Acer is more well known for its laptops and tablets, but it seems everybody wants part of the smartphone market at the moment and Acer is no exception. Lets take a closer look at the Acer Liquid Jade to see if it can stand up to the other competitors in the market such as the Motorola Moto G.

The smartphone sports a 5″ inch 720p HD display, and although not being full HD still manages to make images and text look crisp to the human eye. However one of the downsides is that colours aren’t as vibrant as you would expect and they do seem a little washed out.

Packed inside the phone you’ll find a 1.3GHz quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM – which overall gives you an okay performance but nothing to rave about. You get just 8GB of internal storage which was a little disappointing but there is a microSD card slot so you have the option to expand this. This step was presumably taken to keep the cost of the device down.

The design itself is something that I was very impressed with. It’s incredibly light weighing just 110g, which is brilliant for when you’re out and about. The only downside I would say is the cheap feeling plastic that has been used, especially on the back panel which after using for a couple of minutes will be covered in your fingerprints.

Overall dimensions are 140.5mm x 69mm x 7.5mm and even with a 5″ inch display the phone is very comfy to hold and use. On the bottom you’ll find the micro USB port, while the 3.5mm headphone port sits on the top along with the power button. The volume rocker, dual-SIM card slot and microSD card slot are found in their usual position on the right hand-side of the phone.

Turn the phone over and you’ll find the 13MP camera. Megapixels aren’t everything however and this Acer device packs more than post, even the iPhone 6 only has an 8MP sensor. It supports full HD 1080p video recording at 30 fps, but has very little in terms of extra features such as slow motion etc. Autofocus, LED flash, time-lapse and HDR (High Dynamic Range) options are all available though.

We took some example shots with the phone and overall they were good. Pictures taken in low-light conditions were a little less impressing due to the visible noise, so make sure you’ve plenty of sunlight to maximise the cameras potential. Even so, I would pick the camera as the phones most impressive feature.

Example Camera Images

Moving back onto the front of the phone and you’ll find a 2MP front-facing camera. You won’t be taking any award winning shots with this front-facing camera, however its more than sufficient for video calling and those all important selfies.

In terms of software, the Liquid Jade runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat. As with most Android phones Acer has customised the OS and installed an array of bloatware and custom apps such as cloud storage and another camera app. The Acer colour scheme that we all know runs through these apps, and after using a few they’re not all bad so its definitely worth trying a few of them out.

Verdict

Its very difficult to pick out a highlight feature of this phone, but as mentioned previously the 13MP camera is probably the nearest thing to it, and it can certainly stand up to most other phones in its price range. Whether you want to purchase this phone all depends in what you’re looking for in a phone. If dual-SIM and a decent camera for a good price are important to you, then the Liquid Jade should be fairly near the top of the list.

This is by far Acers best smartphone to date and offers an overall decent budget handset. It retails at £229 on the Acer website, although can be picked up for a little cheaper on Amazon. Check it out at the link below.