Acer Liquid Z630s First Impressions: An average looking budget smartphone with good specs

Acer today launched two new budget smartphones namely the Liquid Z630s and the Liquid Z530, to tap the smartphone market in India during this festive season. The Liquid Z630s is the company's bigger and more powerful smartphone, while the Liquid Z530 has been launched as a relatively smaller and more affordable offering. The Liquid Z630s has been launched for Rs 10,999, which makes it another aggressively priced smartphone that is loaded with powerful specifications.

The smartphone market in India is huge, but then it already is burgeoning with smartphone companies - be it top OEMs, local vendors or Chinese players. The company says that they are not here to disrupt the market with their smartphones, but they are sure that these smartphones will be taken well and receive good response from consumers.

PROS

• 8MP front-facing display
• 3GB RAM

CONS

• Boring design
• Bulky

Acer is a well known name in the laptop segment, which will be an advantage for the company's smartphone business. As per Acer, their experience in the tech industry helps them in their better understanding of Indian consumer's requirement for software and hardware specifications in a smartphone. Hence, their phones have features that are useful for consumers instead of being gimmicky. The company says that they want to go ahead step by step, slowly but steadily. They want their portfolio to have a few but relevant devices, and don't want to impose multiple smartphones on consumers. At the same time, they are also looking forward to consumer feedback to the new smartphones, which will help them in improving their upcoming devices.

The company is confident about the Liquid Z630s smartphone for they say the phone has good specifications and useful feature. We went hands on with the Acer Liquid Z630s smartphone and here are our first impressions.

Design and display:

The Acer Liquid Z630s smartphone is not exactly a good looking phone, considering that it is pretty big, thick, and heavy. It looks old-fashioned in terms of design, and feels bulky on hand, which is due to its 4,000mAh battery.

The front has a front-facing camera, screen, and Acer branding. The company has left wide space above and below the screen, which adds to its size and bulk. Its 5.5-inch 720p display offers good visuals when looked at from front, but looks hazy when tilted at angles.

The right side of the phone hosts power and volume keys, while the left is kept plain. Top houses audio jack and bottom has port for microUSB. The rear panel has a camera with flash and speakers powered by DTS.

Processor and memory:

The phone is powered by a 1.3GHz MediaTek 6753 octa-core chipset with 64-bit architecture, and 3GB of RAM. This is the same chipset that powers Micromax's latest flagship smartphone - the Canvas 5, which costs Rs 11,990. The advantage here is a massive 32GB of internal storage space, which is rear to be seen in phones in this price range. Moreover, the native storage can further be expanded on microSD card, which gives a user an addition 32GB of space.

Camera:

Acer Liquid Z630s feature dual 8MP cameras - one up front and one at rear panel. The 8MP auto-focus primary snapper on the phone is capable of recording 1080p videos, and is supported with editing tools as a part of the phone's software. The front-facing 8MP fixed-focus camera offers wide angle, and can shoot 1080p videos. During the brief session we had with the phone, it was difficult for us to judge the camera's performance. On the basis of the photos we took with the phone, we found the photo results to be nice but not the best for an 8MP camera's capacity.

Software:

The company has added some useful features in the UI that wraps Android 5.1 Lollipop running on the phone. For instance, you can open multiple windows on a screen, which mean that you can launch another app window while you are still using an app on screen. Also, the company has added AcerEXTEND app which let you mirror the phone screen on a small window on your desktop. The company claims that they didn't want to make the UI heavy, hence they have added only utility based software features, which are light and doesn't hamper the performance of the phone.

Battery:

The Liquid Z630s smartphohe is powered by a 4,000mAh battery, which is good to last for up to 500hours on standby mode, and give up to 10hours of talk-time on 3G. The battery is replaceable, if needed.

Conclusion:

The Acer Liquid Z630s is loaded with specs but certainly is not the best looking phone in this price bracket. The UI of the phone is simple and works smoothly. Besides, the phone also supports dual-SIM and 4G LTE network, and features DTS speakers. Despite all these features and spec, the phone will be facing tough competition from Chinese entrants which are highly aggressive, and local vendors like Micromax which are already established in the market. The phone will also be up against Samsung Galaxy On7 smartphone which has been launched a couple of days back, for Rs 10,990.

Stay tuned to know more about the Acer Liquid Z630s smartphone in our detailed review of the phone soon.