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When it comes to using the Acer Liquid E3 in day-to-day use, there is very little that will leave you disappointed. Unfortunately the review model that I am using only has Android 4.2 Jelly bean but Acer told TechRadar back in February that Android 4.4 was on the horizon for this smartphone.
That was a whole six months ago though, so I am not holding out much hope, especially with Android Lollipop just around the corner. If Android 4.4 KitKat does eventually make it to the Liquid E3 then perhaps we are looking at a different proposition, but until then I am left more than a little disappointed.
Those that like the look of stock Android will be left pretty well catered for, although Acer has thrown in some of its traditional green colouring. Thankfully this is very easily turned off through the settings menu because the green can get more than a little much.
Once turned off though, there was still way too much green running through the device for my liking.
The Liquid E3 also has a very useful quick launch feature. Rather than having a dedicated camera shutter key on the side of the handset, there is a button on the back that can launch any app of your choosing or fire up the camera if you long press.
This button isn't something that I can see being used an awful lot though, unless you really must open up Facebook or WhatsApp that second faster than normal.
Swiping around the home screens and through apps was well handled by the four MediaTek cores and I never felt that the Liquid E3 was lacking in power in that department.
This was reflected in the Geekbench scores, averaging a score of 1120. Unsurprisingly, this puts it right up against the Moto G but behind the ageing Galaxy S3 (an older phone, yet more powerful and running newer software).
Even when gaming the Liquid E3 managed to hold up pretty well. One of my favourite test games is Temple Run 2; it scores highly on the downloads list and can often prove a little too much for lower powered handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy Fame.
That said, the Liquid E3 held up extremely well under this test. The graphics were displayed incredibly smoothly, and there wasn't a single point that I missed a jump or turn thanks to a slight hold up in processing.
Battery life
When it comes to performance as a whole, it really doesn't matter if your handset has a billion cores and hundred RAM's if the battery can't cope. Thankfully it seems that Acer has managed to tool the battery inside the Liquid E3 to cope with what is thrown at it.
Interestingly Acer hasn't chosen to release the information about how big the power pack is inside the Liquid E3, but in the end that is just a number, and the only number that should be worried about is how long it lasts.
With the standard TechRadar battery test (a 90 minute video played at full brightness) recording a battery drain of 22%, the Acer Liquid E3 is on par with some of the better handsets out there. Looking at the Moto G with its drain of 33%, there is a clear difference.
That said, the Sony Xperia M2 managed only a drop of 17% but its subpar screen will certainly have helped it, as will the newer more battery efficient software.
During my time with the Acer Liquid E3 I can't say that I was ever really left wanting, it matched my HTC One percentage for percentage during my own testing. One of these involved running a 12 minute video from my Google Play library, resulting in a 5% drain on both the HTC and the Acer.
I was left a little worried that the HD screen was going to end up draining a lot of battery, but this was not the case. Yes it was still the primary drain on the battery, but that is to be expected of the modern handsets that are pretty much all screen.
