Acer NeoTouch F1 Mobile Phone Review - A Snappy F1 Dragon For Any Knight

For a beginner - the computer giant Acer is already showing its ability in the mobile phone market. Just one step behind the Toshiba TG1, the Acer neoTouch S200 (announced under the codename of F1) trots the world using it's whomping 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

Designed to satisfy the most exacting of clients, the neoTouch is quite an impressive little machine, sure to surprise anyone into high end smartphones.

Released in October 2009, the Acer neoTouch can be used with AT&T and T-Mobile USA. It works in 2G on GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and in 3G on HSDPA 900/1900 2100 and will attract your attention using vibration or downloadable polyphonic , MP3 and WAV ringtones. It does have a Speakerphone and can take a 3.5mm audiojack for listening to the Stereo FM Radio with RDS.

It measures a mere 118.6 x 63 x 12mm and weighs in at 130g. While the exterior is plastic, it certainly does not feel so, but it is inclined to attract fingerprints, something Acer will want to address in future models.

The TFT resistive touchscreen (with 65K colours) is 3.8inch (480x800 pixels) in size, and apart from the need to tilt the handset when viewing it in strong light, suits most purposes very well. It uses the Acer 3.0 User Interface and Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotating and has a proximity sensor for auto turn-off.

For those who have a need to find the nearest Starbucks first thing in the morning, the phone includes geo-tagging - one example of location based services. Another use is for the techno-yuppy who likes to take pictures and then immediately upload them to Facebook or Flickr, the 5 megapixel camera (2560x1920 pixels) with autofocus, LED flash and geo-tagging makes this possible, as does the VGA video capability. There is no secondary camera.

In terms of memory, the Acer neoTouch allows practically unlimited phonebook, call record and photocall entries and fields, with a 256MB RAM and 512MB ROM available internally and up to 32GB using microSD.

Data transfer takes place via class 10 GPRS (4+1/3+2 slots) at 32-48 kbps, and class 10 EDGE at 236.8 kbps. On 3G it transfers on HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 5.76 Mbps. It offers WLAN in the form of Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP. While it does not have an infra-red port, it does have miniUSB.

Using Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional and powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1GHz processor, the handset allows for threaded view SMS, MMS, Email and Instant Messaging, uses an HTML Browser, plays games and helps you find your way with GPS with A-GPS support. It has Java MIDP 2.0 and can play MP4/WMV/H.264/H.263 and MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+. It has Facebook and Flickr integration and for the more serious moments in your working day, Pocket Office with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and PDF Viewer. Voice Memo and T9 text input complete the deck.

Battery time is up to 400 hours on stand by and up to 5 hours talk time.

When all is said and done - perhaps the 17" man bag has had it's day -this is a small Acer PC that also happens to make phone calls...

We liked:

It plays MP4 - the latest and greatest movie format (also used by iPods ), and it allows for a scintillating social life - you can take photos and immediately upload to Facebook and Flickr.