Nimish Dubey

The Acer Liquid E Ferrari edition has been officially released in India today. The device, which carries the Acer-Ferrari collaboration into the smartphone arena (they have been seen on notebooks earlier), runs on Android, and apart from having the legendary prancing horse logo on it, also comes with Ferrari content such as wallpapers, images, videos and a special set of ringtones. Built with “exquisite detail and quality materials,” to quote the press release, the device has some very good hardware specs, such as a Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile processor, 512 MB RAM, a 5MP camera capable of recording high-definition video, a 3.5 inch touchscreen, and an Elite Bluetooth headset which has the Ferrari logo on it. The handset is going to be available initially from Croma stores at a price of Rs 29,999.
Which we think is a bit on the high side, if we consider the fact that the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S, the Motorola XT 720 and the Motorola Milestone are priced in the same zone. Yes, there is the exclusiveness of owning a Ferrari phone but on the other hand, there is the fact that the device comes with only 108 MB onboard memory, which is a tad on the lower side; runs a Snapdragon processor at 768 Mhz; and has Android 2.1 under the hood (an upgrade to 2.2 is expected later this year). We also felt that the device did not LOOK exclusive – if anything, it looked like a Liduid E with a coat of red paint on it. Still, we are sure there must be F1 fans who would love nothing better than a smartphone which sounds like a Ferrari when it starts up (yep, you can activate that feature). We, however, are less than impressed.