SYNAPSE CIRCUIT: ACER LIQUID S1 REVIEW

SYNAPSE CIRCUIT:
ACER LIQUID S1 REVIEW

Acer Liquid S1 Duo, £289
You know something? Acer sometimes gets unfair reviews; I feel as though reviewers either didn’t understand some of their past efforts or didn’t want to. Sure, the efforts of Acer has been a mixed bag of power vs. features but with the Liquid S1 Duo I believe that Acer have come up trumps! Why? Good, I am glad you asked!
I, for one, love those huge Android handsets. I am going to have an Android I would like it to be a big as possible without it being too difficult to hold! The Liquid S1 Duo is close to being perfect in the hand; it’s the smooth plastic battery black plate that makes it a bit of a slippery customer to hold. I wish it was rubberised in some way. It’s thin enough at 9.6mm and it is comfortable when taking video and photos.

Here’s the full spec:

Display         
5.7 inch, HD 720p (1280 x 720), 257 PPI, Zero Air Gap

Main camera           
8 MP auto focus, f2.0, 28 mm lens, BSI sensor, LED Flash, 1080p video recording

Front camera          
2 MP, f2.2, 24 mm lens, 88-degree wide angle, BSI sensor, 720p video recording

Processor   
Quad-core 1.5 GHz

Storage        
8 GB

Memory        
1 GB

Battery         
2400 mAh, replaceable Li-polymer battery

Talk time: up to 11 hours

Standby time: up to 450 hours

Dimensions
163 x 83 x 9.6 mm

Weight           

195 g (with battery)

Network        

HSPA+ / WCDMA: 900 / 2100 MHz
GSM / GPRS / EDGE: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz
3G download speed up to 42 Mbps

Connectivity           
Wi-Fi® 802.11b/g/n
Bluetooth® 4.0 LE
GPS / aGPS
micro SDTM slot, micro USB, 3.5 mm audio jack

Sensors       
Light sensor, accelerometer, proximity, digital compass

SIM    
Dual micro SIM

Operating system  
Android™ 4.2

User Interface         
Acer Shell 5.7, Acer Float UI

Entertainment        
AcerCloud, Acer Music, Acer Photo, Acer Video
Acer HD channel
Skitch
YouTube™,
Moodagent

Productivity
Acer Docs, Acer Remote Files, Acer Print
Polaris Office
Swype Keyboard
Google Keep™, Evernote

Utilities          

Acer Auto Profile
Acer Data Traffic Manager
Acer Easy Hotspot
Acer My Style

Special Features   
Acer Float Caller
Acer Float Maps / Notes / Camera / Calculator
Acer Live Screen™
Wireless Display

Yes, it is a mixed bag! Lol! However, it is a good mixed bag! Essentially, Acer have rebuilt the original Galaxy Note and made it a little more inexpensive new! You can pick up a new Galaxy Note for around £329. It’s a difference of £40 but a difference nonetheless. I guess that £40 would have gone into a stylus! But the whole thing works a treat! I found the Liquid S1 to be a very fast phone, the 8MP camera to very, very responsive which was a surprise given that some premium phone cameras can be quite fussy about taking night and HDR shots. With my Galaxy S4 I have to hold the camera rock steady for night and HDR shots otherwise the image is blurred; not so with the Liquid S1 Duo! I found the quality to be very good but not as good as the premium handsets aforementioned. Thankfully, the camera is a massive improvement than what’s on the Liquid E2 handset.
One of the special features is voice activation; by uttering a phrase the Liquid S1 Duo is unlocked. Cool! It’s quite a neat (hee hee... GeekSpeak) feature but I would imagine that if someone with ill intent overheard that person could steal the phone and repeat the activation phrase. It would have been something if the handset could actually read an individual speech pattern. I wonder if a good impressionist could fool such a speech recognition system.

Just like the Galaxy Note the Liquid S1 Duo can have several apps floating on the screen – even a call! I like it!

CONCLUSION
The Acer Liquid S1 Duo is a decent phablet with an attractive price tag! Unfortunately it’s not 4G compatible, it’s no big deal.

Thank you for watching and reading!

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