Acer has become the first smartphone manufacturer to offer 4K video capture. Why anyone would want to capture 4K video with a smartphone remains to be answered.
In addition to 4K video, the Acer Liquid S2 captures 1080/60p HD video and 4x slow motion video (presumably 120fps) at lower resolution. The display is a whopping 6″ IPS display and is powered by a Snapdrag0n 800 processor at 2.2Ghz and 2GB of RAM.
Acer’s press release doesn’t specify what codec Acer is using for 4K video; however, it’s going to have to be something that is highly compressed. JVC’s MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 used in its HMQ10 is quite compressed at 144Mbps (and it’s obvious when viewed on a 4K display); however, I can’t imagine the Liquid S2 offering data rates that high (it uses a single microSDXC card after all) – so I would expect the compression to be even worse.
Unfortunately for those who want to try 4K on a smartphone, the Acer Liquid S2 will not be available in the US – only in Europe for the time being. It should be available at the end of October for a yet-unknown price point.