Acer's Android-powered Stream gets official, gets handled, lives up to its name with DLNA support (video)
By Tim Stevens 
posted May 27th 2010 7:02AM
posted May 27th 2010 7:02AM
[Thanks, Valero]
Acer Stream the Perfect Entertainment Machine
2010-05-27 -
Powerful. Spectacular. Cutting-edge technologies. State-of-the-art connectivity. Ultra-fast. Highly sensitive. These are just some of the words that best describe Acer Stream, the latest technological jewel of the Taiwanese company. Defining it a smartphone would be reductive. In fact, Acer Stream is the utmost expression of technology, design, performance and entertainment.
Acer Stream is a high-end multimedia smartphone, optimized for watching movies, listening to music and enjoying web browsing like at home. Perfect for most demanding users who look for the best in entertainment.
Elegant and minimalist in design, Acer Stream is made from highly resistant materials and offers truly outstanding user interface and technical features, all in just 11.2 mm, ensuring users a unique and unrepeatable experience.
The completely brand new user interface has been totally redesigned in order to focus on what is essential to users and guarantee a simple and quick access to what matters to them.
- Enjoy smooth animations and fine graphics: surf between photos and video thanks to the stunningly fluid 3D interface and unlock the phone by a 'peeling' gesture, assure a cool but very functional detail!
- Read information straight from the lock screen widget: accessing ambient information on the idle screen gives the user what he needs before he even asks for it.
- Quickly start your favorite applications with one tap: the status bar appears as an innovative divider between logical spaces. It shows all the essential information, providing shortcuts to most frequently used settings and its position allows a very easy access to the settings or notifications.
- Easily switch applications with the History panel: the top part of the Home screen has been dedicated to applications history, with the benefit of reducing complexity and providing significant cues for navigation.
- Reorder applications across several pages at their convenience: Apps can be moved around from one page to another or easily uninstalled by simply dragging them to the bin.
- Customize the phone according to specific needs:a simple customization page accessible from the Home screen will be a pleasant surprise, enabling customers to tailor their smartphone through wallpaper and sound personalization.
Coupled with three types of predictive keyboards, a smart dialer and a redesigned contacts list, the Acer user interface makes using the smartphone an efficient and delightful experience.
Social and entertaining: All the most popular applications are pre-installed: Nemo player to enjoy multimedia content to the fullest, Acer UrFooz to create your virtual "look-a-like", add your profile and bookmarks and post it to your social networks, Facebook™ and Twidroid perfectly integrated into the address book.
And for music addicts Acer Stream features Spinlets™, a completely free streaming service that lets you browse and listen to major music labels and record companies for great music and instantly post what you find to your favorite Social Networking sites.
Main features:
Superb display quality: the touch screen with Amoled technology boasts 1.67 million exceptionally bright colors, through a generous 3.7" WVGA display. Furthermore, its incredible contrast (superior 2000:1) makes for clear images and perfect legibility in any environment and light condition. Moreover, this type of display consumes less energy to help increase battery life.
Ultrafast connectivity 3G+ for streaming: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps in download, Bluetooth and WiFi n, enabling faster transmission of multimedia content than ever!
Power and performance: the Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, with its 512 MB RAM, makes the Acer Stream one of the fastest and most reactive phones on the market. The operating system behind Stream is Android version 2.1, better known as
Éclair.
Unique and high-quality multimedia features, enabling the recording of HD videos up to 720p. Listening to your favorite music or the radio with RDS has never been so pleasant; enjoy the Dolby Mobile quality, with powerful bass and crystal-clear clarity for an unparalleled purity of sound. UPnP technology enables content sharing with other devices. Furthermore, a 5MP photocamera and integrated GPS system allow photos and videos to be geotagged. Last but not least, you can connect the Acer Stream to your home TV with HDMI port and watch a movie on a larger screen.
2GB of internal Flash memory is ideal for downloading tons of applications and 3D games, while an 8GB memory card as free bundle and a micro-SD card slot support up to 32GB enables users to enjoy their favorite multimedia content at all times.
What are those extra buttons?
@ChechenTDG
"dedicated play/pause, fast-foward, and rewind buttons"
As the article says. I think it looks really ugly with those extra buttons.
@ChechenTDG
Hardware media buttons. This actually looked really ugly in the first post about it yesterday, but it's not that bad when you see it properly.
@ChechenTDG Looks like an N8 design ripoff!
...and your Acer support is so great you'll get stuck without updates. Ask a Liquid owner.
xvid support is a good point, its very annoying to not have it on the desire, I hate having to convert videos
@swissd8 Interesting that there are still limited options for this in the marketplace. I had a copy of yxflash which worked ok (and also played wmv) but it hasn't been kept updated.
@RincewindWiz
I tried the demo but the video was really choppy, what we need is a good codec integration in the OS.
Samsung, although they make rather disappointing phones have a great codec support. My samsung jet could read any avi smoothly
Custom Android or vanilla flavor? 3G bands?
@Engadgeteeer It's a custom UI. I'm watching the video, and it shows off the Acer UI 4.0.
Galaxy S has these capabilities sans the HDMI cable.
DNLA, Dixv HD, 16GB internal +32GB SD, I'll take my Galaxy S rather than wait for this. Can't wait, and while I would buy it for myself I luckily am getting it as a present from the gf.
@juanvaldez I actually don't know why they didn't mention their codecs if that is a main feature of the phone. But, from the source article, it's lacking so much next to the Galaxy S's support:
HD(720p@30fps) video playing & recording
Codec: mpeg4, H.264, H.263, H263Sorenson,
DivX HD/ XviD, VC-1 Format: 3gp (mp4),
WMV (asf), AVI (divx), MKV, FLV
(All? I presume) with DNLA
Oh, and mine will also come with T-DMB - thanks for the special Korean edition Samsung!
@juanvaldez I wouldn't get too excited - Samsung make great phones, but they will not support them :p (Speaking as an original galaxy user who'd still be on a very buggy and broken 1.5 were it not for the modding community :p)
@juanvaldez Agreed, though I'll take it for the Hummingbird SoC and that Super AMOLED more than anything else.
@Bomberman Weird, here in Sweden the Galaxy is on the 2.0 or 2.1.
@juanvaldez
Yeah Samsung phones also ship with major bugs that don't EVER get fixed -- Samsung support is terrible. Didn't you JUST see the article about the behold II users threatening a lawsuit!? Samsung made a god damn video saying the phone would get an eclair update and they then took the video offline and claimed they never made it in the first place and the phone will never get an update. They are bastards man, and they did the SAME thing with the i8910...I am warning you now, do NOT get a Samsung smartphone.
Tim Stevens, you have the funniest posts.
@jjrudey *swoon*
@jjrudey It was well written, but why was it funny?
the UI is not optimized... come on this is a snapdragon phone, it should be fluid.
FIxed IT!
This will be interesting. Dell, Hp (via Palm of course) and now Acer is in the mobile business. I am biased toward Dell (I have always used their computers and only buy from them). I wonder what the build quality of this Acer will be like. Also, is it me or will Android soon outnumber all other platforms? I do not have an Android phone (I use a stupid Samsung Impression) but man o man I see Android owning the mobile market soon. What will happen when Android reaches Africa and other emerging markets? Just the thought lol.
@Mike Vick It will be the dominant player. Android, after all, is just an operating system that can work across different hardware and carriers. Google isn't really in the hardware business, so it doesn't have to worry about cannibalizing sales in order to expand Android's reach; it's basically a vehicle for Google to get more people on Gmail and Google search -- and sell more ads.
Apple and RIM are the primary losers, largely because they are hardware makers who supply the OS as an afterthought. Neither will license their OS just to gain share because they don't want to cannibalize their sales. Think about it: HTC could make a better BlackBerry clone than RIM makes a BB, and a sweeter iPhone clone than an original Apple iPhone. Both will end up on the wayside, with RIM possibly keeping more market share because of its reach into the corporate sphere.
@Mike Vick
Well since hp, Dell and Acer all use the same company (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quanta_Computer) to manufacture their mobile devices it probably won't matter too much.
@Sevenmack
Perhaps you have never heard of Blackberry connect for Palm, Symbian, or Windows Mobile? http://na.blackberry.com/eng/devices/enabled/os.jsp#tab_tab_windows Now it has never really gone anywhere and they haven't come out with an iPhone or Android client but it does show they are willing to license the technology.
My favorite part is the 2gb of flash storage
I read "Steam" and got a little excited ;/
wouldnt buy another acer again. i have the acer liquid for 8 months and still not update its generic 1.6 donut to 2.1 yet. basically have to use an outdated phone for the life of the phone.
Respect for their heavy metal intro.
This phone is more laggy than HTC magic.. It´s really sad.. I love the idea of Android but all versions under 2.2 are badly optimized. If you cant get android to run fast and fluid on an 1ghz snapdragon while Iphone OS can run more fluent on a 400mhz 3 year old processor & 1/4 of the ram its sad. The same goes for Palm Pre, it´s much more fluid than this. They need to optimize Android fast, It requires to much.
@tvoben have you used any of the new phones running 2.1? I haven't seen one that's slow. 2.1 is when Google started optimizing the OS to run smoother. You should try out the incredible or evo when it comes out. Smooth as butter.
Reviewed by a Na'vi...
Did not know a phone could be that ugly.
Batista quit wrestling for this?!
Where are we drawing the line between smartphone and tablet? Personally these midrange screen sizes seem odd to me. They're too big to be a smartphone, too small for a good tablet, but still the right size to be carried around.
@bravokiloromeo
I think 4in is a nice balance between large enough and small enough. The evo's 4.3in is probably as big as I'd go before things start getting overwhelmingly large. 4.3 can still fit in the pocket but once you hit that 5 inch mark it's probably more appropriate to call it a small tablet.
Eh, not a fan of that UI.
The UI modifications Acer has made seem to be channeling a lot of elements from both WebOs and Blackberry 6 - though I am not sure if that's a good thing in this case. It looks a little too cluttered.
Features look great though, even if the design looks a tad awkward.
@futurerheza
Sign me up for 12!
This has nothing on sense ui
Sad. I understood this guy better than some of the schmucks who do reviews in English!
God that UI runs like crap. Only bad programmers can't get Android 2.x to run smooth on such great hardware.
@Bhima Thank you! they have such great hardware. what a waste
I would like to see some WP7's with DLNA support. It would be great with the Zune software.
And with Acer's legendary terrible hardware, you can be sure it will completely break down the day after the warranty expires.
uh not a fan of the hardware or the UI.... but nice ideas