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.
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.
Nice initial write up James (As always). Certainly looks like a cracking little phone. The limited internal memory shouldn’t be too much of an issue what with having the SD card slot. It just needs rooting and then use Link2SD which is what I currently use on my Xperia Ray.
One little typo – The Acer Liquid E2 feels a bit like their *precious* models.
Should be previous I guess?
Cheers Martin
Guess it was a little too late last night whilst typing this.
UPDATED: So time to update my original comments.
Acer have deployed or are in the process of an APPS to SD fix and update, details are here http://bit.ly/19Kapqo and this also fixes the latest version of NetFlix so you can see video as well as hear audio.
A fix for the slow gps issue can be found here http://bit.ly/1cFpx7O
Customer support is lacking (still) in that it’s actually hard to speak with someone knowledgeable about any of the issues and If I were acer I would have released the device with APPS to SD already enabled, however I guess there’s a pressure to get products out the door.
So now I agree (and eat humble pie) for the price it’s a great phone.
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UPDATED: I take some of it back 10 minutes after posting I managed to find a way to submit and e-Mail to ACER support, let’s see how it works and what the answers are….
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It’s not often, I post on these forums, but as I’ve owned a V370 for about a month, I’d like to add my thoughts to your initial impressions…
You’ve highlighted some good points and they’re pretty much spot on, if I could highlight some challenges I’ve had…
KEY PROBLEM 1) Most “users” (myself included) don’t want to root a phone (and invalidate the warranty) just to be able to install apps – seriously I have a couple of games and a Sat Nav and it’s full… I’m constantly deleting apps because I’m getting “out of space”.
KEY PROBLEM 2) Lack of support – ACER, well just try and contact them with the SNID or Serial Number, you can’t because you can’t get past the web page check that says they’re invalid – even tried tweeting to @AcerUK_Official and @Acer about the memory issue – no response…
Niggles
1/ Mytracks and other apps (I’ve tried Ulysse Speedometer too) that use the GPS are going to randomly report wrong data, other apps too.
(discussed here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/osmand/1RlEPzEU2Co and me here http://community.acer.com/t5/Smartphones/PROBLEM-Liquid-E2-V370-MyTracks-GPS-reporting-false-distances/m-p/106371#U106371)
2/ The latest Netflix doesn’t work (2.0.2 does), seems to be a Netflix issue, but it’s still annoying
(http://community.acer.com/t5/Smartphones/Netflix-doesn-t-work-on-Liquid-E2/m-p/105863#U105863)
3/ Absolutely no accessory’s, (spare battery etc) – I know they may come, but…
Finally, as I said I’ve tried to report all the above to ACER support, but as they don’t recognise my phone id number on their website – even though it’s clearly registered on my account I can’t actually contact them.
My advice, it has the potential to be a damb good phone as you say, but that’s not good enough, it has to have support, backup and the right features (that work), but it doesn’t (yet)! More importantly ACERs support/communication is in my opinion well…. lacking.