Acer F900 Review

Interface:

Despite being a newcomer to the cell phone business, Acer has managed to come up with something nice and new – the Acer Shell. The most distinguishing feature of the Windows Mobile 6.1 personalization pack is its virtual 3D office. The on-screen desk hosts up to 12 widgets that are displayed as typical workspace objects – wall calendar, photograph frame, desk telephone, music player etc. and aside from being shortcuts to certain applications, they also provide extra information. Say, the digits appearing on the phone will show the number of missed calls. All items can be freely rearranged and become smaller if placed “farther” in depth, creating a nicely looking 3D effect. If you think the home screen is somewhat eccentric, you can change over to a normal icon menu that spans over several pages. They are easily switched between by as much as sliding your finger up or downwards. Please, read our review of the Acer X960 if you would like to know more about Acer Shell. As a whole, we are really pleased with the interface. It offers similar functionality to the HTC TouchFLO 3D and its appealing look makes up for the slightly increased complexity of use.



You will see the elderly face of Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional anytime you navigate out of Acer Shell. Although well on in years, the operating system still delivers many options when it comes to keeping your daily grind organized, following emails or providing decent contacts functionality. The Acer F900 sports a personalized screen keyboard that, thanks to the large keys, feels quite handy to use.



We do recommend that you put the secret power of smartphone to good use… You don´t have a clue? Come closer and we will whisper the clandestine truth into your ear… You can install additional programs! So, make a good use of the feature, find a decent browser (we personally prefer Opera and Skyfire) and get the beauty of the Internet onto the huge screen of the Acer F900. The handset comes preloaded with Internet Explorer 6 that now supports flash content, but is still rather far from being comfy to use. The phone also supports HSDPA 3.6Mbit/s and Wi-Fi and the good news is it´s a global GSM device, meaning it will work on AT&T and T-Mobile in the US, although 3G functionality is only available on the former network.




Camera and Multimedia:

Similarly to the Acer X960, the F900 features a 3.2-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. We are slightly annoyed to see it´s rather sluggish, taking about 5 seconds to start and another 6 to focus and save an image. On the other hand, its interface has been altered and now really resembles a Samsung´s creation – icons are large, easy to press and despite appearing in only one color, do look nice. Your confirmation on selecting options is mandatory, which slows you down, but on the other hand there is no way you inadvertently select things that you don´t mean to. The interface itself offers many settings and almost all of them are available via the on-screen view finder – camera mode (photo, video, geotagging, sequence shooting of up to 9 frames, MMS video), image resolution, effects, white balance, self-portrait and flash. We rather like that all effects are available in video shooting mode. The device captures video content at resolution of 640x480 pixels. Now, let´s take a closer look at quality.



As a whole, the Acer F900 delivers decent image quality and performs way better than the X960. Colors are more realistically reproduced, but white tends to look burned out here and there. Details are slightly blurrier than in snapshots taken with the affordable Sony Ericsson C510 Cyber-shot, but outdoor pictures are OK on the overall. Details tend to get even blurrier in images taken indoors, due to increased level of picture noise, plus camera begins to struggle focusing. The built-in flash is a bit weak and definitely not up to the task of providing proper lighting to surrounding objects. Videos are virtually the same as on the X960 – blurry with muffled audio tracks.







The Acer F900 copes well in terms of video playback, at least when compared to most Windows Mobile devices (except for most Omnia series phones that support both DivX and Xvid). We managed to play MP4/H.264 coded videos with resolution width of up to 640 pixels, but image artifacts began to appear at greater resolutions. Only Xvid videos wouldn´t play, but those coded with DivX ran smoothly, although content with resolution about 720x640 pixels turned out virtually unplayable. We tried to use CorePlayer, so we could provide for increased video format support, including Xvid. Unfortunately, the things remained pretty much the same. DivX/Xvid videos played smoothly at resolution width of up to 320 pixels, but you would still experience heavy stuttering with 640x720 pixel coded content, even if less pronounced than in Windows Media Player.