Mighty Gadget Blog: The latest technology news & reviews in the UK

Acer, famous for laptops and computer parts has today launched it’s brand spanking new Android 2.1 phone and given the exclusive rights to online mobile seller Expansys. If the phone is half as good as it’s laptops you can bet it will do well once the mobile carriers get a hold of it although selling it online, SIM free at the moment might be a risk.

Acer have described its Stream as a “high-end multimedia smartphone” and it delivers in the specs field to compete with the other top smartphones. Underneath the 3.7” AMOLED display is a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and 512MB RAM, running Android 2.1 (2.2 update won’t be far off) Also sporting a 5MP camera capable of 720p video capture and GEO-Tagging, it has Wi-Fi and is only a tiny 11.2mm thin. Couple this with 2GB of internal storage and microSD support there’s plenty of room. Social networking is the theme for the phone with apps pre-installed but also Acer Spinlets. This is a streaming service whereby the user can listen to select songs and post their favourites onto their social networking pages. It also has mp3, AAC, OGG and FLAC support for your tunes and MP4, WMV, DivX and Xvid support for your videos.

Available today on Expansys SIM free for £399.99

Usually it’s “the bigger the better” but with Acer’s new S1 series of LCD TV screens it certainly looks like “less is more”. Announced this week, the super thin and small screens not only keep the high quality goods in a smaller space but also are “wallet friendly”. So if you’re interested in a smaller TV for your house or a decent quality, decent sized, space saving monitor, read on.

Housed in a nice glossy black outer shell the Acer S1 series truly indicate that size doesn’t matter. Opting to keep the screens small (18.5” to 23”) these little beauties only measure 15mm thick and a staggering 13mm in depth. Now I know you’re thinking squashing it so thin will mean it’ll lose out elsewhere. WRONG! They offer Full 1080p HD and a whopping 12million : 1 contrast ratio which alters frame by frame to deliver super sharp images. Couple that with a response time of 5ms and you’re looking at a belter. Now there is a downside in that the smaller screens only have VGA and DVI ports where as the larger 21 and 23 get HDMI too. Not only that with EcoDisplay low power consumption, you can sleep easy knowing your helping the environment too.

Prices start at an ultra-low £119.99 too.

The thing with netbooks in my opinion is they’re all well and good to carry about and do the odd bit of word processing or web surfingin a coffee shop, but they cant really do much else. Acer has obviously noted this and has updated its range to allow HD video capabilities but also given them extra connectivity but still giving decent battery life.

The Aspire One 533 has a 10.1” 1280 x 720 screen. Alright it’s not Full HD but 720p is still pretty good. Powered by either the Intel Atom N455 nor N475 you can opt for 1GB or 2GB of memory. It also has up to 250GB of storage. The standard WiFi comes too but you can also have the option to include 3G connectivity and the latest Bluetooth 3.0. Battery wise, there’s 3 options for you to pick from. The highest being a six-cell affair which will give up to 10 hours of use, but also will add weight.

Available in July there’s no price but with so many options to choose from they’re going to vary anyway.

HD content is all the range now and unless you’re living under a rock you aren’t going to know about it. Acer have announced two new models into its netbook range powered by AMDs new range of chips focusing on the power needed for mobile HD use on a computer, which some smaller form machines might struggle with.

The 521 is a 10.1” 1024x600 affair run by a single core AMD V105(1.2GHz) whilst the meatier 721 is at 11.6” 1366x768 run by a dual-core AMD Athlon Neo K325. Both run Windows 7 and can have up to 4GB RAM. For the HD”ness” they will both run ATi Mobility Radeon HD4225 GPUs easily capable of firing out Full HD video and modern PC games should run ok too.

Other features include HDMI out so you can output onto a larger screen, a multi-touch trackpad for easy use. It will also have built in webcam and Bluetooth and there’s also optional 3G connectivity for internet on the go. We aren’t doing well today for getting prices on products but we do know they should be available by next month.

The Acer Liquid showed the computer giants had entered the Mobile world with a great phone. At Mobile World Congress recently, Acer showed off the E400 a scaled-down smartphone to the Liquid, but nevertheless an interesting one.

UK Mobile site Expansys has the E400 listed for sim-free, pre-order. The Taiwanese mobile will be powered by a “slower than Liquid” 600MHz processor but will be running the new Android 2.1. Obviously a smaller, thinner phone means a smaller 320x480 3.2” touchscreen and a 3.2MP camera. So it’s not selling itself to the tech heads in comparison to the liquid, but not everyone wants a massive brick that does everything. The E400 is a lot more pocket friendly and aesthetically pleasing than the Liquid yet still has most of its functions so if your conscious of those things then this is right up your street and to top it all off its very reasonably priced at £264.99, due the 19th April

The website also has the even cheaper E110. At a much smaller £159.99 you get your moneys worth. A 2.8” resistive screen running Android 1.5 Compared by some to the T-Mobile Pulse Mini, the E110 also packs GPS. The E110 is due 2 days earlier on the 17th

The D241H Display+ is a new monitor with what i can only describe as bizarre features for a monitor. I’m not saying their bad features by any means just strange. In a world where most people own mobile phones or PMPs which can do your social networking, emails and photos, why not have a monitor that can do it independently of your desktop PC.

This 1080P Full HD panel with a 2ms response time, HDMI and DVI port, it’s your standard fairly decent LCD monitor for your desktop, What makes it stand out though is its ability to connect via Wi-Fi(or ethernet) to the net when your desktop is powered off. Once connected it’s widgets can check your email(Gmail and Yahoo! mail) collect RSS feeds from your favourite MightyGadget blog, and other assorted web feeds.

You can also plug in an SD card or USB dongle and playback your pictures turning the monitor into an oversized picture frame. What’s cool is you can have three widgets working at once too. It also comes with a remote with a slide out QWERTY keyboard making it easy to write your emails or messages from a comfortable distance.

No pictures of the screen yet but it’s believed to be available in May and pricing is still TBC.

We here at Mighty Gadget cant wait to embrace the 3D revolution and all these wonderful AV gadgets that one will need. We’ve talked about the TVs and the supply from Sky/Freeview etc. Today we have a projector. The Acer H5360 has just come out and is one of the first of its kind to be on shelves for us to buy.

The H5360 is compatible with NVIDIA’s 3D vision(what it uses in its graphics chips) which dispalys two images at 120Hz for each eye. What this means is when you slap on the glasses, the images converge into one a 3D image that runs at 60Hz. The projector itself projects(obviously) a 2500 ANSI Lumens image which has a contrast ratio of 3200:1. As for resolution, 720p.

The projector is on sale now for a measly £549.99. Not bad for a brand new piece of kit so if you’re thinking ahead its not too bad an investment. If you want use out of it now however, you’ll need an NVIDIA 3D vision powered PC to use it.

The Acer Aspire Revo is available via Amazon for £316.23, £263.98 and £149.99 respectively.

The Acer Aspire Revo just keeps getting better and better. We previously posted that there will be 4 versions priced at £179.99, £249.99, £299.99 and £329.99 all released on May the 18th but now Acer have confirmed that the release date will be May the 5th and pricing will start at £149.99 for the model running Linux with only 1GB of RAM and 8GB of solid-state storage.

The Windows Vista, 2GB ram, 160GB version will be £249.99.

A third SKU comes bundled with Acer's wireless, Wiimote-esque controller and will cost £299.99.

The controller will also be sold separately and priced at £49.99 functioning as both a wireless mouse as well as twisting into a gun-like controller for use in games.

via Trusted Reviews