ACER beTouch E110 Review

Introduction:

Acer beTouch E110 was among the few phones that the company introduced at the 2010 Mobile World Congress. It is squarely positioned as an entry level touchscreen Android device as hinted by the 2.8” QVGA screen paired to a run-of-the-mill processor, lack of WiFi and the old 1.5 version of Google's platform. Nothing wrong with that as long as the price is right, however our review unit came with a pretty basic Android distro that lacks some crucial Google services preinstalled, most notably Android Market.
 
This might be a true dealbreaker for you, as you may not be able to enjoy the thousands of Android apps, YouTube, Google Maps and so on. So our advice is to first check if the phone your provider is offering you has these important programs and services or not. With that out of the way, let's delve deeper and find an answer to the question "to beTouch or not to beTouch."

What's in the box?
•    Battery 1500 mAh
•    3.5mm stereo headset,
•    USB to microUSB cable
•    AC adapter with separate European plug
•    Screen protector
•    2GB microSD card with adapter

Design:

The phone is small and compact, with a comfy feeling in the hand albeit on the light side with its 3.70 oz (105 grams). Weight is evenly distributed, while successful one-handed operation will depend on the size of your palms and fingers. For the most part, you'll be able to operate the device with one hand only.



You can compare the Acer beTouch E110 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The overall shape is very similar to the one of the HTC Tattoo, which would also appear to be its closest rival in terms of design and specs. Despite the low price and basic plastics used for the casing (the phone is available with black or dark blue back panels), the device is built sturdy enough for normal use, and has no visible fissures between the panels and the gray bezel.


The 2.8” resistive display is one of the smallest you can find on a touchscreen device these days. It is relatively responsive for a resistive screen, but visibility in direct sunlight leaves much to be desired. The resolution is limited to QVGA as can be expected for a low-end device.

In addition to the touchscreen, for navigation can also be used the circular d-pad, which is the only elevated element in front of the device. The send and end buttons on its sides are larger than the ones found in the HTC Tattoo, for instance, and flush with the surface, glowing white when pressed.  A thin touch strip in the bottom of the screen is where the home, search, back and menu icons are located; these are well spaced and responsive.

Volume rocker is on the right, easy to press, and the microUSB port used for charging and sync is located there as well, closed by a plastic cover . Оn the left side is the microSD slot, where the 2GB card coming with the device is located – no popping the battery out to swap memory anymore. There is a standard 3.5mm audio jack on top of the device where it belongs and that's all there is around the bezel, no dedicated key for the 3MP camera on the back where the speaker is located as well.

Features:

By and large the Acer beTouch E110 is conceived as a simple Android device and the home screen is not really customized in terms of functionality, despite some small additions which the company calls the Acer UI. You have a total of 5 home screen pages, where you can deploy your widgets and shortcuts. Speaking of widgets, Acer has added some of its own, like one to manage the built-in FM radio or other preinstalled applications like Spinlets for streaming media. The main menu can be easily accessed from each of the five home pages by dragging it up and down with an arrow like roller blinds. The menus are simple, with no fancy transition effects or animations added, which Acer claims is one of the elements for supposedly longer battery life, together with the 1500 mAh capacity battery and low-end 400MHz  CPU in the device. Nevertheless Acer still hadn't specified official talk and standby hours at the time of this review.


Nothing out of the ordinary for an Android device can be found in the phone dialer, contacts, calendar or search and messaging functions of the Acer beTouch E110. A useful decision for when the sounds are turned off is to let the red LED at the front of the device - that usually indicates charging - blink when there is a new text or email message.




Creating messages should be made easier with the installed TouchPal virtual keyboards. They range from compact to full QWERTY, with predictive text, mistype corrections and several different language layouts for all those special symbol needs that may arise. Still, typing on the small screen is not a very fast or comfortable endeavor. Moreover, the manufacturer has not included a way to change the keyboard to a landscape QWERTY, which is quite annoying.


3G, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and even GPS are present, but Acer has decided to leave the WiFi chip out and bring costs down. With AGPS on, the Acer beTouch E110 locks signal within 3-4 minutes on initial start, which is in the normal range. However, no geotagging functionality is offered and the lack of Google Maps or other navigation software renders the GPS chip usable only for the Tracker application which follows the whereabouts of the phone online in real time.


No easy way to install a popular application like Google Maps is just one example of why due to the lack of Android Market on the beTouch E110 the users will be stuck with the realities of a feature phone and just the apps that Acer has decided to ship it with. It is possible however that you can look for some of the alternatives out there if you want to expand the functionality of your device. We tried SlideMe's SAM market and some others, but for now they have a much scarcer application catalog than Android Market, although you'll still be provided with significantly more options, compared to what you can do on a basic feature phone.

Camera:

The 3MP camera lacks flash and autofocus, and, despite a dedicated night mode and white balance options, we weren't hoping for above average results in the pictures taken. The camera takes about 2-3 seconds to start and another 3-4 sec between shots with preview mode turned off.

The shooter churns out average quality stills but save for color saturation the shots in daylight are passable with detail and sharpness slightly off. The indoor photos are only useful under very good lighting conditions. The Acer beTouch E110 video mode produced the same washed out colors just this time they were in .mp4 with 352x288 resolution and 20 frames per second.





Acer beTouch E110 sample video at 352x288 pixels resolution.

Multimedia:

Acer has chosen the multimedia Nemo Player to complement the default Android music and video players, and it does a good job coping with the most popular audio and video formats, if the video is scaled to the screen resolution of 320x240. AVI is something which Nemo warned it cannot play, so look for MPEG-4 movies mainly. The interface is pretty cool in its shades of blue. It breaks media down to album art, artists or playlists and does index all the pictures, music and movies on your phone and storage card, so it can be used as a one-stop shop for mobile entertainment. The 400MHz processor and 256 MB RAM/ROM allowed smooth video playback, although it is possible that the phone may get overloaded sometimes, if much else is running in the background, and warns of low resources.



Software:

The company is touting the Acer beTouch E110 as a social and connected device, thus it has included a few applications that are aimed to please the most likely users of the phone – the younger crowd. UrFooz lets you create profiles with virtual avatars on the go, who in turn can represent you and automatically share your activity in the connected social networks. After you connect your accounts you will be able to choose which information to share. Spinlets is a free streaming media network with a search function to the genre catalog of major labels, TV shows, etc. The Spinlets application has its own widget on one of the home screens, which allows you to stream music by genre, song or artist in case you get bored from your personal library choices. Since the Acer beTouch E110 is  supposed to enhance your virtual social life like so many devices these days, the Facebook and Twidroid applications come preinstalled as well, and work flawlessly at 3G data speeds.

Performance:

In-call voice quality is adequate, voices come out tinny, but fairly audible and clear through the beTouch E110's earpiece. On the other side things come out with better loudness, but also somewhat distorted .

We ran the speaker a couple of instances when playing radio and during calls and it turned out to be nothing impressive, but good enough for its purposes, and slight distortion could be heard only at the highest volume level.

Conclusion:

There are a number of conflicting explanations why there are no Android Market, Google Maps, YouTube , etc. preinstalled on some phones that are otherwise running the Android OS. The most plausible is that while Android is free and open source, Google's applications, including the Android Market are proprietary. So far even manufacturers/carriers that are part of the Open Handset Alliance can sometimes opt not to include them in their Android phone distros for various business reasons – no official Market access in the countries or regions where they will be sold (reportedly mainly Middle East and some of Asia), hassle of legal permissions from Google to integrate Android Market and other Google services, and so on.

So be alert whether that Acer beTouch E100 you are eyeing at the store is a full-featured Android smartphone or not. If not, as in our case, it will only serve you as a standard featurephone, without the joys of installing lots of additional apps. Unless, of course, you are planning to become a power user and go to great lengths to customize the entry level touchscreen phone with aftermarket solutions.

In that case if you are thinking to get a budget Android phone and the Acer beTouch E110 in your area is lacking access to Android Market, the HTC Tattoo is a way better option, which is very similar in design and specs, but can offer you the full Android love. If you are browsing for a cheaper phone than the HTC Tattoo and not planning to toy around with it much, the Acer beTouch E110 could do the trick.