Acer beTouch E200 Review

Camera, Multimedia and Internet:

If you manage to find some time for yourself with all the business-related you have to do, you can take some pictures with the 3.2-megapixel camera of the Acer beTouch E200. Its interface looks passable, the settings are conveniently located and the operational speed is good indeed. The camera starts, focuses and saves snapshots really fast.



Still, it´s not really important how long it takes to capture a picture if the final result is not good enough. Unfortunately, images lack details and often come out blurry. Ultimately, the picture quality is low.




You can capture videos at a maximum resolution of 320x240 pixels, but they are rather blurry, lack enough details and frames per second. There is nothing to grip your attention here.

We are pleasantly surprised that the built-in Windows Media Player handles DivX and Xvid videos properly, even those of 800x480 pixels. However, lagging becomes an issue with content coded at such a high video resolution. During our tests, we noticed image artifacts in all DivX videos we played and they ruined the pleasure. That is why we would advise you to stick to using the Xvid and MPEG-4 codecs.

We installed Core Player just to see what else we could get out of the beTouch E200 in terms of multimedia. All artifacts in the DivX videos disappeared right away, but we evidenced skipped frames. We managed to play MP4/H.264 videos in the app, although on the overall, playback failed to impress us and the quality was far from stunning.



A pair of microUSB earphones comes right out of the box. They are rather weak, but still, the overall quality of the sound through them is pleasing. They will certainly fail to wow you with clear bass frequencies, but at least, they are not annoying.

Surprisingly, the Acer beTouch E200 lacks Wi-Fi support, meaning you will have to rely on 3G connectivity (HSDPA 7.2 Mbit/s) to surf the Internet and use various web-based services like Marketplace. The Acer beTouch E200 doesn’t come with any other browser than Internet Explorer and the app handles smaller websites properly. Those of you who need fast, comfortable and reliable browsing, however, would be better off getting the latest version of Opera Mobile, since it´s by far superior to Microsoft´s app. We have to admit we do find the lack of Wi-Fi functionality baffling.