Acer Liquid S1 phablet – Initial Impressions

 

The current generation of Acer devices are pretty impressive, at the top of the pile is the “S” range, which is the flagship device range. The Liquid S1 phablet is a great big thing with a 5.7? screen and specs similar to the Galaxy Note II. I’ve had one for about two days now and here are my initial impressions. Starting of course with the good and bad points.

Good Points

Fairly lightweightLarge bright screenMicroSD slotRemovable 2400 mAh batterySome nice software tweaks added to stock AndroidDTS AudioSpeedy camera shutter

Bad Points

Quite plasticy buildQuite large for the screen sizeOnly 8 GB memory could be rather limiting

Design

The Acer Liquid S1 phablet has a design borrowed from the Liquid Z3 and the E2, with a curved side strip, curved earpiece and the capacitive buttons on the bottom bezel. Talking about the bezels they are quite big, which gives the Liquid S1 it’s rather large size.

Hardware

System: Android 4.2 Jelly BeanProcessor: 1.5 GHz / Quad Core / Media Tek MTK 6589GPU: PowerVR SGX 544MPMemory: Internal: 8 GB / RAM: 1 GB / Slot type: microSD / Max. slot capacity: 32 GBDisplay: 5.7? / TFT / Resolution: 1280 x 720 pixels / 256 ppiCamera: 8 Mpixels / Flash: LED / Video: 1080p HD / Front: 2 MpixelsNetwork: 3G: 850/900/1900/2100 MHz / GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHzMicroSIMDual SIM option availableWireless: Bluetooth: 3.0 / Wifi: IEEE 802.11 a/ac/b/g/nConnection: Jack 3.5 mm / micro USBGPS: aGPSSensors: Accelerometer, E-compass, Gyro sensor, Proximity sensorBattery: 2400 mAhWeight: 195 gDimensions: 164 x 84 x 9 mm

Highlights of the spec are the Quad Core CPU which really makes the S1 feel really rather quite speedy. The camera also seems quite capable and the sound quality is really quite good as well thanks to the DTS optimisations.

Out of the box after installing Play Store updates you are left with about 4.69 GB available.

Software

The Liquid S1 runs Android 4.2.2 so you get the whole lockscreen widgets  to play with, plus Google Now and the latest Play Store Google Apps. Acer have included a few apps out of the box, they have added some settings to let you customise the lockscreen shortcuts and also possibly most interestingly you get something called “Float Shortcuts” which are a selection of mini apps that open up over the top of whatever app you’re currently using.


Initial Conclusion

The Acer Liquid S1 phablet is pretty impressive, I expected it to just be a big old slab of plastic that just happened to run Android 4.2 but what I found was that it was a nice sounding device with a handy camera and it was pretty speedy rushing through the UI. The software additions made the core Android system fairly functional with tweaks to the messaging app, the lockscreen, the camera and the launcher to make something I might just buy if I wanted a reasonably priced phablet.

There is also a Dual SIM option available from some retailers as well.

As this was just my initial impressions please let me know if you have any questions or things you want testing out and I’ll do my best to oblige.