Acer beTouch E140 Review

Introduction:

The affordable Acer beTouch Exxx line of phones has a new member - the beTouch E140. Similar to the E110 and the E120, it's an inexpensive handset that packs a 2.8-inch resistive screen with a resolution of 240x320. Unlike the E110, however, this phone offers a few goodies like Wi-Fi and the Android Market, as well as Froyo (the E110 is running Android 1.5 out of the box), which makes it much more attractive than its predecessor. But is the Acer beTouch E140 better than its low-end Android rivals? Read on to find out.

Design:

The design of the Acer beTouch E140 and its dimensions (4.11 x 2.20 x 0.50) are similar to what we have already experienced with other low-end Android handsets like the T-Mobile Comet and the Samsung Galaxy 5. When you hold this handset, it feels quite compact, hence it's easy to use it with one hand, and it is also extremely lightweight (only 3.35 oz).



You can compare the Acer beTouch E140 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

When you combine a 2.8-inch resistive screen, a QVGA resolution and 262 144 colors you can hardly get a great experience, and the Acer beTouch E140 is just another example of that. At times, smaller text is not very legible, which may be a source of irritation when it comes to browsing, and color reproduction is not particularly good either. The same applies to the viewing angles of this phone, which is to say that in certain angles it's actually impossible to figure out what's on the screen. On the positive side, the display is responsive for a resistive one, and chances are that you won't face too many problems with it.

The Acer beTouch E140 offers a clean design with three physical buttons on the front side, which are relatively easy to press, and above them are the standard Android ones, which are resistive. On the right side is the volume rocker, while on the top and back sides are located the 3.5mm headphone jack and the 3.2MP camera, respectively.



Take into account that the Acer beTouch E140's body is a fingerprint magnet due to its plastic construction, and the same is true for its screen.

Interface and Features:

Android is a craze that's proving to be irresistible for quite a few phone lovers, and there is little doubt that one of the strongest points of the Acer beTouch E140 is that it comes with Froyo out of the box. That said, you get plenty of Google goodies like Maps, Places, Latitude and, of course, the Android Market. Furthermore, Acer made its mark on the phone's media capabilities by preloading two apps: Spinlets, which is a free streaming network; and urFooz, which lets you create a virtual version of yourself.



Unlike its predecessor, the E110, the Acer beTouch E140's UI is not really customized. It offers two widgets - one with pictures, music and movies and another one which offers three Acer-related options plus Facebook and Picasa shortcuts.  Its phonebook capacity is virtually limitless, since it depends only on your free memory. Speaking of memory, this phone comes with a build-in storage of 256MB and you also get a 2GB microSD card out of the box, which you can always swap for a 32GB one, if the need arises.

Messaging:

A lot of people have come to love the Froyo QWERTY, but it's not working very well on the Acer beTouch E140's 2.8-inch screen. First of all, there is not enough space between the virtual letters, so occasional typo mistakes are unavoidable. Furthermore, it's a little bit hard to press the far left and far right buttons, and usually you end up typing the letter next to it, which is annoying.

Despite the resistive screen, the beTouch E140's virtual keyboard is a responsive one and signs of lag are nowhere to be found. Moreover, the QWERTY is available in both landscape and portrait mode. There is a bad news for all you Swype lovers, though, since this option is not present out of the box.



Internet and Connectivity:

One of the categories where the Acer beTouch E140 truly excels is its connectivity options. Not only it's a quad-band GSM handset (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz), but it also supports UMTS (900, 2100 MHz), as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections plus a microUSB port.

The resistive screen means that pinch-to-zoom while browsing is not present, and all you are left with are the touchscreen zoom-in/zoom-out buttons and the double tap option, both of which are not implemented very well in Android. Furthermore, Flash (which is natively supported by Froyo) is not offered due to the not so powerful processor of the beTouch E140. On top of that, the low resolution of the screen makes browsing everything but comfortable, and picture quality is plain rubbish. Still, it's a low-end phone, so the very presence of Wi-Fi is refreshing.


The Acer beTouch E140 offers the A-GPS option, which is most certainly a perk. Our tests conclude that after a cold start, it was a matter of few minutes for the Acer beTouch E140's GPS to locate us, while it took mere seconds for it to point our position after a warm one.

The Acer beTouch E140 is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm 7227 processor and we can safely say that it gets the job done, as everything is executed in a snappy manner. Even when we added a live wallpaper, the phone still performed very well, and the lag, which rarely appeared, wasn't particularly noticeable and didn't ruin the experience of using this device, which is quite pleasing for a cheap handset.

Camera:

The 3.2MP camera lacks autofocus and flash, but offers some settings like white balance and brightness. Despite that, the Acer beTouch E140 makes photos with a truly horrible quality.


In optimal conditions, the color saturation is good, although details are practically non-existent, and you can forget to use this phone's camera if there is not enough light present.

With preview mode turned off, it takes 3 to 4 seconds between taking 2pictures. The bottom line is that you can't rely on this phone if yougo on a vacation to, say, Paris, and want to take pictures of the Arcde Triomphe, or, anything else, really.




Acer beTouch E140 Sample Video:



Multimedia:

Most of the affordable handsets don't offer great music-playing capabilities and indeed the Acer beTouch E140 doesn't deliver in this category. To start with, the speaker is not particularly loud, and the quality is average. The same applies to the headphones - they produce some average sounds, but there is no chance to hear your music, while in the heart of the city. The well-familiar Android music player is offered, and as with the beTouch E110, you get Nemo Player out of the box, with which you can play both music and movies.


When we talk about low-end phones, it's a bit too optimistic to expect them to support, say, Xvid. The beTouch E140 plays videos only in MPEG-4 format, but we are pleasantly surprised that its maximum resolution is as high as 480 x 800.

Performance:

In-call sound quality is passable, since voices sound loud and clear, although a bit unnatural. The biggest problem is that a constant hissing sound is present, which is annoying, although when you put the beTouch E140's volume down, things get better.

On the other side people complained of sound distortion, and said that they can't hear us very well.

The Acer beTouch E140 has a 1300mAh battery and its life is rated at 6 hours of talk time.

Conclusion:

The Acer beTouch E140 is one very polarising handset. It has a few strong sides, but sadly, there are some setbacks that ruin the good impression. Of course, this is easy to explain - the contract free price of this handset is $270, and it's understandable that quite a few compromises were made.

All in all, the beTouch E140 is an extremely lightweight and compact phone, with a good processor for its class and great connectivity options. Best of all, though, is that it comes with Froyo and a full set of Google services out of the box, and this alone is enough to attract a few customers.

However, there are a few issues that ensure we can't recommend this phone to you. First of all, its 2.8-inch resistive screen is practically unusable in sunlight, and makes browsing a painful experience. Moreover, the Acer beTouch E140 is simply not very good as a phone, and you can't rely on this handset's camera either.

Looking at the alternatives, there is not much differentiating the beTouch E140 and, say, the T-Mobile Comet. However, the Samsung Galaxy 5 is an all-around better smartphone, so if you are out in the market for an affordable Android handset, probably this is your best choice.

Acer beTouch E140 Video Review: