Introduction and design
Better known for its affordable laptops, tablets and other gadgetry, Acer seems keen to stake out some ground in the budget-to-mid-range smartphone market too.
It's the first phone we've seen from the Taiwanese firm since the ultra-cheap Liquid Z4 and the slightly dearer Liquid E3 appeared in February, but there are more affordable Acer handsets on the way.
The sticker price for an unlocked Acer Liquid Jade stands at £229 (around $360, AU$400), though you can probably better this online; as yet there are no details of what you can expect to pay on contract, or even if it will be available through the usual operator channels at all.
That puts it firmly in the mid-range, substantially cheaper than the big hitters (such as the Samsung Galaxy S5) but a step above the budget models (such as the Motorola Moto E).
It's going up directly against the likes of the Sony Xperia M2 and the Motorola Moto G - and that means the phone has a tough fight on its hands.
The Acer Liquid Jade is something of an oddity in many ways: it looks unlikely to make it to the States and in Asia it comes as a pair with the Leap smartband.
The Liquid Jade offers some unusual features like dual SIM capabilities and a whopping 13-megapixel camera but cuts back in other areas — there's no 4G support here, for example, which is a shame as the high-speed data network rolls out across the country.
The key question is: has Acer done enough to make the Liquid Jade stand out in a crowded mid-range field? Or is it another handset destined to sink without trace outside of Asia?
You're not going to hear any sharp intakes of breath when you take out the Acer Liquid Jade in company, but then you're not going to be embarrassed to have it on show either. It's a neatly designed, light, 5-inch handset with a faux-metal trim around the edges, and it's functional without being spectacular (something of a running theme for this phone).
I like 5-inch screens - for me they hit the sweet spot for a large-ish display that you can still just about use with one hand - but the 720 x 1280 IPS display gives the game away that this isn't a premium handset.
With a 294ppi resolution it's crisp and bright in use, but it's one of the corners that have been cut to get to this price. Functional but not spectacular, again.
The handset measures 140.5mm x 69mm x 7.5mm (5.53in x 2.72in x 0.30in) and weighs in at a very light 110g (5.64 oz) - that's 20g lighter than the Nexus 5 I usually carry around with me. It's difficult to fault the design, though it feels a little cheap and is very plasticky (which means fingerprints can be a problem on the back).
It feels comfortable and well built when held and the protruding camera lens around the back isn't really a problem. The micro USB port sits on the base, with the headphone socket on top together with the power button; the dual-SIM card and microSD card slots are on the left with the volume controls in the usual position on the right.
That microSD card slot certainly helps: there's only 8GB of on-board storage, presumably another corner-cutting tactic to keep the price down.
Black, grey, green and white options are shown on Acer's website but it was the black one I had in to test for this review.
Key features
What's most notable about the Acer Liquid Jade is that there's very little of note about it. The dual-SIM capability seems a novelty more than anything else and most of the rest of the handset's specs are par for the course. If you were wanting to pick out the phone's highlights (or indeed lowlights) then you'd be struggling for material.
Perhaps the biggest eyebrow raiser is that 13MP camera - megapixels are by no means everything, of course, but that's a step above most other handsets out there (even the iPhone 6 settles for an 8MP snapper). More on the camera later in this review, but it's worth pointing out here.
The price could be another distinguishing feature of the Acer Liquid Jade, but while you could label it as affordable, a £200 outlay is still significant. Considering it's up against the very good value Moto G, the Liquid Jade doesn't quite look cheap enough (though to be fair it's thinner and lighter than the Motorola handset).
There's a glut of mid-range Android and Windows Phone models on the market and the Acer Liquid Jade hasn't got the features to make it stand out from the pack.
The battery life can swing from pretty average to pretty impressive, as I'll explain shortly, but this can vary from user to user and it's not really enough to tip the balance significantly.
The Acer Liquid Jade is a phone that does well in most areas - design, camera, battery life, software, price - without really getting you up out of your seat.
Interface, performance and battery
Android 4.4.2 KitKat is the operating system you'll find on your Acer Liquid Jade if you decide to invest in one. Acer's tweaks to Android itself don't go to the same depth as those made by Samsung, HTC or LG but there's a slew of bloatware apps here covering file management, photos and cloud storage.
An extra camera app, an extra messaging app, a rather ugly-looking contacts replacement app, the little-known Polaris 5 office suite... it's not a particularly pleasant sight. There's even an unappealing quick mode launcher (for kids or older users) that it took me ten minutes and some web searching to extricate my way out of.
Among the usual suspects in the widget drawer you'll find a host of weather and time widgets together with a data use monitor that can warn you if you're approaching your monthly limit.
Fortunately, you can install all of your usual apps if you want to go your own way. Videos look sharp and vibrant on the Liquid Jade's screen and audio is above average thanks to the single rear speaker and the DTS-HD Premium Sound enhancements built into the phone. It's not movie theatre quality but it's surprisingly decent for a mid-range Android handset.
The Swype-enabled keyboard lets you peck at the keys as normal or keep your finger down and draw the words out. I found it a little disorientating to use but that's only because I'm used to stock Android and some of the secondary buttons are in a different place. No doubt it's easy to operate once you get the hang of it, though it's not particularly appealing visually.
The settings drop-down drawer you can open from the notifications tray is a little overwhelming but it provides easy access to a bunch of options: GPS, brightness power saving, auto rotate, data usage, messages and the built-in flashlight app.
There's also a float caller feature that you can activate here that means a smaller pop-up appears when someone rings (rather than it taking up the whole screen) - I've seen it on previous Acer phones and it's actually a feature that makes a lot of sense.
Performance
Performance is one of the areas where the Acer Liquid Jade slips to 'satisfactory' rather than 'good'. A ho-hum 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek processor and 1GB of RAM keep things moving, but I noticed occasional lag and hold-ups while apps got their ducks in a row.
It doesn't spoil the experience too much - perhaps the casual user wouldn't even be bothered by it - but it goes in the drawback column for me.
Try and do anything too demanding on this handset and it's likely to start wheezing, though it's fine for day-to-day use on the whole. Did I say, "functional but not spectacular," yet?
Those impressions are backed up by the Acer Liquid Jade's benchmark scores. It registered a multi-core score of 1160 on Geekbench 3, which puts it a smidgen ahead of our old friend the Moto G but some way behind the two-year old Samsung Galaxy S3. It's in the sort of range reached by a lot of budget and mid-range phones.
Battery life
Taking on our regular TechRadar 90-minute looped video test, the Acer Liquid Jade slipped from 100% to 71%, which means the 2100 mAh battery doesn't hold a charge quite as well as the Moto G or the iPhone 6 Plus do.
Most phones we test perform better than that so you can't expect outstanding battery life... or can you?
The phone has a special CPU power-saving mode that kicks in when the phone is idle, and when not in use, the handset's battery level drops about one percentage point an hour. It's not difficult to do the maths: if you keep your phone in your pocket all of the time, you could squeeze days out of the Acer Liquid Jade.
Presumably the CPU saver is a kind of sleep mode where very little is happening at all. Even if you're going to be using the phone extensively in the day, it's refreshing to pick it up in the morning to find the battery level has hardly dropped overnight, even with Wi-Fi and sync on. That's not something I can say about most of the phones I've had.
In normal use it was a less impressive story, with most standard activities (web browsing, gaming, music) chipping away at the battery life noticeably. I'd say you can expect the usual day's worth of use from the Acer Liquid Jade if you're a medium-to-heavy user of your phone; if it's sat idle for most of the time, then that power-saving mode can do wonders for you.
There's also a dedicated Power save app that you can use to specify which features (such as mobile data and Wi-Fi) are switched off when you're trying to save battery life. It works like the power-saving plans in Windows and it's a handy extra option to have.
The essentials and camera
The essentials
The phone dialler and contacts apps that Acer has put together here look smart and clear but behind the tweaked interface there are no real differences between these apps and the ones you'll get with stock Android.
The calls I made were loud and clear and I didn't suffer any drops, though it's worth pointing out that there's no ambient sensor on the Acer Liquid Jade, so it can't tell when you have your face up to the handset.
It's a small issue that isn't really a problem but it shows another area where you're getting what you pay for, something less than a top-of-the-range smartphone.
The 2MP snapper on the front of the unit is fine for video calling but that's about it, which is par for the course on the majority of phones out there. If you really want to look your best on Skype or Hangouts then you're going to need something like the HTC Desire Eye.
Hangouts is here for your text messaging needs but there is actually another messaging app that looks like it's been left over from the Android editions of days gone by. It's basic and functional but you're probably going to want to jump ship to Hangouts or indeed something else as quickly as possible.
The web is another place where you'll be spending plenty of your time: both the pre-installed browser app and Chrome worked smoothly, with no problems accessing sites over Wi-Fi or mobile networks (don't forget there's no 4G support here).
Moving around some of the flashier, more interactive sites was a sluggish experience, which is probably another consequence of the average internal specifications sported by the Acer Liquid Jade.
Camera
Back to that 13MP camera then, and the Acer Liquid Jade managed to take very good pictures in most lighting conditions, a summary you could apply to many a mid-range phone of recent times. Low light occasionally confused the camera software but I still managed to get decent results in dark areas with and without flash.
This is by no means a mobile camera up there with the very best, but it is a step above what you would normally expect for something at this price point. With Android phones typically struggling in the camera department, it's one of the Acer Liquid Jade's best assets.
Given enough time to frame a shot and work out your settings you can get images that are sharp and well saturated. If you're trying to snap something quickly and the lighting is less than ideal then blur and noise are definite problems - the autofocus isn't particularly nimble.
Acer's own camera app comes with a bevy of different modes and settings, some of which are more useful than others: landscape, night, night portrait, backlight, backlight portrait and portrait modes are all here as well as the standard auto setting, and you can control white balance manually and apply a handful of colour effects too.
In terms of video you can capture 1080p clips and there's a time lapse feature here that's fun to play around with - you can even pause recording, Vine-style.
Like Samsung's proprietary photo app it's possible to switch from videos to photos with one tap rather than two which helps. It's a more feature-rich alternative to the stock Android camera, though a little less polished.
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Click here to see the full resolution image
Verdict
The Acer Liquid Jade doesn't disappoint but it won't blow you away either: what good points the phone has are balanced out with a few niggles so you'll want to make sure it offers the benefits you need before parting with your cash.
The handset does the job, and is kind on your wallet too. It's not a bad choice if you want a mid-range, decent value Android handset, but the problem is it's up against some strong competition.
We liked
That CPU saver battery mode is certainly impressive, the 13-megapixel camera takes better shots than most phones at this kind of price, and in the design department you get a thin and light handset that looks sleek and feels comfortable in the hand.
We disliked
In general, battery life isn't amazing, and you get a pile of bloatware that isn't particularly useful.
The phone has middling internal specs and performance, and comes with a price that doesn't really make the Acer Liquid Jade stand out enough in a crowded market.
Final verdict
What matters to you most in a phone? If it's a decent camera, a long-lasting standby mode or the ability to use two SIMs in one handset then get the Acer Liquid Jade near the top of your shortlist.
In all other respects - value, design, performance - the phone manages to do okay, but not much more than that. It's definitely Acer's best phone yet, however, and at this kind of price level it's perhaps unfair to moan too much about its shortcomings.
First reviewed: October 2014
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1Ax6ECD
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