Acer’s New Windows Mobile 6.5 phones

Acer today launched three new handsets, all of which use Microsoft's new Windows Mobile 6.5 OS.The all India launch happened in Bangalore and the press conference was addressed by Acer's India Head of Smart Handhelds, Richard Tan. During the press conference, Mr. Tan elaborated on the three new handsets- the beTouch E101, the beTouch E200 and the NeoTouch.

The beTouch E101 is the cheapest of the three, priced at Rs.11,900 (US$253). It has a 3.2-inch touchscreen, and its menus can also be navigated using an iPod-like scroll wheel. It uses Acer's proprietary beTouch UI which essential adds a new homescreen instead of the default Windows Mobile one. Although, the phone comes GPS ready, the downside is that it doesn't support 3G and Wi-Fi.

The beTouch E200 is a slider touchscreen phone priced at Rs. 17,900.It has an alpha-numeric keypad that slides out from beneath the screen and it can also be controlled using touch. It comes 3G ready and has GPS but again there is no Wi-Fi.

The neoTouch is Acer's high-end offering and is priced at Rs.35,000. Its stand-out features are its large 3.8-inch screen and a 1GHzQualcomm Snapdragon processor, which Mr. Tan claimed is the fastest present in a smartphone today. The neoTouch also has a 5MP camera with flash and comes ready with 3G, Wi-Fi and GPS.

Mr. Tan further informed that Acer has tied-up with Tata Docomo in India to market these phones. He stated that any user who purchases an Acer smartphone and opts for Tata Docomo as their service provider,will get 500MB free download usage a month for six months.

The Acer phones were the first Windows Mobile 6.5 phone we have seen. The OS looks slightly different, especially a very Zune-like default homescreen, but after a while, we came across what looked uncannily like Windows Mobile 6.1 menus. The phones themselves look interesting and are priced well (except for the touchNeo, which might just be a little overpriced), but our first impressions were that they lacked a polished UI and build quality.

We hope to review the phones soon and hopefully an in-depth test will dissuade our initial fears.