Looking for low end phones is a difficult task because everything is about tradeoffs. For flagship phones, the task is easier because it's a simple "yes/no" question: Am I willing to pay that much? If you are, you're guaranteed to get a phone that will fit your need. You have to be careful with phones on the low end to make sure you get it right and avoid prohibitively annoying features.
I bought the
Acer Liquid Z3 yesterday.
Pros
- Price: 79€ (a little less than 110$)
- Android Jelly Bean 4.2.2
- The body is light but doesn't feel cheap
- Internal storage is extensible via microSD card
- Battery: It fully charged in a matter of minutes, and exposes over 80% of battery level after 24hours of moderate usage
- The screen is small but pretty
- Dual SIM card. I didn't know this feature and I like it already. It will prove useful during my travels.
- Charges through a microUSB port; I already have several compatible chargers and most of my colleagues/friends have one too, so it's easy to charge it. (you'd think that this would be standard by now, but Apple still wants to please its hipsters by selling them different plugs each year. God forbid they be compatible with the rest of the world. Ugh Apple, sometimes you...)
Cons
- The screen doesn't react as well on touch input. This is not really noticeable for browsing, calling etc. It's only annoying when typing. I hate typing on virtual keyboards and even more so on this phone. I hope I'll get used to it soon, or else I'll start looking into alternative input methods.
- 512MB of RAM is not huge. It's okay for most of the time, but run several apps simultaneously and you'll quickly hit a wall. Obviously I blame developers who treat memory as if it's an unlimited resource.
- Acer installs some crap on the phone. It's easily avoidable but it's still useless. When will manufacturers understand that we do NOT want their additions.
- Videos and pictures don't look nice. To be more specific they don't look as nice as they do on the SGSII.
- The Camera sucks and is almost useless. Low picture quality, no flash, crappy auto-focus, ...
Overall review and thoughts
I started looking into cheap phones because I was highly disappointed by the SGSII (and all the other high end phones I could get my hands on). Phones, at least all smartphones today, are crappy by design and it looks like manufacturers enjoy them being like that. So I thought of making a list of relevant features I need and look for the cheapest phone that provide them.
The Liquid Z3 is what it is, a cheap smartphone. Given its price, I'd say it doesn't feel too cheap and mostly does the job. I'm excited about the high battery life, my SGSII barely lasts 24 hours of light usage (considerably less if I start playing games or watching videos).
Most of the cons I noted don't bother me too much. Except for the keyboard. But hey, I hate virtual keyboards of high end phones, I wasn't expecting to have the problem solved on a phone that costs 20% of the price.
Again, I love the feeling that it's cheap. I don't worry too much about it and figure that if this phone serves me well for one year, it will already be a big win.
Thanks for your suggestions everyone. They helped me get a good feel of what is done on the low end market and make a more educated purchase.
