Review: Acer beTouch E200

Busses. You wait for ages for one and then three come along together. So, it seems, is the case with Acer, which has recently announced no fewer than four Windows Mobile smartphones. The beTouch E200 sits at the head of its beTouch group of three.

It is an alluringly designed silver and white handset, and it is the first Windows Mobile 6.5 ‘Windows Phone’ device we’ve seen to incorporate a slider. Sitting under the slide is a wide, flat number pad. We were able to use it at about 80 percent of our top speed for tapping out texts.

That is a better deal than we got from working with the screen. At 3-inches across diagonal corners and offering 240 x 400 pixels it is a little on the small side for true finger-friendly working. The beTouch E200 lacks an accelerometer so you can’t switch into wide mode to tap on a large format QWERTY keyboard. In tall format the 200 pixels wide screen just doesn’t offer enough space to easily work with the fingertip. So you’ll be reaching for the stylus that sits in a housing on the top right of the casing.

You’ll need the stylus quite a bit because Windows Mobile 6.5 sports a lot of the small fiddly icons and menus that its predecessor was infamous for. So this isn’t a device to choose if you are determined to be stylus free.

Acer has put its own Today screen on top of the Windows mobile main applications menu. This offers the time and shortcuts to up to nine applications, which are easy to personalise. You can get to the full applications menu by tapping an on-screen icon. You can also lock the device by tapping an icon.

The beTouch E200 runs on a Qualcomm 528 MHz processor, and it is acceptable but not really a flyer. We found there were short waits for applications to run. The resistive screen is not always a hundred percent responsive to finger-taps either. Add these elements together and on occasions we found the device a bit frustrating.

Worse even than those annoyance is the absence of Wi-Fi. Really it is such a staple these days that we find it difficult to see how any smartphone can get by without it. Still, there you are. If you want data on the E200 you’ll have to rely on the HSDPA which is supported to 7.2Mbps downloads. Bluetooth is present.

There’s another irritation too. The microSD card is lodged underneath the backplate. At first glance it looks as though you can get to it without having to remove the battery, but in fact you do need to take the battery out to get to it. That’s not good news if you are keen on manually swapping microSD cards.

And a final disappointment – the headset slot is mini USB and located on the right edge. So you’ll need an adaptor and not to mind a bit of pocket-snagging if you are to use your own favourite earphones.

There is GPS present, and Google Maps complete with Latitude and Street View are on hand to help you get around. And if you are a fan of social networking then links to Blogger, Flickr and YouTube might interest. We find the Facebook application the best of the quartet though. The 3 megapixel camera can takes shots for you to upload.

Overall, then, Acer’s beTouch E200 is a mixed bag. Nice physical design, and useful if you hanker after a real numerical keypad, but it suffers from some poor design issues such as the use of USB for the headset connector and the need to remove the battery to get to the microSD card slot. And there’s no Wi-Fi.

Price: £258 SIM-free
Web: www.acer.com

Essential verdict
Performance: 8/10
Design: 8/10
Features: 6/10
Value for Money: 7/10
Overall score: 7/10

Written by Sandra Vogel. Originally published in Smartphone Essentials magazine.

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