Acer beTouch E130 smartphone review

The beTouch E130 looks to challenge the BlackBerry Bold as the smartphone for business users

The beTouch E130 comes with a candybar design and the popular Android operating system, an intriguing combination that hasn't been prevalent in the smartphone market.

At first glance, the beTouch bears a striking resemblance to the BlackBerry Bold 9700 and it has a lot of features in common. Acer's device is slightly bigger at 115 x 62.5 x 11.5mm compared with 109 x 60 x 14.1mm for the Bold 9700.

Design Our review unit came with a distinctive two-tone black and white finish, giving it a rather stylish appearance.

One department where it outshines the majority of handsets in its class is the display. The 2.6in LCD QVGA has a touch screen which, despite being resistive, is very responsive and provides a welcome second method of input.

Acer has fitted the beTouch with a trackball that is easy to use, but not quite as good as the optical trackpad on the Bold. A number of buttons, including home, menu, back and search keys, flank the trackball.

Annoyingly, when the End Call button is pressed, the screen is automatically locked. During testing, this frequently proved frustrating as we often pushed the End Call button to exit an application, resulting in the device being locked. It took a while to resist the temptation to do this.

The device feels well built generally, the only niggle being a plastic back cover that cheapens the handset somewhat; it almost felt like it was going to snap in half every time we tried to remove it.

Interface The beTouch comes with Android 1.6 OS. However, with Android 2.1 freely available and 2.2 on the verge of being rolled out to the masses at the time of writing, it is fair to say that this device may be overlooked in favour of models with the latest interfaces. Whether it gets an upgrade to Android 2.1 or higher in the future remains to be seen.

Acer hasn't really created much of an overlay, keeping it simple with five customisable home screens. A flick of the screen brings up a full menu of applications.

Business users can sync with Microsoft Exchange via the pre-loaded Roadsync app. A trial of the Lite version of Documents to Go is also included, allowing users to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files on the move.

Those willing to pay more can upgrade to the full version of Documents to Go and gain the ability to edit documents on the move but, with a screen less than 3in in size, this isn't the most practical way to edit work and can be a time-consuming process.

Gmail, Google Maps, Google Talk, Notepad, File Browser, Facebook, Twitroid and NemoPlayer also come with the device as standard.

Acer beTouch E130 smartphone review

The beTouch E130 looks to challenge the BlackBerry Bold as the smartphone for business users

Messaging
Text input is generally favourable and users who favour physical Qwerty keyboards are likely to find this keypad easy to use.

The keys are quite large compared to most smartphones with physical Qwerty keyboards, so it may suit users with larger thumbs.

The buttons are long and similar in size and shape to the Nokia C3. They have a nice rubbery texture, and are comfortable to press.

In our tests, we found that turning off the predictive text was an absolute must. Not only was it extremely distracting when typing, but hitting a wrong letter completely threw the prediction and resulted in having to correct the word anyway.

Typing without the predictive text resulted in the odd misspelled word, but was hassle-free and actually speeded up typing for us.

Internet
Devices like the beTouch have not really been designed to provide a comfortable internet experience like the Samsung Galaxy S or the Dell Streak.

The 2.6in screen means that web pages have to be viewed in segments, but the ability to use the touchscreen and trackball to hone in on specific areas is welcome.

With 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity supported, surfing the internet is quick. Browsing on the Acer is better than on devices of similar sizes and specifications.

The beTouch supports micro-SD cards up to 32GB, significantly expanding the 512MB on internal storage. The device also comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera, minus a flash. Pictures are decent, but the lack of ability to zoom and autofocus is missed.

Acer claims up to six hours of talk time, which is the same figure RIM touts for the Bold 9700. The device can easily last two to three days with moderate use.

The beTouch E130 will be available in November at £199.