MWC 2009: Acer Round-Up

Acer seems to be the new name on the PDA market, after having bought E-ten's PDA division last year. Present at the MWC 2009, Acer showcased four brand new devices that seem to be wearing E-ten's mark in terms of design. I was surprised to see that Acer decided to drop the 'glofiish' brand in favor of a more traditionalist code naming. Maybe the issue was that E-ten decided to keep the 'glofiish' name for its future devices, if Acer didn't specifically ask E-ten not to produce PDAs under any other brand.

The four devices presented in Barcelona resemble various 'glofiish' models sold last year. The first one, Acer M900 is a quad-band slider featuring a full QWERTY keyboard. The device runs on a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional platform and features a huge 3.8 inch WVGA touchscreen display. M900 is powered by a Samsung S3C 6410 mobile processor running at 533 MHz, which I don't really trust anymore. Samsung CPU's are kinda obsolete and not as good as Marvell or Qualcomm processors. Other features include: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, built-in GPS (SiRFstar III), microSD slot card, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support, FM Radio, fingerprint sensor, built-in 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, flash and video capabilities, but also a 3.5mm audio jack.


Acer DX900, the second device that has been showcased is a dual SIM PDA featuring a 2.8 inches WVGA touchscreen display (480 x 640 pixel resolution). In fact, if you compare it with the older E-ten glofiish DX900, you'll find out that it's almost the same device. One thing differs and that is the HSDPA 7.2 Mbps connectivity included in Acer's device, compared with only 3.6 Mbps onto glofiish DX900. Also, the Widget UI running on the Acer device is new, so it couldn't have been embedded into the E-ten DX900. Anyway, here's the highlight of DX900: built-in 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, microSD slot camera, Samsung S3C 6400 mobile processor 533 MHz, 128MB RAM and 256MB ROM memory, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth with 2.0 with A2DP, built-in GPS receiver (SiRFstar III). The device runs on the same Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system.


Acer F900 is the slimmest of the four, at only 12.9mm thickness, but still weighs around 150g (including battery). The big 3.8inch WVGA touchscreen display (480 x 800 pixel resolution) is one of the main attractions of the device. It runs on a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional platform with a new UI widget homescreen. Other highlights of the device include: Samsung S3C 6410 mobile processor 533 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support, built-in GPS receiver (SiRFstar III), built-in 3.2-megapixels camera with autofocus, flash and video capabilities, and microSD slot card for memory expansion.


The last of the four, Acer X960 doesn't come up with anything new compared with its above mentioned brothers. It features the same Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with a special Widget UI, built-in GPS receiver (SiRFstar III), 2.8 inch WVGA touchscreen display (480 x 640 pixel resolution), 128MB RAM and 256MB ROM memory, microSD slot card, Samsung S3C 6400 mobile processor 533 MHz, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooh 2.0 with A2DP support, built-in 3.2-megapixel camera with flash and video capabilities, and a secondary camera for video calls.