Priced slightly higher than the bottom-of-the-barrel E101, the Acer beTouch E200 still falls in the budget category for full-featured smartphones.  This time, though, it comes with a few interesting capabilities, along with relatively admirable performance.

Physically, it's an unusually styled phone.  Ever saw a slider Windows Mobile handset that revealed a standard T9 keypad?  I don't remember if I ever saw one either, but that's what the E200's form factor is.  Suffice to say, it is a strange design idea. Overall build appears solid, with a sturdy sliding mechanism and great feel in the hand.  It's also quite a looker in its own right.

The E200 sports a 3-inch touchscreen with a 320 x 240 resolution.  Colors are rich and lines are sharp, but the resistive touch capability once again leaves a lot to ask for.  It also doesn't help that it's running Windows Mobile 6.5, which still retains much of the same hard-to-finger touch elements beneath the revamped surface.

As a phone, it manages above average call quality, with voices sounding crisp and clear on both ends of the conversation.  Speakerphone performance is also decent.  The device itself feels speedy, removing much of the lag we've come to expect from Windows Mobile handsets.  Battery life should be good for around two days or more of regular use.

The range of features is about what you'd expect from a typical smartphone.  There's 3G support, onboard GPS and stereo Bluetooth, but no Wi-Fi.  HSDPA performance is decent, but we've seen speedier connections from similarly-rated handsets.  It comes Windows Mobile's wide range of messaging support, so you should be taken care of on that end.  The 3.2 megapixel camera takes surprisingly good photos, although it lacks a good amount of editing options.

Overall, the Acer beTouch E200 is a decent Windows Mobile phone.  That is, if a sliding T9-style keypad makes sense to you.  The design decision is a bit far out for me, but this one comes in at a decent price, so it might be worth looking into.

The Acer beTouch E101 is the cheapest model in the company's newest line-up of Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphones.  If you're in the market for a sub-$300 device with Microsoft's latest handiwork, this is probably the way to go.  The ride after won't be such a smooth one, though.

Physically, this batch of releases from Acer is a huge step up from their previous Tempo line.  While not being particularly attention-grabbing, the beTouch E101 looks like a proper smartphone.  Despite the plastic build, it handles very well and appears to have sturdy construction.  The navigation array, particularly the clickable scroll wheel, is admirably designed.

Display is a 3.2-inch resistive touchscreen (with 240 x 400 resolution), which manages to show very clear and vibrant images.  Unfortunately, touch response is among the worst we've seen on a Windows Mobile handset.  If you're planning to use this without a stylus, be prepared for a world of frustration.

As a phone, the E101 manages very good call quality on both ends of the conversation, with clear, natural-sounding voices.  Speakerphone works similarly well, albeit with a lot more echo.  Windows Mobile 6.5 works as 6.1 has always done - a little too lacking to be relevant at the current market.  There are some noticeable lags, but it's not too bad - a credit to Acer's hardware.  Battery life is rated at up to five hours of talk time, enough for a couple or more days of regular use.

Forget about connecting to the web.  The phone has neither 3G nor Wi-Fi, so you're stuck with GPRS or EDGE for data connections.  Kind of makes it odd that  the handset comes with a YouTube app on board.

It has all the usual Windows Mobile features, including a robust messaging suite, stereo Bluetooth, GPS and some pre-installed apps.  The 2.0 megapixel camera manages decent-looking snaps, although it comes with neither flash nor a good amount of settings.

Overall, the Acer beTouch E101 is a tough phone to recommend, unless it's the "only" Windows Mobile 6.5 handset you can afford at your budget.  Core hardware is actually pretty powerful (528MHz processor, 256MB of RAM), but the touch implementation begs a lot of improvement.

On paper, Acer should be killing it with the Acer neoTouch.  Sporting a fast 1GHz processor, a large 3.8-inch touchscreen and an attractive price, it's a tough deal to ignore.  Yet, it feels, once more, like an almost-but-not-quite effort.

Physically, the Acer neoTouch is a gorgeous phone.  With a front panel dominated by a large 3.8-inch display and notably slimmer lines than their previous releases, the computer company is starting to get mobile right.  Do note we said "starting," as the device sports a cheap build that feels like it can crack with one fall.

You can't help but love the large-size screen, which manages an 800 x 480 resolution.  It displays images sharply, with rich and vibrant colors.  With Windows Mobile 6.5 running at the helm, Acer could have done without the home page skinning.  They did it anyway with Acer Home, which, unfortunately, doesn't really add any value to the experience.  A custom phone app, a new address book and a better onscreen keyboard round out the modifications to WinMo.

As a phone, the neoTouch manages excellent voice calls.  Speakerphone lacks a little volume, though, which makes it tough to use.  Overall phone performance is quite fast, especially when compared to the company's previous Tempo line of smartphones.  Battery is only good for a day and a half of regular use, so best carry a charger around if you're a heavy user.

Feature set is pretty rich, including HSDPA connectivity, Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth and GPS.  It naturally comes with Windows Mobile's full set of messaging capabilities (e.g. Exchange push email), some excellent productivity apps (e.g. Mobile Office) and a social networking software.  Web browsing is pretty snappy with fast-loading pages.  Performance won't eclipse more popular smartphone choices, but it's better than many Windows Mobile phones we've seen.

Media playback, especially movies, is highly enjoyable with the large display.  Quality is pretty good, too.  There's also a 5.0 megapixel camera with LED flash and autofocus, which manages poor to average shots, depending on the surrounding brightness.

Priced at around $600 unlocked (depending on retailers), it's quite a bargain for the hardware set alone.  It's a sexy looker, too.  That, of course, is if you can live with the decidedly plastic build.

Not a fan of Acer's spate of Windows Mobile smartphone releases during the year?  Maybe you'll find a little more to like in the Acer Liquid A1, the company's first Android handset.

Refusing to hold back on the hardware for their newest effort, Acer is fitting the Liquid A1 with a pretty spiffy hardware suite.  Chief on the specs list is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU and a 3D-capable chipset, making it the very first Android device to offer that level of computing power.

The phone will feature a capacitive touchscreen with 800 x 480 resolution (no word on size), a 5.0 megapixel camera module, onboard GPS and 3G connectivity.   Acer is also touting improved power management for the phone, claiming longer battery autonomy for heavy users.

It will ship pre-installed with version 1.6 of the Android OS (Donut) and, based on the press release, sounds like it will use a custom UI that revolves around entertainment features and web bookmarks.  Other software capabilities include address book integration with Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Picasa and Flickr, as well as an exclusive multimedia application called Spinlets.

No details on pricing or release date have been give for the Acer Liquid A1, which looks a lot more like a modern smartphone, compared to the company's previous releases under the Tempo line.   Rumors are going around, though, that they're prepping it for a November debut.

[via Talk Android]

Acer has a tough sell on its hands with its Tempo line of touchscreen smartphones.  The Acer Tempo F900 continues the trend, offering a decent but unexceptional feature set, along with a more affordable price.

Just like other phones in the Tempo line, the F900 comes in at a bulky frame and runs Windows Mobile 6.1 with Acer Shell skin.  It's the biggest phone in the range, touting a large 3.8-inch display (800 x 480 pixels) that's bright, clear and eye-catching.  Looks aren't spectacular, especially next to the only other 3.8-inch WinMo phone in the market (the HTC Touch HD), feeling more slab-like.  Build appears to be sturdy.

As a phone, it facilitates average-sounding voice calls, but the speakerphone is a bit lacking.  It supports all standard connectivity options, including 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 2Mbps HSUPA, Wi-Fi b/g and stereo Bluetooth.   Messaging support is extensive, as Windows Mobile handsets go, but you're stuck with the same old kludgy UI.  It rocks a 1530mAh battery, which should be good for at least two days of typical use before recharging.

It uses the same processor as the dual-SIM DX900 (533MHz Samsung S3C), but appears to run even slower.  Overall, it's a frustrating phone to use because of the navigation lag.  I recommend ditching Acer Shell (which is especially slow) and either working with Windows UI natively or using a different skin.  The touch response is also not up to par with many modern handsets.

While the F900 suffers a lot of problems, the feature set is not one of them.  Like many of their other phones, Acer outfitted this as tightly as they can. It comes with the Opera browser built-in, with fast page loads and decent performance.  The accelerometer is a bit frustrating (it doesn't always re-orient the screen when you turn it), but I can live with it.

It also comes with a 3.2 megapixel camera (average photo quality), aGPS (with SiRF Star III pre-installed), a very good music player and numerous apps.  One omission they overlooked is adding a better media player here, as the phone offers one of the best mobile viewing experiences available with a screen that big.

Like their other smartphone efforts, the Acer Tempo F900 fails to impress.  Unfortunate but not surprising, since Acer doesn't really try that hard with this handset.  The days when you can slap a beefed-up hardware package and call it a top-of-the-line phone are just long gone.  Acer needs to find a way to get their head out of that thinking.

The latest in the electronic company's attempt to make its mark in the smartphone landscape, the Acer M900, is a huge phone. Justifying the additional size, however, is a large display panel, coupled with a side-sliding full QWERTY keypad and a host of high-end features.

Intended to rival similar QWERTY-toting business touchscreen phones like the HTC Touch Pro 2, the M900 fits in all the modern conveniences you can ask for in a handset. Well, all except a pocketable size, as it measures a large 119 x 62 x 17.1mm and weighs 188 grams.

Display is a huge 3.8-inch touchscreen panel, with 800 x 480 resolution and very good quality. Text and images all look bright and crisp when viewed in it. Controls are decent and even adds in an uncommon fingerprint sensor, which can double as an optical directional pad. The keyboard offers good spacing, although it feels a bit shallow. Keying in punctuation requires you to "shift" via the Fn key first, which is hardly the most impressive design we've seen.

We've talked about Acer's Shell UI before and it's here too - working as good as ever, with its office-like design. Connectivity is tops on the unit, which includes high-speed 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS. Other features include a very snappy camera (suprisingly good quality), an FM radio, a task manager application and custom onscreen keyboard (which works way better than the WinMo default).

Voice calls are good, though, it could use some improvement. Video calls, on the other hand, were generally unsatisfying because of pasty video processing.

On the specs sheet, the Acer M900 packs every modern convenience users will expect from a high-end phone. In reality, though, there is no reason to buy this over similarly-priced high-end units, such as the iPhone and those from HTC. If you can get a good deal on it, however, as was being planned originally for its US release (free on contract), it may prove a compelling choice for the hardware quality alone.

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I've always been baffled at why major manufacturers continue to steer clear of producing dual SIM handsets.  My guess is it has something to do with exclusivity issues with carriers, although I could be wrong.  I certainly don't think there isn't any mainstream interest in it - I, for one, would love it.

After their takeover of phone manufacturer Eten, Acer decided to rebrand one of the former's devices and bring it to the world market.  Called the Acer DX900, the new phone just might be the very first mass-market Windows Mobile handset with dual-SIM functionality.

Physically, the phone looks cleanly styled and is 100% identical with the Eten DX900 (save for the branding). It remains bulky, however, despite packing in limited hardware features and a considerably average-sized 2.8-inch touchscreen.

For indoor use, the display performs well enough, even coming with a stylus to help save you when fingers just won't do the job.  Under direct sunlight, however, the display is barely usable, even with a supposed light sensor aboard the unit.  It runs Spb Shell on top of Windows Mobile 6.1.  While the layer is good, its changes aren't implemented across all menus.  As such, you occasionally get the hard-to-use Windows menus, depending on which functions you're using.

The two SIM card feature works well enough on the device.  The implementation is such that you define one as the main SIM while the other plays second fiddle via the options.  If you're picky about which accounts you'll use to call or SMS particular contacts, you'll end up having to work with the settings a lot.  Overall, it's the standard Chinese phone implementation of dual SIMs - not exactly what I was hoping for.

Call quality is topnotch, while messaging suffers from the same interface problems as most Windows Mobile handsets - WinMo is just something you'll have to tolerate, instead of enjoy.  Multimedia playback is good, with decent support for a bunch of formats, including DivX.  Camera is just about average for WinMo smartphones, which should peg it on the lower end of the scale.  There's a GPS tuner on board although no software comes preinstalled, so you'll have to manage that yourself.

Overall performance can be annoying if you've used better smartphones in the past (such as the newer HTC models).  The interface can be slow and there is a definite lag with almost every function you try to use.  As one of the cheapest smartphones out there, though, the phone's failings may be forgivable, especially if you could really use the dual SIM feature.

If a dual-SIM smartphone appeals to you, there's basically not much of a choice - this is the unit to get.  For other purposes, though, and assuming you have the budget, it might be wiser to look elsewhere.

Photo Credit: GSM Arena

We wrote last week about Acer's bulky and overall unimpressive Tempo line of smartphones.  As it is, while the four phones shown off were largely decent Windows Mobile efforts, much of the media coverage the new handsets received went along the same line as our apathetic sentiments.  In what just might be a brilliant counter to the lukewarm response, Acer is working on a distribution setup that could see Tempo models make their way to a large set of consumers.

One magic word, as it seems, could change people's "doomed" predictions for the erstwhile ignored handsets: "free".  PC Magazine reports that Acer is currently in talks with both AT&T and T-Mobile to bring Tempo phones at no cost on contract in the US.

If you can have it free with a plan, the phone does turn into an attractive catch.  It's a full-featured smartphone, after all, with the usual suite of functionality we've come to expect from the lot of modern touchscreen handsets.  At no upfront cost, I'm sure customers can look past the bulky form.

According to the same report, Acer is using its position in the netbook market (which mobile carriers are now getting into) as leverage for the negotiations.  I, for one, definitely look forward to Acer making this happen - if the contract's even half-decent, the Tempo C1, E1, F1 and L1 should find a good amount of willing users.

Photo Credit:  BGR

Acer lifted the veils off their brand new line of smartphones, monickered Tempo, at the ongoing MWC 2009. While they pack it with with a modicum of standard features, a few things really do seem amiss.

At a time when every other WinMo handset coming out with the much-lauded 6.5 version of the OS, Acer chose to stick with Windows Mobile 6.1. Perhaps the four phones that come as part of this release were intended for an early 2008 launch that sadly didn't come to pass? Form factor is also sadly disappointing. While none of the units look half-bad, they're also unusually thick and bring absolutely nothing new to the table.

Unless these things are selling for bargain, I doubt they'll make much of an impact with the kind of releases other cell phone manufacturers are coming out with. All that aside, the Tempo line features four touchscreen handsets, each one fitted in various configurations.

On the low end are the X960 and the F900. Both phones feature a 2.8 inch touch-enabled display with VGA resolution, HSDPA connectivity, on-screen keypad and a 3.2 megapixel camera with auto-focus. A tad better are the M900 and DX900 that both feature a generous 3.8 inch WVGA touch display, fingerprint reader for extra security, a smattering of connectivity options (3G, Wi-Fi, BlueTooth) and a 5 megapixel camera. The DX900 appears to be the top of the line and offers a standby time of 160 hours (which isn't all that much once again, all things considered).

How Acer had the gall to waste money release phones at a show that seem a bit too dated for their own is beyond me. Still, if the price point is attractive, this might just find its way into a few mobile users' hands when it makes its likely debut in the European market.

Photo Source: Gizmodo