I bought a new phone to replace my old Android Developer Phone that I bought right after it was released more than a year ago.

One year with Android has at least convinced me of one thing: this is a very good mobile OS. I was sceptical when Google announced the Open Handset Alliance but now I’m convinced that Apple and Google both share the future of mobile at the expense of the “traditional” mobile operating system vendors.

So, when considering a new phone there were basically only two options: iPhone or Android. The number of Android devices is growing rapidly and there’s concern for device fragmentation. It’s interesting to see how Android is basically growing in to become the Windows 95 of the mobile world.

Anyhows… so I decided to buy a new phone after more than a year with the G1. The battery strength was getting worse and worse and the device started to feel painfully slow. I was first looking at the Nokia N900 web tablet-mobile phone-computer-thingy but Nokia just kept delaying it (hear this, my Finnish friends: if the original release, back in December 2009 would have been kept, I would have been a Nokia customer, mmkay?).

I ended up buying an Acer S100 Liquid. It has a Snapdragon CPU (fast!), 800×480 resolution (on a beautiful screen!), Android 1.6 (would have preferred 2.0 but an update should be coming) and a very limited set of extra add-ons to the OS (which in my world is a good thing). The one thing I’m missing is the QWERTY-keyboard but I’m getting used to the virtual on screen keyboard.

The price is hard to beat and possibly its best feature: you can buy it for 3400SEK inc VAT (about €330) in Sweden.

The camera is a 5 megapixel one that I haven’t used very much (I still carry around my Sony Ericsson G502 with its 2MP super fast camera – much more fun to take pictures with). One thing I noticed though is the color balance which is awful.

Video is 640×480 but I don’t use that very much.

If you’re looking for a no extra frills, work horse Android phone at a very competitive price, the Acer S100 Liquid is a perfect buy. I’m happy with my purchase.

Update: The reason for the poor whitebalance was that I hadn’t removed the little plastic cover sheet over the camera lens. Yes, I know, I suck at product reviews. :) Here’s a photo taken with the S100.

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