Acer Liquid Z630 - arrived in the regiment of interesting "shovels"
Building any smartphone is not an easy task. And it’s not even about those engineering masterpieces that we used to call flagships, with their multi-core monsters, the closest line-up and the completely contradictory requirements “better camera + bigger battery” at the same time as “thinner gadget”. Designing “medium-sized” and “state employees” poses no less a challenge, but not so much competent wiring and attempts to cram the new one as the ideal balance of hardware and software for a certain price.
High resolution screen? You need a powerful GPU, which means you'll have to save on something else: a battery, case materials, a camera, or communication capabilities. Cool body materials and a good battery? Under the knife will get the camera, performance and display. Today I want to introduce you to one of the most successful attempts to get a balanced device, without getting out of the "reasonable" price. Meet the Acer Liquid Z630.
The smartphone belongs to the share of devices that is now actively growing on the market, which it is fashionable to call the word “fablets”. The display diagonal is 5.5 inches, it is already beyond the limits of comfortable use with only one hand, but has not grown to 5.7 inches which are definitely unsuitable for “normal” use. Of course, now begin to talk about the dominance of "shovels", and jokes on the topic "and the cutting in the kit there?". No, no cutting. And, yes, in this price segment there is a steady increase in the demand for such a diagonal, so, unfortunately, we have what we have. On the other hand, such physical dimensions allow you to place a capacious battery in the device: here Acer did not stint. Responsible for the autonomy of impressive battery size at 4000 mAh.
')
By the way, about the materials: the back panel of the phablet is made of high-quality corrugated plastic: neither you noticeable micro-scratches, nor slips from wet hands. The front panel is covered with glass with oleophobic coating. Branded chips, of course, are present. The characteristic design of the conversational dynamics, the overall shape of the body - all within the overall strategy of Acer smartphone construction.
If the manufacturer did not save much on the body, then where is the dog buried? SoC MTK 6735 is the “basis” for the Liquid Z630. This platform is interesting because for the first time MTK tried to implement a single decent platform for creating relatively inexpensive devices that will work normally. At the same time, the low price for this SoC is based precisely on the mass character of this solution.
Inside MTK 6753 are 4 64-bit ARM Cortex 53 cores that can operate at frequencies up to 1.5 GHz. In most models, the frequency is limited to 1.3 GHz, and the Acer Liquid Z630 in this case is no exception. The powerful GPU Mali-T720 is responsible for working with 3D graphics (supports OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.2). The hardware video decoder allows you to work with H.264 and H.265 formats and allows you to decode video up to FullHD @ 30 FPS, almost without using the power of the CPU.
And now - the cherry on the cake. Wireless support. Here, MTK did their best: the built-in modem supports ALL LTE frequencies, so the solution turned out to be truly universal, and devices for different markets do not need to be customized separately for local standards: just “sew” the correct modem into the device’s memory.
WiFi? Bluetooth? GPS? Glonass? Of course, yes. WiFi b / g / n + direct, Bluetooth 4.0 + A2DP for headsets, navigation starts in 20-30 seconds on a freshly turned on smartphone.
If the stuffing is more or less normal and the case is not bad, then the display is not so simple. IPS-matrix with a diagonal of 5.5 inches works with a relatively modest resolution of 1280x720 pixels. The stock of brightness is too small, and on a sunny day, using the device “without problems” will not work, but in the dark the backlight does not burn the eyes, the minimum level of brightness is very low. The viewing angles are close to the maximum: if the distortion and noticeable, then at such angles, under which the device is simply inconvenient to use.
As for the resolution, then Acer cheated. On the one hand, 1280x720 does not load the GPU (and the “shovels” segment started from 5.7 inches at the same resolution, there were no problems), on the other hand, users spoiled by modern technologies may be dissatisfied with the fact that competitors have “more points”. What do we really have? The display is excellent. The color rendition, contrast and the picture itself are very, very pleasant. Grain is not in sight. Properly chosen size and shape of the system font made absolutely not noticeable the highest resolution of the display: getting into the pixel grid is such that there are no “teeth” on the borders of characters.
A nice addition is the ability to adjust the white balance: reading on a slightly yellow screen is much more convenient than on a white or bluish background. Although in general, the picture at the display is quite warm and without additional settings.
Here, I confess, there will be no miracles. Good performance, high-quality display, good materials and a huge battery - the camera got a very average module in all characteristics.
In good conditions, he simply removes: there are no miracles in the field of image sharpness or dynamic range, as confirmed by numerous photographs from various reviews .
That's what reviewers from Ferra took
But in difficult conditions, the module works surprisingly well. Especially if you take into account the dollar rate, the price of the device and the overall level of the gadget. See for yourself.
This is a crop and resize from a photo taken in the rain and wind from the hands! The full file can be viewed by clicking on the picture. In difficult conditions, sometimes the white balance is wrong, but I'm not sure that SLRs or the notorious iPhone would cope with this frame normally. Very difficult conditions with two light sources, different in nature and color temperature.
Optical stabilization is not here, so in the dark prepare to shoot 5-6 frames to be able to choose the best one. In principle, there is nothing criminal here, it is possible to understand what is shown in the photo.
But all the bright light bulbs actually turned into squiggles:
At the same time, literally the next frame turned out to be completely normal:
In general, from such a budget apparatus with a completely inexpressive daytime shooting, I expected at night outright pornography, the inability to focus on the object, hellish noises or no less hellish consequences of working noise. For the whole evening (and more than 50 frames), I received only ONE frame out of focus:
And then, the problem was not in the software of the camera, but in the lens: a drop of water tritely fell on it. The camera can shoot up to 10 frames in a row in its native resolution without any problems. Removes very quickly, the quality of a single frame does not suffer. But the frame buffer is being rewritten for a long time.
10 frames glued together in 1 gif
Pleases the work of the meter. Even in complete darkness, he tries to get a sane image:
In general, I don’t have any serious complaints about the software and the software component of the camera.
Crop, fullsize on click. He made a little noise and missed with the white balance, which is noticeable by the color of the arch on the right.
The camera interface gives much more opportunities than the module is able to implement.
The settings are neatly hidden in the drop-down menu: here you have both shooting modes, preset profiles, and special effects. It makes no sense to sort them all out, but you can also get a general idea of the wealth of opportunities from the screenshots. There is even a photographing mode, sorry, food.
The HDR camera seems to be glued, but the extremely poor dynamic range of the module does not allow for pulling out any significant amount of detail from the shadows. But the noise adds pretty. This will have to accept.
Here is a frame without HDR:
Here is a frame with HDR:
Noise has become more, but the dynamic range is not particularly increased.
The standard Android 5.1 is enhanced with Acer's proprietary shell, which can work in several different modes: friendly for beginners, childish or classic. The first is perfect for those users who are completely unfamiliar with technology. The second - by itself, for children. Parental control features are easily configured, in this regard, again, everything is fine. The third is the usual application lucher with “branded” buns.
Of the 16 GB of internal memory available to the user about 9 and a half: the built-in software is not just a lot, but a lot. Here you can find both reminder-reminder browsers that can work in a floating window, and all sorts of cloud-dryuki, pre-installed games from Gameloft, the Polaris office suite and branded applications for music, video and image viewing.
The native desktop with the “For Dummies” setup wizard allows you to quickly set up your smartphone, even if you have just been unfrozen, and you missed the events of the last thirty-six years:
All this (by itself) can be replaced, but to remove it without root without violating the integrity of the firmware with root — not (just “disable” in the application manager), and this is sad.
For the rest, the shell is like a shell, now LG, Samsung and ASUS have similar chips. Shutter notifications / quick switches are easily configured, floating applications can all be turned off. Well, or turn it on.
No brakes were detected, the browser copes with relatively heavy sites without problems, the toys are going fine. Native Google Apps (Google Start, Chrome) work perfectly. No problem with Google Now, Ok, Google from the desktop - no problem.
Antutu is difficult to call an objective test, but everyone uses it, and we cannot stand aside. Over 6 runs (2 sets of three tests in a row to take into account possible heating and throttling), the results swam from 26,150 to 26,500 parrots.
With a dollar under 70 and a price of 13.5-14 thousand rubles - more than normal results. In the end, the point is not the number of benchmark points, but how the device works.
Acer's engineers obviously nakhimichili something with the speed of animation, all transitions and transformations take less time than the competitors, because of what it seems that the speed of the interface response is faster than that of classmates. Asphalt on medium settings flies everywhere except the Tokyo highway.
There’s nothing to write about here: the device is just as good for listening to music as you can use the complete headset or its analogs. Big headphones shake the power is not enough, and the sound detail after music-oriented smartphones can be a little frustrating. The rest - the sound is like sound. Better than 90% of the budget junk on the market.
What do we have in the end? A good middling in all respects with a stunning battery. Performance is the most common, but we are invited to play on this phone and not in Crysis. But all everyday functions work fine. The UI is well developed, the built-in software works quickly, the display is pleasing with rich colors and a good picture, the device is fine in the hand.
The camera is so-so, but for 14k normal photos will be taken only by Lumia 1020 from Avito or any digital camera.
The device has a lot of direct competitors: ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser ZE550KL, Meizu M2 Note, Lenovo A7000, Xiaomi Redmi Note 2.
Asus hardly keeps one day from the battery, Atom - rather voracious processor. But the camera is better.
Meizu is the best option in terms of sound, but, unfortunately, the memory card here occupies the second SIM card slot, so you have to choose what you need. In addition, it is more expensive, and the materials of the case / design of the back panel raise questions. Autonomy is better than Asus'a, but also not a record.
Lenovo is more expensive, takes a little better, but is weaker on a battery, and its screen is so-so, to be honest.
Xiaomi is the strongest competitor both in price and filling. It has a very ... specific shell, some complain about problems with the russification of a smartphone (in some places it is not, no, and damned Chinese flourishes will come out), but in Russia it is sold ... semi-official, so to speak. That is, you can find it, and even some kind of guarantee, but they will give it, but otherwise - consider that you bought it in China.
There is another competitor that rarely remembers ... Yes, it's about the Nokia 640 XL model. According to the form factor, the impact is close, and the iron is about the same level. The price tag is almost identical, but LTE will not be in it, and model cards with two SIM cards and / or LTE are not on sale in the Russian Federation now. The trouble is not even in this, but in terms of speed of work, a set of applications, ease of browsing, opportunities for customization, and even in the autonomous area, this “state employee” easily kneels any flagship on WP / W10M, not to mention models 640 / 640XL, which are now doing the main sales for statisticians from Redmond.
And so it turns out that the “average” in all respects Liquid Z630 becomes an extremely interesting option if you are comfortable with a 5.5-inch diagonal, and the shooting results do not go further than twitter, contact, and facebook. The battery is great, the software is no problem, the price is delicious, what else is needed?
High resolution screen? You need a powerful GPU, which means you'll have to save on something else: a battery, case materials, a camera, or communication capabilities. Cool body materials and a good battery? Under the knife will get the camera, performance and display. Today I want to introduce you to one of the most successful attempts to get a balanced device, without getting out of the "reasonable" price. Meet the Acer Liquid Z630.
General view
The smartphone belongs to the share of devices that is now actively growing on the market, which it is fashionable to call the word “fablets”. The display diagonal is 5.5 inches, it is already beyond the limits of comfortable use with only one hand, but has not grown to 5.7 inches which are definitely unsuitable for “normal” use. Of course, now begin to talk about the dominance of "shovels", and jokes on the topic "and the cutting in the kit there?". No, no cutting. And, yes, in this price segment there is a steady increase in the demand for such a diagonal, so, unfortunately, we have what we have. On the other hand, such physical dimensions allow you to place a capacious battery in the device: here Acer did not stint. Responsible for the autonomy of impressive battery size at 4000 mAh.
')
By the way, about the materials: the back panel of the phablet is made of high-quality corrugated plastic: neither you noticeable micro-scratches, nor slips from wet hands. The front panel is covered with glass with oleophobic coating. Branded chips, of course, are present. The characteristic design of the conversational dynamics, the overall shape of the body - all within the overall strategy of Acer smartphone construction.
Platform and wireless capabilities
If the manufacturer did not save much on the body, then where is the dog buried? SoC MTK 6735 is the “basis” for the Liquid Z630. This platform is interesting because for the first time MTK tried to implement a single decent platform for creating relatively inexpensive devices that will work normally. At the same time, the low price for this SoC is based precisely on the mass character of this solution.
Inside MTK 6753 are 4 64-bit ARM Cortex 53 cores that can operate at frequencies up to 1.5 GHz. In most models, the frequency is limited to 1.3 GHz, and the Acer Liquid Z630 in this case is no exception. The powerful GPU Mali-T720 is responsible for working with 3D graphics (supports OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.2). The hardware video decoder allows you to work with H.264 and H.265 formats and allows you to decode video up to FullHD @ 30 FPS, almost without using the power of the CPU.
And now - the cherry on the cake. Wireless support. Here, MTK did their best: the built-in modem supports ALL LTE frequencies, so the solution turned out to be truly universal, and devices for different markets do not need to be customized separately for local standards: just “sew” the correct modem into the device’s memory.
WiFi? Bluetooth? GPS? Glonass? Of course, yes. WiFi b / g / n + direct, Bluetooth 4.0 + A2DP for headsets, navigation starts in 20-30 seconds on a freshly turned on smartphone.
Display
If the stuffing is more or less normal and the case is not bad, then the display is not so simple. IPS-matrix with a diagonal of 5.5 inches works with a relatively modest resolution of 1280x720 pixels. The stock of brightness is too small, and on a sunny day, using the device “without problems” will not work, but in the dark the backlight does not burn the eyes, the minimum level of brightness is very low. The viewing angles are close to the maximum: if the distortion and noticeable, then at such angles, under which the device is simply inconvenient to use.
As for the resolution, then Acer cheated. On the one hand, 1280x720 does not load the GPU (and the “shovels” segment started from 5.7 inches at the same resolution, there were no problems), on the other hand, users spoiled by modern technologies may be dissatisfied with the fact that competitors have “more points”. What do we really have? The display is excellent. The color rendition, contrast and the picture itself are very, very pleasant. Grain is not in sight. Properly chosen size and shape of the system font made absolutely not noticeable the highest resolution of the display: getting into the pixel grid is such that there are no “teeth” on the borders of characters.
A nice addition is the ability to adjust the white balance: reading on a slightly yellow screen is much more convenient than on a white or bluish background. Although in general, the picture at the display is quite warm and without additional settings.
Camera
Here, I confess, there will be no miracles. Good performance, high-quality display, good materials and a huge battery - the camera got a very average module in all characteristics.
In good conditions, he simply removes: there are no miracles in the field of image sharpness or dynamic range, as confirmed by numerous photographs from various reviews .
That's what reviewers from Ferra took
But in difficult conditions, the module works surprisingly well. Especially if you take into account the dollar rate, the price of the device and the overall level of the gadget. See for yourself.
This is a crop and resize from a photo taken in the rain and wind from the hands! The full file can be viewed by clicking on the picture. In difficult conditions, sometimes the white balance is wrong, but I'm not sure that SLRs or the notorious iPhone would cope with this frame normally. Very difficult conditions with two light sources, different in nature and color temperature.
Optical stabilization is not here, so in the dark prepare to shoot 5-6 frames to be able to choose the best one. In principle, there is nothing criminal here, it is possible to understand what is shown in the photo.
But all the bright light bulbs actually turned into squiggles:
At the same time, literally the next frame turned out to be completely normal:
In general, from such a budget apparatus with a completely inexpressive daytime shooting, I expected at night outright pornography, the inability to focus on the object, hellish noises or no less hellish consequences of working noise. For the whole evening (and more than 50 frames), I received only ONE frame out of focus:
And then, the problem was not in the software of the camera, but in the lens: a drop of water tritely fell on it. The camera can shoot up to 10 frames in a row in its native resolution without any problems. Removes very quickly, the quality of a single frame does not suffer. But the frame buffer is being rewritten for a long time.
10 frames glued together in 1 gif
Pleases the work of the meter. Even in complete darkness, he tries to get a sane image:
In general, I don’t have any serious complaints about the software and the software component of the camera.
Crop, fullsize on click. He made a little noise and missed with the white balance, which is noticeable by the color of the arch on the right.
The camera interface gives much more opportunities than the module is able to implement.
The settings are neatly hidden in the drop-down menu: here you have both shooting modes, preset profiles, and special effects. It makes no sense to sort them all out, but you can also get a general idea of the wealth of opportunities from the screenshots. There is even a photographing mode, sorry, food.
The HDR camera seems to be glued, but the extremely poor dynamic range of the module does not allow for pulling out any significant amount of detail from the shadows. But the noise adds pretty. This will have to accept.
Here is a frame without HDR:
Here is a frame with HDR:
Noise has become more, but the dynamic range is not particularly increased.
Soft and performance
The standard Android 5.1 is enhanced with Acer's proprietary shell, which can work in several different modes: friendly for beginners, childish or classic. The first is perfect for those users who are completely unfamiliar with technology. The second - by itself, for children. Parental control features are easily configured, in this regard, again, everything is fine. The third is the usual application lucher with “branded” buns.
Of the 16 GB of internal memory available to the user about 9 and a half: the built-in software is not just a lot, but a lot. Here you can find both reminder-reminder browsers that can work in a floating window, and all sorts of cloud-dryuki, pre-installed games from Gameloft, the Polaris office suite and branded applications for music, video and image viewing.
The native desktop with the “For Dummies” setup wizard allows you to quickly set up your smartphone, even if you have just been unfrozen, and you missed the events of the last thirty-six years:
All this (by itself) can be replaced, but to remove it without root without violating the integrity of the firmware with root — not (just “disable” in the application manager), and this is sad.
For the rest, the shell is like a shell, now LG, Samsung and ASUS have similar chips. Shutter notifications / quick switches are easily configured, floating applications can all be turned off. Well, or turn it on.
No brakes were detected, the browser copes with relatively heavy sites without problems, the toys are going fine. Native Google Apps (Google Start, Chrome) work perfectly. No problem with Google Now, Ok, Google from the desktop - no problem.
Antutu is difficult to call an objective test, but everyone uses it, and we cannot stand aside. Over 6 runs (2 sets of three tests in a row to take into account possible heating and throttling), the results swam from 26,150 to 26,500 parrots.
With a dollar under 70 and a price of 13.5-14 thousand rubles - more than normal results. In the end, the point is not the number of benchmark points, but how the device works.
Acer's engineers obviously nakhimichili something with the speed of animation, all transitions and transformations take less time than the competitors, because of what it seems that the speed of the interface response is faster than that of classmates. Asphalt on medium settings flies everywhere except the Tokyo highway.
Sound
There’s nothing to write about here: the device is just as good for listening to music as you can use the complete headset or its analogs. Big headphones shake the power is not enough, and the sound detail after music-oriented smartphones can be a little frustrating. The rest - the sound is like sound. Better than 90% of the budget junk on the market.
Summary
What do we have in the end? A good middling in all respects with a stunning battery. Performance is the most common, but we are invited to play on this phone and not in Crysis. But all everyday functions work fine. The UI is well developed, the built-in software works quickly, the display is pleasing with rich colors and a good picture, the device is fine in the hand.
The camera is so-so, but for 14k normal photos will be taken only by Lumia 1020 from Avito or any digital camera.
Competitors
The device has a lot of direct competitors: ASUS Zenfone 2 Laser ZE550KL, Meizu M2 Note, Lenovo A7000, Xiaomi Redmi Note 2.
Asus hardly keeps one day from the battery, Atom - rather voracious processor. But the camera is better.
Meizu is the best option in terms of sound, but, unfortunately, the memory card here occupies the second SIM card slot, so you have to choose what you need. In addition, it is more expensive, and the materials of the case / design of the back panel raise questions. Autonomy is better than Asus'a, but also not a record.
Lenovo is more expensive, takes a little better, but is weaker on a battery, and its screen is so-so, to be honest.
Xiaomi is the strongest competitor both in price and filling. It has a very ... specific shell, some complain about problems with the russification of a smartphone (in some places it is not, no, and damned Chinese flourishes will come out), but in Russia it is sold ... semi-official, so to speak. That is, you can find it, and even some kind of guarantee, but they will give it, but otherwise - consider that you bought it in China.
There is another competitor that rarely remembers ... Yes, it's about the Nokia 640 XL model. According to the form factor, the impact is close, and the iron is about the same level. The price tag is almost identical, but LTE will not be in it, and model cards with two SIM cards and / or LTE are not on sale in the Russian Federation now. The trouble is not even in this, but in terms of speed of work, a set of applications, ease of browsing, opportunities for customization, and even in the autonomous area, this “state employee” easily kneels any flagship on WP / W10M, not to mention models 640 / 640XL, which are now doing the main sales for statisticians from Redmond.
And so it turns out that the “average” in all respects Liquid Z630 becomes an extremely interesting option if you are comfortable with a 5.5-inch diagonal, and the shooting results do not go further than twitter, contact, and facebook. The battery is great, the software is no problem, the price is delicious, what else is needed?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/369201/
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