Acer Z220 Review

Acer Z220 Review

The Acer Liquid Z220 is the firms the cheapest Android phone at the show: the vendor also outed the 5in Liquid Z520 and Jade Z smartphones - but, oddly, decided against stuffing them with Android 5.0.

Print Send Save Tweet this BARCELONA: Acer unveiled its first Android 5.0 Lollipop smartphone at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC). The Acer Liquid Z220 is unlikely to get too many people excited as its the companys cheapest Android phone unveiled at the show. The firm also unveiled the 5in Liquid Z520 and Jade Z smartphones but, oddly, decided against loading them with Android 5.0. DesignThe Liquid Z220 isnt going to win any awards when it comes to design, but it’s by no means a bad looking smartphone. The rear is coated in a textured material, which makes the handset comfor table to hold, and its a nice and compact unit despite the oversized bezel surrounding the screen. However, the white version of the smartphone (it will also be available in black) was prone to picking up fingerprints even in the short time that we handled it. DisplayThe Liquid Z220 has a 4in 480x800 display with a 233ppi resolution. This was disappointing even for a phone with a €79 price tag, especially given the Honor Holly’s 5in 720x1280 screen and similar £79 price. It’s perhaps just as disappointing in the flesh as it is on paper, as the screen quality is poor. App icons look fuzzy around the edges and brightness levels are low. Software and performance The Liquid Z220 is Acers first smartphone to ship with Google’s Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system, trumping the Honor Holly. This equips the smartphone with all of the latest Android features, such as Google’s card-based multitasking menu and revamped Notifications. Acer has also l eft the UI largely untouched, which means that the Z220 comes with Google’s Material Design language. This is all very well, but its difficult to appreciate on the low-quality display. However, Acer has stuffed the smartphone full of applications that nobody asked for. Head into the apps menu and you’ll find Acer Portal, 50+ free games, Puzzle Pets and Real Football, among several others. Most of these are likely to go untouched, and take up space on the handset, which has just 8GB of built-in storage. Thankfully, there is a microSD slot to extend the amount. The Liquid Z220 uses a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor, which is a little disappointing considering the Holly’s 1.3GHz quad-core MediaTek offering. We didn’t experience too many problems in terms of performance, although apps are noticeably slower to open than on many similarly priced phones, and there was some lag when swiping through screens. CameraThe Liquid Z220 has a 5MP c amera on the rear with an 89-degree wide angle lens, which we found easy to use thanks to the smartphones compact size. However, the camera struggled when it comes to image quality, in particular in the dark lighting at Acers MWC event. The camera had difficulty focusing, and pictures lacked detail and colour. We were unable to test the camera in natural light, but will do so in our full review. First impressionsAcer clearly has some lessons to learn when it comes to competing in the low-end smartphone market. The Liquid Z220 is cheap at €79, but Huaweis Honor spin-off and Motorola are producing much higher-spec handsets at a similar price. The Liquid Z220s screen, for example, feels like it belongs on a phone released in 2012, paling in comparison with the Honor Hollys 5in HD offering. Whats more, Acers software additions will put some buyers off, especially when handsets such as the Motorola Moto G offer a largely untouched version of Android. 02 Mar 2015

The display is 4 inches across the diagonal, but this is reduced somewhat by the software buttons. This is a low-contrast, low-brightness LCD panel set far below the glass; it’s the worst display I’ve seen on a phone in some time. It feels like staring into an old, dusty box in a poorly-lit antique store.

Even with such minimalist hardware to power, the low-capacity 1300 mAh fails to give the Liquid Z220 anything resembling acceptable battery life. Its hard to motivate the phone to last all day if youve been using it even somewhat intensively, so you be careful with how you use it. The Z220 died after only 5 hours in our new battery test, which is the worst score weve ever seen (seriously). Even when its asleep and only using Wi-Fi, this phone hemorrhages battery.

Acer has also left the UI largely untouched, which means that the Z220 comes with Google’s Material Design language. This is all very well, but its difficult to appreciate on the low-quality display.

The camera was also par for the low-end course, producing photos with little detail even in great conditions – and absolutely dire results in anything else. Colours were frequently washed out, dodgy autofocus resulted in half of the photos being a blurry mess, and generally things were disappointing.

The Liquid Z220 doesnt support 4G mobile networks; the best you can get is H+. It does, however, have two SIM card slots. When both are being used, one does data and calls, and the other only calls. The microphone picks up voices fine during calls and both callers can hear each other. Cant say the same about the built-in speaker, though, which makes it seem like youre speaking to a robot (not that were complaining—robots are awesome).

Videos produced were also pretty awful, with little detail present in the 720p files. The camera interface also sometimes lagged for a few seconds, causing me to miss shots.

No one will be mistaking the Liquid Z220 for the worlds most gorgeous, original smartphone. Its made entirely of plastic, although some effort was put into its assembly. The textured back feels surprisingly good. The volume and power buttons are conveniently located along the right edge, exactly where a rightys thumb naturally falls. The screen takes up a mere 55% of the facade and the big black bands above and below it make it seem even smaller than it already is. The plus side is that these petite dimensions make the display easy to use one-handed, as even the smallest of thumbs will be able to reach the top of the screen.