14 DAY TRIAL // Acer beTouch E130 has just been approved by FCC this week, after it made its appearance at Computex event at the beginning of June. The smartphone features a Blackberry-style look with a large QWERTY keyboard and a small track-ball. Unfortunately, the phone's software seems to be obsolete even before its official launch on the market. The only thing that might interest possible customers might be the comfortable keyboard and probably the low price, if that's going to happen.
Otherwise, Acer beTouch E130 features a mid-sized TFT 2.6-inch touch screen with 65k color and 320x240 pixel resolution, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, 3.5 mm audio jack, Stereo FM radio with RDS function, digital compass, and a 3.2-megapixel camera without LED flash.
The smartphone is powered by a ST Ericsson PNX6715 416 MHz processor, which is not among the finest CPUs usually embedded in Android-based devices. Further, the phone comes with an old Android 1.6 OS (Donut), which has little to no chance to be upgraded to a newer version, as the manufacturer doesn't stated anything yet.
Other highlights of the device includes: 256MB of RAM, and 512MB of ROM, microSD card slot (up to 32GB), GPRS and EDGE class 12, HSDPA 3.6 Mbps and HSUPA 384 kbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support and GPS with A-GPS support. A few proprietary applications have also been pre-installed, Acer Spinlets and Acer UrFooz. The whole Google package is also included, as well as integration with social networking services such as Facebook and Flickr.
Even though the competition on the low-cost Android market is fierce, Acer beTouch E130 has its potential thanks to its exquisite and ergonomic design. The device should be launched by the end of the year at a price that will be disclosed in a future official announcement.