We’re reviewing (perhaps better late than never) the Acer Liquid E1 at the moment, so to compare I took a look at the new E2. This has an improved spec and will arrive in the next day or two at Expansys. They’re doing it SIM-free, so no contracts to worry about. It runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1.2 GHz quad-core CPU.
Good so far? Well, although there’s “only” 4GB of on-board storage you can store your pictures and videos on the external microSD card, snapping away with the uprated 8 megapixel camera (plus another 2 megapixel shooter up front). The screen is a decent 4.5″ 960 x 540 pixels / 245 ppi and you get all the usual Bluetooth / WiFi / GPS and 3.5mm audio port stuff.
So, how much would you expect to pay for this? A quad-core CPU? Decent screen? 8 megapixel camera? SIM free? Try just £179.99. Yep. £179.99 with free delivery. That’s actually rather good indeed. Give this one your consideration, because I certainly will be.
Leigh, I have used the E2 for 3 weeks and reviewed it (in Italian though). I can say it’s indeed a great value. Of course it doesn’t want to compete with One or GS4, but for less than 200 you get a quad-core, enough memory, a decent camera and good audio performances. Plus it’s a dual SIM, very useful while traveling (I always have my Italian SIM and a local SIM i get in the country I visit to use roaming-free mobile data). I can definitely recommend it 🙂
£180, really? One Hunderd and Eighty pounds, for a brand new quad core phone? GTFO! OK, so it’s not an exynos or snapdragon but blimeny cricket.
I believe that the SOC in this is what the chinese copies of the S4, iPhone and HTC One have in them.
I’m tempted by this, I was gonna get the cloud mobile, but for a tenner more this one might fit my needs better as I could bung my works sim in it and not have to carry two phones around 🙂
I’ve found this French forum for rooting the phone (you need to register to get all the files and stuff):
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.phonandroid.com%2Fforum%2Facer-liquid-e2-duo-f1436.html
Apparently even though this has 4gig of on board memory they have partitioned it and only allow 1.6gig for apps, it’ll need rooting if you have loads of apps to enable them to be moved to the SD card.
Here is another link for benchmarks:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/11/mediatek-launches-worlds-first-quad-core-cortex-a7-soc-we-go-h/
For the money this looks like like the king of the hill, cheaper than the N4.
SOC is not a Chinese copycat but it’s the MediaTek MT6589, which proved to be a very well designed SOC and which is now being adopted by important brands as Sony too. IMHO MediaTek has nothing to envy to Qualcomm and costs much less, allowing manufacturers to keep the final price low.
About the storage partitions: there are 2 partitions that you can use; first is 1GB and it’s where apps go, as well as address book, …
The second partition is 1.65GB and you can move apps there, as well as store personal data.
While you can’t natively move apps to the SD, 2.65GB are more than enough for a regular user to store apps and data that can’t stay on the SD (which will still be available for photos and music). After all, this device is not competing with N4, One or GS4 that will always be preferred by power users.
For the record, here is my review (in Italian): http://www.webnews.it/recensioni/acer-liquid-e2
You are absolutely correct, I didn’t mean the SOC was the copy, I meant it is the SOC used by the Chinese in the copies of the phones they make.
I will have a read of your review later, thanks for the clarification 🙂