Quick look at Acer’s new cloud-powered Liquid Jade 2 [Video]

Cam Bunton | Feb 26 2016 - 9:40 am PT

Earlier this week, Acer announced the all-new Liquid Jade 2. The new Android Marshmallow-powered smartphone features fairly high-end specs for what looks to be a mid-ranger.

The Liquid Jade 2 has a 5.5-inch full HD AMOLED display on the front covered in 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass. It’s fully laminated with zero air gap for sharp, accurate colors and images which look like they’re right on the surface. This zero air gap also ensures viewing angles are good too.

Although made from plastic, the entire phone has a brushed metal look to it, which we’ve seen in many smartphones in the past. There’s an attractive chrome trim around the device as well as a bright red ‘silhouette’ to add a splash of color.

The 21MP camera boasts PDAF (phase detection auto focus) and 4K video recording, and even has manual controls within the software UI to adjust white balance and exposure using onscreen controls.

It runs Android Marshmallow, with Acer’s own lightweight skin on top, and is powered by the same Snapdragon 808 chip found in the LG G4 and Moto X Style. It also has 3GB RAM and 32GB onboard storage, which combines somehow with cloud-storage to get 1TB of what Acer calls ‘Hybrid Storage’. It sounds a lot like the cloud-based system offered by Nextbit, but it wasn’t clear during my hands-on time whether that feature works the same way. It also has a MicroSD card slot which supports cards up to 200GB in capacity.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-ZKXd3yx3k]

Overall it seems like a good phone. We don’t know pricing or availability yet and aren’t sure what capacity the battery holds. Still, it’s good to see another Android OEM making a phone without a heavily skinned UI.