The Acer Betouch E110 Defines Entry Level Android Features

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The Acer Betouch E110 Defines Entry Level Android Features

Who ever said that Android smartphones are only for the elite should see the new Acer beTouch E110 and a host of other Androids out there with less stellar features aimed at wider budget-constrained markets.

Most of them don’t really do justice to the promise of the Android that often gets real in upscale models, but hopefully that should change soon with economies of scale in their production.

The Taiwan computer maker Acer has unveiled at the last Mobile World Congress, the beTouch E110 sporting some features we’ve come to expect from smartphones, Android or not, but at their barest minimum specs to make it at par with entry level smartphones.  There is as yet no pricing information despite a planned March release but going by the feature cost cuts Acer obviously did on it, we can’t expect this to go beyond the €200 price point.

Up Close

If there’s any Android smartphone that defines what it means to be an entry level Android, the beTouch E400 fills the shoes.  You get features with low-end sophistication that often just skims the surface above not being there.  For instance, you get 3G on the dual band UMTS but its high speed HSDPA and HSUPA data connectivity speeds get the low end 3.6 Mbps and 364 Kbps, respectively.  There’s also no WiFi to talk about.

Then its display features is pruned down.  While you get a large 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen with 256k colors that has WVGA or HVGA resolution in other Android smartphones, the neoTouch E110 settles with a mere QVGA resolution usually reserved for screens below 2.2 inches.  There’s not even a gravity accelerometer the market expects from touchscreens.

Imaging is next to get axed.  When you thought you have an average 3.2 megapixel camera, there’s nothing else – no LED flash, no autofocus and no geo tagging which could have been there with its SatNav GPS receiver.  Even video recording is silent on its details. This could be just an oversight in the press kit and we hope to see a more detailed spec sheets anytime soon.

Lastly, but perhaps not that important, the neoTouch E110 gets a modest 414 MHz ST Ericsson PNX6715 processor running an older Android Cupcake OS which nonetheless gets customized with Acer’s own multimedia user interface

Apart for these obvious production cost cutting measures to bring down its price down, the E400 is still a competent quad band GSM for international roaming on the 2G network with class 10 GPRS/EDGE speeds.  You still enjoy USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP for local wired and wireless day connectivity support.   And as mentioned earlier, it has SatNav functionality as well.

Multimedia comes off unscathed from its pruning axe with a Roll Tech Nemo Player that can reproduce the popular media format codecs out there,  You also get speakerphones and a stereo FM radio receiver. You also get Bluetooth A2DP for wireless stereo listening and a 3.5mm audio jack for wired listening on headphones.

The Acer beTouch E110 gets customized Android 1.5 OS with the Acer multimedia UI with web widgets. It has Spinlets for music streaming and comes preloaded with a document viewer for MS Office and PDF files, an Android email client and web browser.  It is also a socially imbued smartphone with the apps for social networking integration with Facebook, Twidroid PRO and Ur-Fooz apps for avatar creation.

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