The Acer Liquid A1 was announced just last October and it looks like this first Android smartphone from Acer is coming out soon. For one, it has gained FCC approval and even has AT&T 3G support (850/1900 MHz) now. The Acer Liquid A1 features a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, a 3.5” WVGA touch screen display, Wi-Fi, GPS and access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Additional features for the Acer Liquid A1 include a 5MP camera with autofocus and a 3.5mm headset jack. So for all you doubters out there, Acer’s plan to invade the smartphone market seems to be imminent so watch out for it!

It’s no secret that we’re facing down a tidal wave of new netbooks at CES in January, with all signs pointing to Intel unleashing its brand new graphics-friendly Atom N450 chip based on its new-generation Pine Trail platform. So, before we get all netbook’d out, let’s allow ourselves a small amount of excitement at this Acer Aspire One 532 spotted within the bowels of the internet (Acer’s driver pages). A bit of Google work uncovered specs that include an Atom N450 processor with Intel GMA 3150 and a 10.1-inch 1280 x 720 screen. It’s been listed for 299 Euros in one of these random, bean-spilling online stores, so that gives a decent reason to hope that a new generation of Atom won’t mean a major leap in pricing. Is that a whiff of holiday optimism we smell in the air?

The Acer Liquid A1 is now available in the UK market. The company’s first Android smartphone is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor with a 3.5-inch WVGA capacitive touchscreen, Quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Triband (900/1900/2100) HSDPA, WiFi b/g, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and a 5-megapixel camera. FYI, Acer has decided to underclock it to 768MHz in order to prolong the 1,350mAh battery life span. The Acer Liquid A1 is currently in stock at retailers Expansys and Clove, priced at £339.99 ($556) and £328.99 ($538), respectively.

 If you need yet more reason to delay purchasing a current generation netbook, we’re hearing that Acer has eagerly scooped up an order for NVIDIA’s Ion 2 chips, which will eventually be found partnering Intel’s forthcoming Pineview hardware in machines of the future. With Intel now integrating graphics processing and the memory controller into the CPU packaging, the Ion 2 is expected to serve much more like a discrete GPU than the Ion chipset of today. Plans to support VIA processors are also still firmly in place, should you wish to experience the improved graphics processing outside of the realm of Lord Intel.

 Acer loves it some Google. And unless Google’s trying to stamp out your revenue stream, who doesn’t? Now Acer chairman, JT Wang, says that he expects to be first to market with an official Chrome OS netbook — sometime in the second half of 2010 according to DigiTimes‘ sources. In fact, JT says that Acer’s been working on a Chrome OS device since mid-2009. This despite admittedly weaker than expected demand for its dual-boot Android netbook, the Aspire One AOD250. Guess even the Google halo isn’t enough to shoehorn its smartphone OS into a market dominating position on cheap ultra-portables. It’s worth pointing out that DigiTimes‘ moles aren’t saying anything new with the launch time-frame since Google’s target for its gold Chrome OS build has been 2H of 2010 ever since the lightweight OS was announced. Not that the timing matters too much since we’ll likely be seeing plenty of Chromium OS netbooks flooding the grey market long before the second half of 2010.

 Best Buy announced that tomorrow November 11th they will be selling an Acer notebook for $249.99 as an early Black Friday deal online and in-stores. $249.99 Acer Laptop appears on Best Buy site.

This early Black Friday notebook deal is almost $50 lower than the HP Notebook Walmart offered last weekend.

The $249.99 Acer Laptop from Best Buy is also based on the Intel Celeron 900 CPU and comes with 2GB RAM and a 160GB HDD.

With so many different factors to consider when purchasing a laptop, finding the right one can be a daunting task. Portability and battery life are the current trends, along with value of course, which has brought about the recent surge of netbooks. However as I’ve said before — and I still stand by the statement — netbooks are great for simple tasks, but lack the power to be more than a supplement to a real notebook or desktop system. More of this gadget »

The T230H is the latest addition to Acer’s LCD monitor range that boasts multi-touch capabilities. This new 23-inch widescreen monitor provides a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, 80,000:1 contrast ratio, 300 cd/m2 brightness, 2ms response time and 160/160 degrees viewing angle. It also comes with two 1.5W speakers, D-Sub, DVI and HDMI connectors. The Acer T230H will hit Europe pretty soon for 349 Euro (about $516). [Acer]