Introducing the new Acer neoTouch P300

The recently concluded Mobile World Congress in Barcelona showcased Acer's new smartphone lineup for its beTouch and neoTouch line that the Taiwan computer giant hopes will lead its business expansion plans for 2010.

Along with the new smartphones, Acer has made clear its plans to grow the mobile phone business it stated last year with 500,000 units sold that it plans to reach 3 million this year. Not that we have any confidence in its plans, but if its bland product offerings were any indication, we strongly suggest Acer to get back to drawing board.
Its new Liquid e Android gets nothing more than an OS upgrade while its other Android and Windows smartphones almost got us into thinking the MWC was dated 2009 instead of 2010.

One of them, the Acer neoTouch P300 takes some limelight as being the company's first full QWERTY smartphone in the neoTouch family of Windows Mobile handsets. But with the demo on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series that revealed a superbly rich OS that the WinMo should have been to begin with, it can a real challenge to get anyone excited on any new Windows Mobile smartphone from Acer anyone else.

We probably would if only Microsoft can assure everyone that there's an upgrade path to it. But there's none. The WinPho7 Series is entirely a new break like starting from scratch. No current hardware, except perhaps those running Snapdragon and other 1 GHz engines can meet its minimum requirement for a possible upgrade.

Better Software Features

There's no doubt the neoTouch P300 is a competent smartphone one. A lackluster OS aside, there's really nothing to be excited about its hardware features that have become quite typical for Windows smartphones.

You get another 3.2-inch TFT LCD resistive touchscreen with the expected accelerometer for auto rotate. It's a 3G phone on a single band UMTS with an average 7.2Mbps HSDPA connectivity as well as a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE on 2G running on a Qualcomm MSM7225 engine clocked at 526 MHz with a 256 MB Ram and 512 MB ROM with microSD expandability.

You get the expected WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP and microUSB 2.0 for local data transfers, a SatNav from its built-in GPS receiver, an average 3.2 megapixel autofocus snapper with nothing else but a geo tagging option for its GPS and an unspecified video recording. Multimedia gets better with a competent Windows Medial Player but no FM stereo radio. Bluetooth A2DP is there as well as a 3.5mm audio jack for wireless or wired stereo headphone listening.

It gets lot more interesting with its preloaded apps. You get native support for Windows Live IM and Microsoft Exchange Server as well as Internet Explorer 6 Mobile with Flash. It's gets SNS apps that integrate your phonebook contacts with Facebook, Flickr and Blogger accounts, a built-in YouTube application for video streaming and SatNav aids like Satellite Data Update, Google Maps, Street View, Latitude, Traffic tracking and POI Search. You also get access to the Windows Marketplace.

Available Starting April

Acer announced at the MWC that its new smartphones showcased in the event will hit the market progressively starting in March. The Acer neoTouch P300 gets a release scheduled timed for April. Price information has yet to be disclosed but with a borderline upscale feature set and considering that no one will be interested in a non-upgradable OS, we really can't expect this to go over the €200 SIM-free price point before taxes and subsidies.

You can get more information on the Acer neoTouch P300 at moby1.co.uk. They compare contracts for the Acer neoTouch P300 and many other phones. You can also find all the best deals for phones on 3 Mobile.