Acer Liquid E2 – Initial Impressions

Acer Liquid E2   Initial Impressions

Acer have been flogging away in the tech industry for many years now, in the mobile tech industry they are onto about their fifth generation of mobile devices and the Liquid E2 sits firmly in the mid range budget bracket. I’ve got one for the next few weeks and we’ll see how it goes.

As usual I’m going to do a quick initial impressions, so far I’ve had it for about a day and a half. Lets start with the good and bad points.

Good Points

  • Solid construction
  • Build quality
  • Dual stereo speakers
  • Dual SIM variant available
  • Android 4.2
  • No skins
  • Micro SD Card slot
  • Decent DTS sound quality
  • Zero lag camera

Bad Points

  • Screen brightness a little dull
  • Internal memory a little lacking
  • One of those fingerprint magnet screens

Design

The Acer Liquid E2 feels a bit like their previous models, like a cross between the S500 Cloud Mobile and the Liquid Gallant.

It is a nice design, with a contoured side panel, curved screen frame and curved rubberised backplate it makes for a device that is nice to hold. A few little niggles like top mounted power buttons and top mounted headphone socket are just me being picky.

Software

The Liquid E2 runs a very stock version of Android 4.2.1 so you get the whole Jelly Bean experience, including Google Now, Daydream mode, themes and Project Butter.

Acer have pretty much left Android alone, bar a few widgets and a few Acer apps. The widgets are pretty basic and I soon installed another launcher and clock widget.

As it is stock Android the experience is pretty basic, leaving you to install third party apps.

Hardware

Spec wise the Acer Liquid E2 is pretty good.

  • System: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
  • Processor: 1.2 GHz / Quad Core
  • Memory: Internal: 4 GB / RAM: 1 GB / Slot type: microSD / Max. slot capacity: 32 GB
  • Display: 4.5″ / IPS / Resolution: 960 x 540 pixels / 245 ppi
  • Camera: 8 Mpixels with Autofocus and zero shutter delay
  • Flash: LED
  • Video: 1080p full HD
  • Front camera: 2 Mpixels
  • Network: 3G: 900/2100 MHz / GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
  • Wireless: Bluetooth: 3.0 / Wifi: IEEE 802.11 b/g/n
  • Connection: Jack 3.5 mm / micro USB
  • GPS: aGPS
  • Sensors: Accelerometer, Ambient Light Sensor, Digital Compass, Proximity sensor
  • Battery: 2000 mAh
  • Battery life: Standby time: > 450 h / Talk time: > 9 h
  • Weight: 140 g
  • Dimensions: 131 x 68 x 9.9 mm

Key points of the spec are the quad core CPU and 1GB of RAM really make a quite snappy device.

Camera

The camera is quite well featured, but needs a little fiddling with to take the best photos possible. The zero lag shutter really makes taking a quick snapshot possible, especially as you can take a picture from the lockscreen. The problem is that to focus a shot in low light takes slightly longer than the shutter takes to snap a shot. So you can easily end up with out of focus shots. It is a learning curve that you’ll soon pick up.

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Initial Conclusion

My initial thoughts are that the Liquid E2 is a damn good phone, with only really the internal memory and the screen covered in fingerprints stopping it from being amazing. For the money it’s a bargain. There is also dual SIM variant available as well, which is also similarly bargain priced.

As I mentioned earlier this is just an initial impressions, we’ll have the full review up in a few weeks, if you want us to test anything out or you have any questions let us know in the comments.

Comments (3)

  1. Martin
    • James Pearce
  2. AlastairHW