Acer Liquid E2 – Hardware Review
Recently we discussed the capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy Note II, which is a phone that comes with a hefty price tag. Today we have the chance to tell you more about the Acer Liquid E2, which will take a considerable smaller amount out of your budget. Will the phone stand tall against the more expensive models?
We’ll start off with some basics for the Acer Liquid E2. The screen size is 4.5”, making it a fairly ‘large’ screen for you to enjoy browsing the web, watch clips or even play games whilst enjoying a decent overview. The phone itself is also fairly slim. As for performance, the phone has a quad core CPU, making it run smoothly, especially for its price range.
The Liquid E2’s backside has 2 speakers, which are a nice touch, be it for the design of the phone or simply the practicalities it brings along. Seeing most phones nowadays serve as mp3 players as well, it’s fun to be able to use your phone at home or wherever you want without having to plug in a pair of headphones. Also the volume the speakers are able to throw music at you, are not to be underestimated.
The backside of the phone also has a soft ‘padding’ which will also provide more grip and a softer feel when ‘handling’ the phone. A subtle yet fun touch, when looking at the overall design of the phone.
Realizing camera’s are becoming a ‘basic’ feature in smartphones, this doesn’t mean the phone will have a decent one for you to use, especially in a lower price range. The Acer Liquid E2 will allow you to snap decent pictures or good looking clips with its 8MP camera.
The Acer Liquid E2 is an android phone and will automatically have the 4.2 version pre-installed. This means you will already have a decent version of the OS on your phone and things will be up to date when it comes to apps currently available. Also updates are supported on the phone, which will enable you to stay up to date at any time.
Again it’s easy to say, all the basic features a phone needs to have, work as they should. You will be able to use everything without having to fear any ‘delay’ on opening your basic apps or whilst opening your text messages and so on. Even after a few days of running different apps and what not, the phone still works smoothly. (Unlike several other smartphones.) Of course after a week or so it’s always a wise decision to turn your phone on and off once, to reboot everything.
To game or not to game?
As we discussed the gaming capabilities of the Samsung Galaxy Note II in our previous smartphone review, we will also take a look at Acer’s phone when it comes to games.
The Acer Liquid E2 may have a smaller screen than the Note II but it will still offer a decent and clear gaming experience. Whilst it may be a tad smaller than the handhelds we’re used to nowadays, your thumbs won’t really get the way when playing a game. (Well not that much anyway.)
Loading times have increased a decent amount compared to the Note II, but games will still run nearly as smooth, or just as smooth. Keep in mind this phone will cost a significant amount less than Samsung’s model and still offers pretty much the same gaming quality. Something a lot of other smartphones don’t offer, that are in the same price class as the Liquid E2.
Having a phone that heats up a lot when gaming can be an annoyance. Luckily the Liquid E2 hardly heats up when playing games for long periods of time.
Battery life is an important factor when playing games, especially on a smartphone. You wish to be able to play some games on the road, whilst not having to worry you will run out of battery in a few hours and become unavailable when you’re needed. Surprisingly the Liquid E2 proves to be a worthy gaming phone. Whilst running loads of games during the day, and playing them for quite some time, the battery reached around 40 – 20% at the end of the day. This means you can safely spend some time gaming whilst on the train, during waiting periods and so on.
Own opinion
Being used to fairly small phones, this one felt surprisingly ‘natural’ after only a day. The size of Acer’s phone feels as it was made to be able to do everything with one hand. (Yes, wrong use of words.)
In the end, the items that surprised me the most were the overall smoothness of the phone when it comes to opening apps and how they run. There was hardly any delay on them, even after running periods of time. Same goes for the gaming capabilities of the device, being able to go from one game to another provides no problem.
A small yet useful test the phone also ‘received’ was the smoothness of opening text messages etc when there was a lot in the phone’s memory. All of us probably have had a smartphone which opens messages a lot slower when having a lot of them stored on your phone/sim. Having turned off the limit for each conversation, making sure a lot of messages and different conversations reached my inbox were the step. Having a thread with a few 1000 text messages did not slow it down by one bit. As mentioned earlier, a simple test, but the results will surely pleasure a lot of people.
Whilst the phone deserves loads of praise, I experienced two slightly ‘annoying’ features when it comes to the design of the phone. For starters, whilst the soft padding on the back is fun to work with and simply feels pleasant, it will get dirty really fast. Fingerprints will be easily visible and not that easy to remove either. Secondly the speaker of the phone looks nice from a design point of view, but it tends to get dirty/dusty really fast as well, and again it’s not easy to clean.
Other than that, the phone deserves nothing more than positive attention.
Conclusion
The Acer Liquid E2 may fall in a price range that may be considered as a ‘cheap’ zone, it offers nothing more than high price quality. The phone combines a decent amount of media functions and gaming capabilities in a smartphone. If you’re looking for something that doesn’t plunder your bank account for the same quality as loads of other more expensive models, the Liquid E2 is the way to go.
Acer Liquid E2 - Hardware Review,
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