Computeractive

PHONE ❘ £137 from LambdaTek
www.snipca.com/18772
Acer Liquid Jade Z
High performance at a low price
Five hundred quid for a phone? You
must be joking, you might think. I don’t
need all that, you might think. Retina
this, fi ngerprint scanner that – who
cares, as long as you can make calls,
send texts and install a few apps? So
you buy a budget smartphone. You turn
it on. And then you remember it isn’t
really a phone at all, it’s a computer.
Features aside, that extra you pay is for
performance: the ability to do the same
things, but with less staring at the
screen waiting (often praying) for them
to actually happen.
Most smartphones run Google’s
Android software, and the cheaper they
are, the more they struggle to do it. Even the simplest task, like
scrolling down a web page, can be alarmingly slow and jerky.
Here’s a phone, though, that breaks the mould. Its MediaTek
processor is as powerful as those in phones costing twice as
much. Th e nearest we’ve seen in this price bracket is the
Vodafone Smart Ultra 6, and the Liquid Jade Z beats it. 3D
games aren’t its strong point, but everything else works
gratifyingly smoothly.
In other respects, you get what you pay for. Th e 5in screen is
sharp, but colours are quite dull and it doesn’t get very bright.
Th e case is nice and slim, but feels more like a plastic office
chair than a high-tech accessory. Photos from the 13-megapixel
camera show lots of detail, but their high-contrast look makes
shadows too dark. Indoors, things get very grainy.
You’ll soon be spending another tenner on a microSD card,
given the miserly 8GB of storage, most of it eaten up by Android.
Version 4.4 is installed, and although this will be upgradable to
5.0 (Lollipop), don’t expect to see 6.0 (Marshmallow) on this
phone. Finally, battery life won’t get through a full day: in our
video playback test it conked out after eight hours 20 minutes.
SPECIFICATIONS
5in 1280x720-pixel screen • 13-megapixel rear camera • 5-megapixel front
camera • 8GB flash storage • MicroSD card slot • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.0 •
3G/4G • Android 4.4 • 143x70x7.9mm (HxWxD) • 110g • One-year warranty
www.snipca.com/18771
VERDICT: It’s a good budget choice if you want
a phone primarily to make calls on. Don’t expect
much more, though
★★★☆☆
ALTERNATIVE: Vodafone Smart Ultra 6 £100 It’s
incredibly good value, but as the name implies,
it’s is only available on one network