to the X10. Still perfectly good for watching video and looking at photos, you won't be disappointed there.

Where the X10's screen could be too sensitive, the Acer's screen was occasionally not responsive enough. You will sometimes find you have to really press down on the surface to scroll up and down, although swiping left and right didn't seem too bad. There really isn't much else to say about the screen. Not a bad screen, just not amazing.

EDIT (06/28/10): Multi-touch on the Acer LE - I was reminded by a reader that the Acer LE supports Multi-touch whereas the X10 does not, and Sony Ericsson has declared that the X10 is actually incapable of supporting Multi-touch. When using the Acer LE pinch-zooming in Maps and with web pages became so second-nature to me that it didn't even really occur to me when I was writing the review, but the truth is, it's an awesome thing to have. Of course, it's not necessary, so while it would be nice to have it on the X10, the Acer LE would be a better phone, imo, if it had a nice big screen like the X10 (of course then the battery of the Acer would probably suffer more. Argh! Stupid reality... why can't you be more like Star Trek?!)

Advantage: Xperia X10 - Big and beautiful screen fills the device! Just wish it wasn't so sensitive. (EDIT: and would be nice if it had multi-touch).

3. User Experience

The X10 comes with Android 1.6 (really? REALLY? C'mon...) which apparently will be updated to at least 2.1 at some point near the end of 2010. Sony uses a "skin" or "UI" on top of Android called "UXP" (UX platform). You can set this to be your default "Home" which means you will have the Sony TimeScape (Twitter, Facebook, etc) running all the time on your home screen. You can, instead choose to use the TimeScape widgets, or launch it as an application. The included default wallpaper, as well as the TimeScape and MediaScape, all use a uniform and stylish "blue" theme.

The X10 is a fast phone, with 384 MB of RAM, and is, for the most part, responsive, although the TimeScape updates could sometimes be slow. I also found that TimeScape seemed to make the phone a little "slow feeling" but that might just be me. (More on TimeScape and MediaScape later, by the way). Personally I find the “unlock’ sliding graphic kinda of lame, but some people like it. Just a personal thing, I prefer pressing the hard button on my phone to unlock, but I can see how an actual software on-screen unlock can actually be more secure since you can’t accidentally unlock it. (I prefer pressing the "menu" hard button on my Magic to unlock it. It is so much easier to do this in the car while driving with the phone in a cradle than having to try to slide something onscreen!!!)

The Acer LE has Android 2.1 at its release (Thank Cthulhu!) and will apparently be updated to 2.2 by the end of the year. (According to RogersMary, Rogers should be receiving the update from Acer to test in Q4). Fortunately Acer hasn't bothered with any stupid UI slapped on over Android. Personally I hate UI's forced on to us by manufacturers, but that's a post for another day (Having a custom UI means having to wait for the manufacturer to update their UI to work with newer versions of Android. That means you have to wait longer, if you ever get it at all). So, vanilla Android it is, but that doesn't mean it's boring, it just means you'll have to spruce it up yourself. Acer has included some pretty cool/functional widgets for webpage thumbnails and media, but I'll get to those later on.

The Acer LE's power button is on the left side, instead of the top, which can be both a good thing and a bad thing. Whether you are holding the phone in your right or left hand, you can wake the phone by easily pressing the button with thumb or finger. The problem comes when you accidentally squeeze the phone a bit (happens occasionally) while trying to do this, and inadvertently hit the volume rocker as well. Or, conversely, you might be trying to hit the volume rocker and get the power button at the same time, putting the phone to sleep! It's very annoying when your phone rings, and as you pick it up to answer (holding the phone as you normally would) you accidentally hit the power button! This turns off the screen and the sound. Great when you want to silence the ringer and ignore a call, but annoying when you were trying to answer the call, and now need to start swiping at the screen to get it back.

The Acer LE has the same processor as the X10, but it is underclocked. It does, however, have more RAM (512 compared to 384). The Acer never felt sluggish to me, no matter how many apps I was running, and though I installed a task manager app to kill running apps, I probably didn't need to. Even with scores of apps running, I still had lots of memory left over!

The Acer LE also, like the X10, requires you to "swipe" an onscreen graphic to unlock it, but where the X10 requires you to do this in an "arc" (which can be made to go left to right or right to left) the Acer does it in a straight line from left to right. It's much easier to do this in a car cradle with the Acer. One strange thing I've noticed about the Acer, when you receive a call, after the call is done and you hangup, it goes back to the home screen. If, however, you make a call, after you hang up instead of going to the home screen, it takes you to the Call History screen in your address book! This happens even if you initiate the call from a one-touch dialing icon on the home screen instead of from your contacts

Even weirder, I've discovered that when the phone is in the cradle (held vertically) the HOME and BACK buttons won't work! (The Acer does not have "hard" buttons on the front like the Magic or X10). This means that if I call home by pressing a one-touch icon on the screen (nice and easy while driving) once the conversation is over and it sends me to the Call History screen, I have to wait until I can safely stop to remove the phone from the cradle and hold it in my hand to press the button. I'm not entirely sure why this should be (something to do with the sensitivity? Does it need pressure at the back of the phone?) but I'm not imagining it, I've tested it repeatedly. This is a big badness when you are trying to safely use the phone while driving. Oddly the "Menu" button works, and occasionally the "search" button.

Another annoyance about using the Acer... when you are in a call, there appears a little "Hold" button at the top left corner of the screen. A couple of times while talking to people, the phone pressed against my face in such a way that it put the call on hold. I guess you just have to adapt by holding the phone differently, but I wish there was a different method for holding a call.

BONUS - The Acer LE has really cool set of glowing icons along the top edge of the phone that light up when you have a new text message or email, have missed a phone call, or to indicate if the phone is charging or charged. These are really handy when the phone is in your pocket or on a desk/table. Without having to wake the phone you can quickly see if you've missed anything. Pretty cool little feature.

Advantage: Hrmmm.... The X10 has those nice hard buttons on the front, which make it safer to use in the car (imo), but it only has Android 1.6. (The OS is a BIG deciding factor for me). I'm also not big on custom UI's regardless of how nice they look or operate, but only because it slows down OS updates. Many people like them, and it helps to distinguish one manufacturer's Android phone from another. The Acer has Android 2.1, and no annoying UI, but those little annoyances can be REALLY annoying when you are in the car driving. Outside of the car, though, they disappear. AND it's a faster phone (imo), so... it's a toss up.

4. Keyboard

The X10’s on-screen keyboard is HORRIBLE!!! Trying to figure it out was driving me crazy, especially to get special characters. The keys seem smaller then the keys on the Magic’s onscreen keyboard by just enough to make it even harder to see what you are pressing, and to type quickly. To get certain characters, like a comma or exclamation mark, you have to double-tap the period or question mark keys, and if you don’t do it just right, you get two periods or question marks. Unlike the Magic keyboard, there is no key to “clear” the keyboard from the screen. Instead you have to press the Back button on the phone. I had to figure this out on my own. Also, when you are typing the phone suggests so many different words as you type (some which have NO resemblance to the word you are typing) that it is unnecessarily overwhelming. Also hard to see, since they are little grey rectangles with small black font. You can switch to the default Android keyboard by long-pressing an input field and choosing it as the default, but it's not much better.

The Acer LE does not have a special keyboard, it uses the default Android keyboard which isn't much better. Neither the X10 or the Acer has a trackball, which can be problematic when trying to edit text (like going back to a particular point), but while the X10's custom keyboard had "arrow" keys to make up for the lack of a trackball, the default keyboard on the Acer does not have arrow keys, since the keyboard was really made for the Dream and Magic.

Advantage: Well... if you plan to use the phone with its installed keyboard(as) right out of the box, technically the X10's has the arrow keys, which gives it a slight advantage over the Acer, but the X10 keyboard is pretty bad. They best option for either phone is to install a different keyboard. A lot of people like to install the HTC keyboard, but I don't believe you can do this right from the Marketplace and might involve rooting (not sure). The BEST option by far (far, far, far) is to get Swype! I have become a Swype convert! For those who haven't heard of it, Swype is a new type of keyboard that allows you to slide your finger or thumb from letter to letter without lifting off until finished your word. Its predictive powers are nothing short of miraculous. You can also use it as a regular keyboard, and this is where the lack of trackball becomes irrelevant. Swype includes a special editing keyboard with arrow keys! At the moment Swype is available as a Beta, and not in the marketplace. You can look for it here. It's free for now, but I don't know what will happen when it's out of beta.

5. Camera

The X10 has a very nice 8 MP camera that does both stills and video. Photo quality was good, and it has an LED flash for indoor photos. My only gripe was the shutter button on the side of the phone. You depress it half-way to focus (which is cool) and then the rest of the way to take the photo. I found, though, that I had to press really hard to get it to depress the rest of the way. I let other people try it and they had the same problem. They thought they'd pressed it as far as it would go, but had to press it harder and farther. This can sometimes add camera shake to your photos if you can't really brace yourself.

The Acer LE has a 5 MP camera, that does both stills and video as well. Really, once you get to 5 MP with any digital camera, you won't really notice a difference until/unless you are printing those photos VERY large. If you're sharing via Facebook, Twitter, or email, 5MP is more than enough. The image quality is otherwise nice enough and comparable. The only real drawback to the Acer is its lack of a flash. Recently Microsoft (while designing their new "Kin" phones) asked common users what sorts of features they really wanted in a phone, and lots of them begged for a flash to make indoor photography actually useful. It's a shame the Acer doesn't have a flash.

Advantage: X10 - While 8MP vs 5MP is kind of irrelevant, having a flash is a big deal.

6. Apps

The X10 comes with two major staples of the Sony UXP experience; TimeScape and MediaScape

TimeScape is a visual display of your Facebook, Twitter, Email (but not Gmail?!), Photos, Missed Calls, Music, and text Messages. Each one has its own screen (swipe left and right to get at them) and each is represented in a “tower” of floating “cards” that you can swipe up or down. You set up your Twitter and FB accounts, and then set the frequency that they will refresh. TimeScape can also be set as your default “Home” screen (or skin, if you will) so that those floating Twitter, FB, or other feed towers are always on screen. This can be cool for people who are all about the social media thing, but that’s not me. Also, the images used in the Twitter and FB tower feeds seem rather “low-res” and not very impressive, and since you can't control what your "friends" (or the people you follow) use as their avatar photos on FB and Twitter, you might end up with some very interesting images floating on your homescreen at any given time.

MediaScape is very smooth, very slick, and very cool. It’s not even a contest between MediaScape and the default Android gallery or music player. This is something I would enjoy showing other people when pulling out this phone! Two thumbs up. (For those who don’t know, MediaScape is a photo gallery, music app, video viewer all rolled in to one, and supports adding online services directly. For example in the photo gallery you can directly add support for FB or Picasa, but apparently not Flickr. What!?! Right?!)

The Acer LE has some pretty cool stuff, like Media Server (which let's you make your phone a wireless server of your photos, video, and music), Spinlets (streaming online music), the Nemo media app (a very cool app like Sony's MediaScape. It's very slick, and nice to use. Just hard to make playlists, though, haven't figured that one out yet), and something called urFooz which lets you make a little "avatar" person that you can use on social networks and "share with your friends".

Nemo, like I said above, is a very nice media centre, and easily competes with the X10's MediaScape. From the main screen (a nice blue fusion kind of look) you can get to Photos, Music, and Video. Each of these has sub-options and a moving ribbon of content. For example, in the Photo area you see a ribbon of your photos scrolling past, below which are options to view photos by Time, Folders, Photo Wall, or Camera Photos. Photo Wall is basically a gallery of all your photos. You have similar option with Music and Video, where you can see the currently playing/selected song or video and a thumbnail, with options like Artists, Album, Playlists, and Songs, or Recently Played, All Videos, and Camera Videos.

The biggest problem with Nemo is playlists for music. The player comes with a default playlist called "Music-to-Go" to which you can add songs from the actual songs as they are playing. The problem is, there doesn't appear t be any way to make a new playlist! In the Playlists window there are NO buttons. When you press the "Menu" button on the phone, the only option you get is to go back to the Music "home". Seems like a pretty big oversight. Of course, you can always download a different/better media app from the marketplace, so, it may not be that much of a deciding factor for you.

The Acer LE also comes with a "Task List" app that looks almost like a very stripped down version of Astrid, but with no real useful options other than listing tasks and setting alarms. You can import and export tasks, but you can't sync them with anything online. I can't imagine anyone will really use this over one of the better options from the marketplace. Acer also gives you Roadsync Calendar, and Roadsync Mail for using with Microsoft Exchange email and calendars. I didn't try them, so I can not comment.

Advantage: Neither - Both phones come with some cool stuff, and most people will choose what they really want from the Marketplace. The Acer has a slight advantage for now because it has Android 2.1, so there are apps you can get on the Acer you can't get on the X10, but once the X10 gets 2.1, there will be no difference.

7. Call Quality

The X10 and the Acer are both adequate "phones". The sound quality when making calls is okay, though the Aver seemed a little quieter, even with the volume all the way up. The Acer seemed to drop more calls when I was inside my office, but this might be Rogers network, I can't really be sure. I don't really make a lot of calls with any smartphone, I mostly use them as mini-computer devices.

Advantage: X10 - but not by much. Like I said, the Acer seemed a but quieter, but not so much that it was a problem. Maybe it was the demo phone I had? Who knows.

8. Battery

The X10: This is an important one. I will tell you right off the bat I had HUGE problems with the X10's battery.  I even wrote a whole post about it here. In a nutshell, the X10 eats through your battery very quickly, but that's only half the problem. The X10 doesn't charge the way some phones charge. For example, you cannot turn the phone off to charge it! I mean, if you actually shut the phone down completely, and plug in the USB charger, it will turn itself back on and boot up!!! This is problematic because the phone will be continuously using power while it is charging! I could never get 100% charge! The best you can do while charging is to turn of WiFi and put it in Airplane mode. Now, I know people have posted elsewhere that this is apparently the normal way for some phones to charge, but I don't like it. I feel like I can't control my phone. I don't necessarily want it on while I'm charging!

I also had a problem with the way it charged that some people didn't have and others did, so it might have been an issue with my specific charger, or my specific battery. When I plugged the phone in before going to bed (anywhere from 10pm to 12am) by 7:00 in the morning it was STILL not at 100%! That's right, it could take more than 8 hours to charge up to 100% (if you could get that far). Like I said, maybe it's the phone I was given, because Puleen and Don didn't seem to have that problem with their demo units, but others in the forums did report it. When I contacted Sony Ericsson, they're weren't very helpful.

The Acer LE by comparison has a really good battery. Kept its charge for more than a day with WiFi and data on all the time, using Twitter contantly, listening to music, watching videos on YouTube or TED, and browsing the intertubes. You can actually turn the phone off to charge, if you want, but that wasn't necessary because if you just put it in Airplane mode and plug it in, you'll be back to 100% in only 2-3 hours at most (from an almost dead battery). I have absolutely no complaints about the battery in the Acer.

Advantage: Acer LE - Great battery life, no trouble charging. This is important to me. I want my phone to last while doing cool stuff.

9. The Rogers Stuff

The X10 has the Rogers logo on bootup (but that doesn’t really bother me). There is an icon for the Rogers MyAccount app, but the app is not actually pre-installed! instead it links to the app in the marketplace. You still have to install it. This replaced the pre-installed icon. There is also a pre-installed “Shop” icon, that goes to the usual Rogers sites in the browser. Attention Rogers… I will never use this! Why bother? Rogers also pre-installs an app called UrMusic. It is a music player, but a horrible one. Those of you with the HTC Magic and Dream… this music player looks worse than that. It’s also pretty pointless since the X10 comes with the MediaScape player that pretty much rolls over UrMusic without even noticing it hit something. I can only assume this app was rushed to be on the X10 in time for launch, but who knows. It seems the only real reason it is there is because you can use it to buy music  online (from Rogers?) but it only seems to work when you have a 3G/Data signal so that Rogers can “verify” your device. I was able to connect last night with data on, I assumed my phone was “verified” but now that I don’t have data, it doesn’t let me in. Seems you have to buy your music using your data, and not WiFi, I guess so Rogers can make more money when you go over your limit? Maybe Rogers can clarify for us. EDIT: I have been informed that data usage of UrMusic is "Zero-Rated" (like using the MyAccount app) so you won't be charged for that data. Still, I would prefer to be able to buy/DL music using WiFi just because it's faster.

The Acer LE by comparison, has NO Rogers logo on the boot screen (at least not on the review unit I was sent), and there are NO Rogers apps pre-installed, not even the crap-tacular UrMusic. Instead there are icons for the various Rogers apps that launch the Android Marketplace and take you to that app's page so you can install it if you choose. While I still don't like that these icons are on the phone, at least the apps themselves are not preinstalled. That is a step in the right direction. I haven't determined whether or not those icons can be removed.

Bonus: I discovered (using the Astro file manager) that there is a file on the Acer LE's internal memory (ROM) in the "etc" folder called "bootsound" which is a .wav file. It would theoretically be possible to replace this file with any .wav file you want to change the bootup sound of your Acer LE. I didn't try this myself, so don't blame me if you screw up your phone in the process. < UPDATE (06/28/10) - A reader informs me via Twitter that the "etc" folder is read-only, so i suppose this file cannot be changed, unless there is a way to change permissions without rooting? Thanks to IAmTweetless

Advantage: Acer LE

The Moment of Truth

Both devices have their pros and cons, and in many cases readers will ignore the specs and just go for the phone that "looks" nicer to them. Of course, if you were one of those people, you wouldn't be reading this. I also said you might be surprised by my conclusion, and here it is; Which phone is better? In my opinion... neither.

What? Well, it's like this, you see. Being Canadians we tend to get shafted when it comes to new technology. We're always behind in how quickly we get new gadgets. There are amazing new phones just coming out in the US with the HTC EVO 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S, and the Motorola Droid X. These phones will be way better than either the X10 or the Acer LE. I know that there will always be "something better" coming out a few months down the road. It happens with computers, and it is happening with smart phones the same way, but the difference I think in this case is that the X10 and Acer LE are "cusp" phones. They are on the "cusp" between the Magic (1st generation Android) and the newer phones I mentioned above.

The X10 comes with Android 1.6... 1.6!!! My Magic will likely have 2.1 before the X10 does! While RogersMary has confirmed the Acer LE will get 2.2 (maybe by end of this year we hope), there is still no such guarantee for the X10 that I've seen. In either case, it's possible these two phones won't go much farther than 2.2. The Acer might go beyond 2.2 I suppose, since it has no custom UI to worry about, but I can't be too sure about the X10.

The newer phones I mentioned above will debut with 2.1, and get 2.2 soon enough. They will also likely get whatever comes after 2.2, not to mention that the hardware of all three will be better than the X10 or Acer LE.

The catch, of course, is that we don't know if or when those new phones will come to Canada, and/or with which carrier. Rogers won't comment on these phones at all! So, that said, if I didn't have my Magic (which can be rooted, and will get 2.1) and I didn't want to wait for EVO, Galaxy S, or Droid X (or couldn't get them on my existing Rogers contract) I would go with... (drum roll)... THE ACER LIQUID E!

Yes, the X10 is a pretty sexy phone, nice to show off, and has a beautiful big screen, and yes the Acer Liquid E has some annoying little things (like problems I'm having with the Home button) but there are work-arounds for those little problems (like "Bar Control") and the problems I had with X10 battery turned me off of it. Maybe it was just my review unit, but I'd hate to be stuck with one of those faulty units and have to deal with Sony telling me there is nothing wrong.

So there you have it. That's my opinion after using both for 2 weeks each (sadly not at the same time) take it or leave it... in the comments.