First impressions: Acer Liquid E700

NEW DELHI: Acer has re-entered the Indian market with the launch of two new handsets part of its Liquid range of smartphones. While the Liquid Jade is positioned closer to the mid-range at Rs 16,999, the Liquid E700 is a budget offering, priced at Rs 11,999. The Liquid E700 is the more interesting option as it comes with a high capacity battery, a front-facing camera with LED flash and triple sim card support. At an event hosted by the company in New Delhi, we got a chance to spend some time with the Liquid E700. Here are our first impressions of the smartphone... Acer Liquid E700 would have been just another Android smartphone but its curved top and bottom edges, front speaker and earpiece grills and the contours of the curved display panel make give it a distinct personality. The bezel on the display panel is not very narrow and we found the panel to be a bit reflective. The capacitive touch navigation buttons are also placed below the screen. The right edge of the phone sports a plastic volume rocker key and a micro-USB port, while the top edge houses the 3.5mm headset jack and the power key. The keys are made of plastic and offer decent tactile feedback but we found that the positioning of the power key makes it cumbersome to use. The two front grills look similar to HTC's recent phones but only the bottom one is the speaker outlet unlike HTC's dual-front speakers. The back has a removable plastic cover that sports a rubberised, matte finish, offering a good grip and soft feel. The camera lens, LED flash and a customisable button. The button reminded us of the recent LG flagships; it can be assigned a function and long pressing invokes the camera shutter. The phone feels and looks good despite not featuring premium materials and doesn't feel very heavy although it houses a high capacity 3500mAh battery. The battery is sealed but you can easily spot the three sim card slots and a microSD card slot once you remove the cover. The Acer Liquid E700 sports a 5-inch HD (720x1280p) IPS display. It offers wide viewing angles although the panel is more on the reflective side. We'll have more on the display in our full review. The phone runs Android 4.4 KitKat with Acer's custom UI skin on top called FloatUI. The OS offers multitasking capabilities with support for multiple app windows running simultaneously. Acer also includes its own apps and services and offers a Quick Mode with bigger tile-like icons for senior citizens and users not accustomed to smartphones. Liquid E700 features an 8MP rear camera (with flash) and a 2MP front-facing camera also accompanied by a flash. We'll have a detailed look at the camera in our full review. The phone is powered by a 1.2GHz MediaTek MT6582 quad-core processor and 2GB RAM. The triple-sim smartphone supports 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity options and comes with a 3500mAh battery. In our brief time with the phone, we experienced a slight lag while navigating through the home screen and launching and switching between apps. However. it's possible that the demo unit could be running a test build of the software. Look out for our full review to find out if the Acer Liquid E700 has what it takes to challenge the likes of the Asus Zenfone 5 and the new Moto G. TOI