Acer beTouch E200 review

In the last year or two, Acer has become just one of the competitors for smartphone perfection.

The Taiwanese manufacturer's offerings seemed pretty impressive in February with a whole new range of Windows Mobile devices. We were pretty impressed with Acer's SPB Mobile shell nicely hiding the ugly Windows Mobile 6 interface.

Now the beTouch E200 has come along and our heart has been shattered.

Although the beTouch runs on Windows 6.5, a much improved incarnation of Windows' mobile OS, the Acer shell has been stripped from the phone, as has the wonderful Windows 6.5 homescreen.

The Acer beTouch E200 is a slider, but doesn't reveal a Qwerty keyboard beneath the screen. Instead it's alpha numeric and this really doesn't make typing any easier. Each row of keys is constructed from a solid piece of plastic, which makes typing quickly difficult if you type without looking at the keys.

The onscreen keyboards are also difficult to use, thanks to the small letters. You'll have to use the stylus if you want to make any sense.

The quality of the screen is reflected in the beTouch E200's price. At just £260 SIM free, there's no wonder the resolution of the 3-inch screen is only 240x400 pixels.

It's also resistive and you can tell this instantly when you try and select an icon on the menu. Sometimes it's slow to react (surprising since the beTouch E200 runs on a not-too-shabby Qualcomm MSM 7225 528 MHz processor), other times we kept having to jab the screen with our finger or, most annoyingly, the stylus to see any action.

The homescreen is a hybrid of Windows 6.5. You can choose the icons that you want to appear on the homescreen, but they're not active as they are on most Windows 6.5 handsets. You can't view subject lines of emails, details about missed calls, dynamic weather or any other information from the homescreen as you can on every other Windows 6.5 device.

The menu is the same pleasing vertically-scrolling number, and the screen seems more responsive in this part of the phone than any other.

The only issue appears when you want to select a sub menu - there's a solid possibility that you'll have to slide the stylus out from its home in the beTouch's casing.

Like the keyboard, the keys below the screen are pretty tricky to use too. The four-way navigtion key in the centre rocks as you press it, while the call answer and end buttons to either side of the nav button don't seem to have enough give to be responsive.

In terms of connectivity, the beTouch isn't badly equipped with HSDPA/HSUPA support and GPS, but Wi-Fi is a serious omission that should not be left out on any smartphone, whatever the price.

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