Welcome the new Acer neoTouch P300

Veteran computer maker Acer is set to expand the mobile phone business it started last year with a set of smartphones unveiled at the recent Mobile World Congress. They are unique as they now make it very easy to compare Android and Windows Mobile smartphone feature sets.

These are the neoTouch family of Windows smartphones and the beTouch family of Android smartphones sharing the same hardware specification and styling for each model pair. Hence, you have the beTouch E400 Android against the neoTouch P400 Windows Mobile handsets, and so on.

One unique handset is the Acer neoTouch P300 that has no Android counterpart as it sports the first tactile full-QWERTY slider form factor in either the neoTouch and beTouch families. Running in the same lackluster OS that have confined Windows as a minor player in the industry, the new P300 carries a capable set of features that, while not outstanding or remarkable, closely follows what we've come to expect from another capable but underwhelming Windows handset.

This gets worst in the context of a new Windows Phone 7 platform set to debut with new smartphones running it late this year, making any new Windows Mobile phone without any upgrade path uninteresting, to say the least.

Typical Upscale Features

So what's in the P300 that should interest the smartphone community? For starters, it's a 3G phone on the single band UMTS (2100) with a 7.2 Mbps HSDPA data connectivity that makes the internet experience divine. It's also a quad band GMS for unrestricted roaming anywhere on the 2G network with class 10 GPRS/EDGE speeds. It's powerful enough with a Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz engine with 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM with the usual micro SD memory expandability. Then there's SatNav with A-GPS support.

Its display is likewise typical in its class with a 3.2-inch TFT LCD resistive touchscreen with Wide-QVGA resolution, 64k colors and an accelerometer for auto rotate viewing in landscape or portrait depending on handset orientation. Imaging gets served with a 3.2 megapixel autofocusing shooter with nothing else but geo tagging from its GPS receiver.

Entertainment features start with Windows Media Player for your favorite audio and video files but there's no FM stereo receiver. Stereo listening can do wireless with its A2DP support and a 3.5mm audio jack.

It has native support for IM on Windows Live and allows seamless access to your corporate emails on Microsoft Exchange Server. You get Internet Explorer 6 Mobile with Flash as well as social networking integration with Facebook, Flickr and Blogger for automatic updates.

It also comes with video streaming capability using its own YouTube application. It gets preloaded with a document viewer/editor for your MS Office files and SatNav aids Google Maps, Street View, Traffic, Latitude and POI Search as well as access to the Windows Marketplace.

Available 2nd Quarter

Acer had made known at the MWC its plans to get the new handsets ship out progressively starting this March with the Acer neoTouch P300 slated to hit Europe and the rest of the world starting this April. Price information is not available at this time but with a les than stellar feature set on an OS that won't get upgraded to the WinPho7, we really can't expect this to fetch over the €200 SIM-free price point before taxes and subsidies.

To get more info on the Acer neoTouch P300 then pay a visit to http://www.moby1.co.uk. They compare the best deals for the neoTouch P300 and lots of other phones. You can also find all the best deals for phones on 3 Mobile.