Gadgetory

this video was brought to you by NCIX great technology selections and service what's up guys I'm Dimitri with Harbor Canucks and I think we can all agree that the phablet as a category is quite risky as it combines the form factor of a tablet with functionality of a smartphone and if any of the score elements of those two devices if any of those core elements are not done properly then what is the point the Acer s1 is almost a year old that has just been released in Canada it is unlocked and goes for a whopping 300 $79 off contract and right away you can think of many smartphones within this price range that offer better specs better screens like the Nexus 5 so let's see whether or not the s1 is just way too late into the game with its outdated specs low performance and realistically really low res display for 2014 whoa it's rocking immediate a quad core ARM chip at 1.5 gigahertz with only one gig of ram 8 gigabytes of storage and running mostly stock android jelly bean 4.2 it features Bluetooth 4.0 accelerometer g-sensor cellular bands do not include LTE or 4G there's no landscape mode on the front page and the 5.7 inch screen is IPS however with only 720p resolution that scales everything way too large for this size so there's obvious color shifting with the display especially the viewing anything in vertical the greys become yellow which is unpleasant specifically for email and unless you're looking directly at the phone your viewing angles and your viewing experience will suffer now the phablet is large as expected - in operation as needed the physical characteristics are not impressive or just ok plastic housing then better curve for the speaker that collected dust really quickly the built-in capacitive buttons actually like that somewhat resemble Android L design direction the two aluminum strips running in each side adds a bit to the design but both the power button on the left the volume rocker on the right are completely horrendous and I don't use that word often so they offer very little if any feedback the power button is actually very loose another sample you can actually hear it rattling and the same goes for the volume rocker they don't provide any tactile response and they squish in instead of actually clicking in and also notice the power button and the volume rocker right across from each other which means that accidental turning off the phone as you're trying to adjust the volume was very common and vice versa the headphone jack is up top and the microUSB port at the bottom the back cover is somewhat rubberized with curvy sides for better handling you can see the protruding camera lens along with complementing flash the camera is 8 megapixels and takes a less than average pictures but I do have to praise them for really quick autofocus and firing something that I'm not used to on my Nexus 4 we do have 1080p recording as you can see right now we're recording with image stabilization on which is digital so it does zoom in on the image slightly but we do have all the controls for the exposure so it's awesome to see if to really fine-tune how you want the image to look and so this is the sample looks pretty good behind the removable cover we find a 2400 milliamp hour battery with a micro SD card slot and the SIM slot and battery life with Wi-Fi and 3G connectivity certainly well into two days which is refreshing again there's my Nexus 4 barely lasts a full day anymore so one very important element missing from the s1 is a notification indicator you know that thing that blinks to indicate if you have an unread mail missed a phone call or you have some pending text messages well the s-1 doesn't have that you have to physically turn on device and that's very unpleasant considering the power button is garbage now you do have third-party apps to you know for this type of notification stuff but the fact that the score feature is missing from the phone is disappointing now the rear-facing speaker isn't that great that's right here it's very tiny regardless of the DTS studio sound certification it's not very good I've missed a lot of phone calls while being outdoors simply because I cannot hear the the sound on this phone but maybe the vibration of the phone you might detect that something-something is incoming but that's on the case the vibration is very weak and like I think you can't feel it once inside my pants and also when it's on the surface you can actually hear the vibrating which is a big which is a big mistake and actually getting a phone call right now and I wouldn't have known unless you know we said this out but this is a phone call from Eber and as you can hear it's actually not very loud and being outside being in a loud environment you would have missed this important call phone call from potentially an very important person to now speaking of sound quality call reception and call quality has been pretty good however the actual speakerphone here on top which from which you hear the other person on the other line is very quiet even at 100% volume and you also have to position it in a very strange way in order to sort of get it inside your ear for you to hear what's what's incoming and I think for a sir to mess up this very important element and a smart phone is a very disappointing for this price bracket so the s-1 is mainly running stock Android 4.2 without any annoying Acer skin which I'm really happy about but let's be realistic Android 4.2 is outdated it's inefficient we are already introducing androids l2 devices so asa really should check themselves and push these updates towards these smart phones that are only now launching in Canada second the phablet experience is sluggish and I don't mean clicking the icon tray button to see the stutter I mean really laggy Google Hangouts where the animation takes forever to process when you send a message or when turning on the phone and the clock widget needs to update to the latest time with a clearly visible lag or when hitting into any of the four apps from the shortcuts on a lock screen and this is just not on par to what we've come to expect for a smart phone in this price bracket and running a few benchmarks and the results really solidify poor Android performance as the hardware is well below average so there's the benchmarks right there you have three phones you know because we set up the shop like this for productivity acer includes a few float apps present hold the multitask button to access a row that allows multi window overlay but due to such low resolution it's almost impractical to have them open at the same time and I found them completely useless and the only float application I appreciate is incoming phone call that doesn't occupy the whole screen so there's no interruptions on what you're doing and after using the S one for three weeks I was very happy to switch back to my Nexus 4 as it features the same resolution it's much more appropriate form factor for that resolution it's much faster in all fronts and it's also cheaper so there was a no-brainer for me so the acer liquid s1 is well behind the times to be considered worthy and while I can appreciate the expandable storage with a microSD slot and mainly stock UI I think it's fails in many core categories for both as a smartphone and the tablet first the outdated version of Android followed by the low res display for this fight when seven inch form factor poorly designed known tactile buttons and uncomfortable placement of them really weak rear facing speaker and almost unnoticeable vibration koval U is not loud enough and in loud environments is really difficult to hear the person on the other line and finally the performance is really poor and constantly noticed laggy animations and for the price it is really difficult to recommend the s1 but what do you think of the phablet category in general the LG g3 for example and the note 3 seem to hit every element right with regards to user experience for the splurge form factor of course they're twice the price of the s1 but still the s1 for the price is uncompetitive in today's market alright guys thanks for watching our view of the s-1 phablets from Acer make sure you subscribe for more similar content and we'll see you in the next one