Acer Liquid S100 review

Do high end specs automatically make a good Android phone?

The definitive Acer Liquid S100 review
The definitive Acer Liquid S100 review

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Acer liquid s100

As you can imagine on a phone that comes from a company with no photography heritage and at this price range, the photography options on the Acer Liquid aren't that great. Sure, the headline specs are good enough - 5MP, autofocus and so on - but the absence of flash, LED or otherwise is a bit of a downer.

The photo processing also falls a little short in our eyes as well - not only does it take an age to shoot a photo, but it also doesn't manage to capture it quickly enough. This often leads to a bad case of blurry pictures when you move the camera away from the subject when you think the photo has finished being taken.

Acer liquid s100

The options for snapping away are good enough, with the ability to mess around with the ISO settings, the white balance and the effects (we're big fans of 'Posterise' which adds a certain Andy Warhol effect to your photos). However, it's not going to trouble the likes of Sony Ericsson and Samsung who are at the head of the mobile photography game.

To be fair to the Acer Liquid, there still aren't any decent cameraphones on Android, so it's a bit harsh to say that it's a negative point as yet. But we do miss the little review pane in the top corner of the photo-taking screen where we could check out our latest snap.

Acer liquid s100

Video is similarly only OK - taking something in QVGA resolution isn't going to cut it here, which is why the option to take video in VGA mode is a welcome sight.

We can't find any published specs on the frame rate it records in, but the video we shot in good light was a little choppy, so again this isn't going to be a great substitute for a dedicated device.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.