The Acer Stream may be ugly, and it may have the most absurd custom skin of any Android phone yet, but it does have one supposed ace up its sleeve: sterling multimedia support. Is it enough for the Acer Stream to earn its place in your shortlist? Read on and we’ll tell you in this part of our Acer Stream review.
Read the rest of our Acer Stream review
Acer Stream review
Acer Stream review: Android 2.1
Acer Stream review: Build and touchscreen
Even as recently as a year ago, Android’s multimedia reputation was poor. The very first Android phone didn’t even ship with a video player onboard. In the months since, as Google and manufacturers have got to grips with the demands of users sick of separate iPods in their pockets, that’s ceased to be the case – happily, the Acer Stream is one of the best all around multimedia Google phones yet. It’s just a pity its Android 2.1 software is so ridiculous otherwise.
The Acer Stream’s five megapixel camera isn’t the best we’ve tested, but comes out with sharp results in daylight (There’s no flash though, like the Samsung Galaxy S), and there are plenty of shooting options to tweak, like white balance and ISO. It’s also capable of recording 720p HD video, just like the Galaxy S and the HTC Desire. You can see a clip below: it’s a bit choppy and pixellated compared to the second clip shot by a Galaxy S, but focuses on the fly well.
But more than anything, the Acer Stream excels when it comes to playback. On the video side of things, it’ll merrily play Xvid and DivX AVIs along with MP4s, and they look buttery smooth on the AMOLED screen – there’s no MKV support like the Galaxy S claims but it still beats HTC’s phones.
Unfortunately, we were unable to test out the HDMI connection – Acer doesn’t provide the correct cable in the box. But the Acer Stream didn’t earn its name because of the company’s affinity with the countryside. That would be weird (Though not as weird as the phone’s Android 2.1 skin). It’s the Stream because of its DLNA skills, to some extent making the HDMI port pointless.
It’s a simple matter of connecting to Wi-Fi and firing up the Media Server app to stream music, pictures and videos to a DLNA device – we watched an episode of Mad Men off the Acer Stream through our PS3, and it worked without a hitch. You could store your video collection on it to watch on the bus and then on your HDTV when you get home, though to do so you’ll need a big microSD card – unlike the 8/16GB Galaxy S, the Acer Stream has a measly 2GB of internal storage.
Acer’s also gone to extra effort for audiophiles, although be warned that we couldn’t get OGG and lossless FLAC files to load, which Expansys lists as supported. The Acer Stream uses Dolby Mobile tech giving you plenty of sound tweaking options, and the speaker, when face up, is superb. We loaded up a few MP3s, and they certainly sound ace through headphones meanwhile. It’s also worth mentioning that we had no problems connecting the Acer Stream to a PC or a Mac as a USB drive, something we can’t say about every Google phone that comes through EP Towers.
Unfortunately, Acer undoes all this good work with its abomination of a take on Android – while we like the Acer Stream’s media skills, we also like the Samsung Galaxy S a whole lot more.
Acer Stream review sample provided by Expansys
Read the rest of our Acer Stream review
Acer Stream review
Acer Stream review: Android 2.1
Acer Stream review: Build and touchscreen
