Hands-on with Acer's Liquid E1 and Z2 smartphones Video

Hands-on with Acer's Liquid E1 and Z2 smartphones Video Transcript

Hello, phone fans. I'm Luke Westaway for CNET. We're here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to check out two new Acer phones. First up, let's take a look at this guy. This is the Acer Liquid E1. This is the slightly fancier of the 2 smartphones. So as you can see, it's got a 4.4-inch display and that has a 960 x 540 pixel resolution. It's got a dual core 1 gigahertz processor that doesn't sound too glorious when I say it like that. But despite how she feels pretty snappy, it seems quite responsive so I'm not too concerned to be honest. If you flip it around on the back, you can see it's got a 5-megapixel camera. It's got an LED flash as well. There is a front-facing camera that has much lower resolution of 0.3 megapixels, so you might find your video calls look just a little bit pixilated. It's got dual speakers and an FM radio and is running Android version 4.1, now that is not the most recent version of Android, but is pretty close. So, you can access to the app store, of course, and all of these home screens that you can fill with widgets, another exciting apps. I have to say I'm quite impressed by the E1's design. I like the red accents here on the speaker and lock button. And if you flip it around, you see you get this cotton-shaped grille across the back and you also got the speakers and the camera. It's quite a nice effect overall. If that's a little bit rich for your blood, then you might want to check out the Acer Liquid Z2, which is a small cousin the phone we just looked at. So, this one has a 3.5-inch display, which is a lot smaller that's got a resolution of 480 x 320 pixels. That's not a huge pixel count to be honest, so you might find web pages and things looking just a little bit blurry than you'd like. It's got a 1 gigahertz processor on the inside of it. But because of that low resolution and the fact that you're probably gonna be running quite undemanding apps, you should find it's kind of fast enough for what you need to do. If I spin it around, you can see it's got a 3-megapixel camera and it's got at this point a nice looking speaker down here as well. It is running Android version 4.1 Jelly Bean just like the last phone that we looked up. In terms of design, this phone is the perfect antidote if you're sick of palm-ruining smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy Note II. It's extremely small and it feels very light as well. I spin it around and I like this curved effect on the back. Overall, I would say this is a compact, quite attractive little phone. The only thing that really lets down is this low resolution screen. Both phones are gonna be coming out in Russia and the UK in mid-March. Other European countries will follow shortly after that. Unfortunately, there's no way at the moment of the US release date. The Z2 is gonna cost about 100 euros, while the E1 is gonna cost a slightly pricey at 200 euros or there abouts. I'm Luke Westaway for CNET here at Mobile World Congress and here are 2 new Acer smartphones.