Review: Acer X960

Acer’s first Tempo series PDA, the DX900 was capable of carrying two SIM cards. The second unit to come our way, the X960, doesn’t do that but it does have a very novel feature of its own: a widget driven user interface.

Windows Mobile 6.1, which is at the core of the X960, is hidden behind a graphically rich and touch friendly front-end. Acer has gone one step further than usual with the X960 and its Today Screen is a simple display of icons.

The top information bar remains intact offering the Start button, connection status, signal strength, volume control, battery status and a shortcut to the task manager which lets you switch between open apps, see memory status and stop individual apps running. The bottom line is intact too, with the softmenus readily visible.

In between, though, there is that completely novel display. It is widget based and there are six icons to tap: messaging, email, calendar, phone, weather and a clock. You can’t add new widgets to these, but fingerpan left and there are two further screens with more shortcuts to contacts, music and photos on one screen and system settings, an application launcher and Web services on the other.

Each of these links in to a screen with a uniquely designed look and feel, and often with fingerpanning control. For example photo contacts are presented in a vertically scrolling carousel.

There’s more, too. Swipe your finger up or down and a 12 icon grid menu pops up with even more shortcuts.

This all makes for a very novel way of getting around a Windows Mobile device, and the skinning means you don’t necessarily have to get down to Windows Mobile itself to do what you want to. The SMS creation tool, for example, has been skinned right down to the keyboard which is a little larger than the standard one in Windows Mobile.

The hardware itself is a fairly nondescript design. Black shiny plastic with silver highlights are the order of the day. The 2.8 inch 640 x 480 touch screen is framed at the top by a camera for two way video calling – this is a HSDPA device. At the bottom are Call and End keys, a Home key, a key with a GPS icon which by default launches Google maps, and a central navigation ring and select button.

There is a 3.2 megapixel camera on the back of the casing. It has autofocus and an LED flash. There is a GPS antenna built in and Wi-Fi is here too.

If we have a grumble about the general specifications it is on the memory front. After a hard reset, before installing any data or applications of our own there was just 80MB of storage memory free. Fortunately there is a microSD card slot on the right side of the handset and so you can add more memory. It had no trouble with reading our 16GB microSDHC card.

We’ve already indicated that the X960 plays music. It is a great pity that the headphones connect via miniUSB and that they are one piece. If you have a 3.5mm headset you really like to use you’ll need to buy an adaptor.

In general use the X960 was also a touch sluggish, not always as fast to respond to our fingertaps as we’d have liked, and over time this could become irritating. But overall we come away with a positive view of the handset. It is quite average in many respects but the custom UI is surprisingly effective, lifting it above similar devices in this price range.

Specs & info
Price (as reviewed): £339
Operating system: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Processor: Samsung S3C 6400 533MHz
Memory: 256MB ROM, 128MB RAM
Dimensions: 106.4mm x 59mm x 13.7mm
Weight: 131.5g
Display size: 2.8 diagonal inches
Display resolution: 480 x 640
Expansion slot: 1 x microSD

Essential Verdict
Performance: 7/10
Not always instantly responsive to finger presses and sweeps

Design: 8/10
Average hardware design, novel user interface

Features: 8/10
Plentiful connectivity options and software extras

Value for Money: 7/10
Not a bad price SIM free

Overall score: 8/10

Words by Sandra Vogel.

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