Acer Liquid e, beTouch E110 / E400, and neoTouch P300 / P400 hands-on

Acer took MWC rather seriously this year with no fewer than five phone intros to its name spanning the range from Android to Windows Mobile 6.5.3, so we went ahead and put our hands on all of them today. Starting at the bottom of the range, the lowly beTouch E110 is obviously designed to compete head-to-head with the likes of the HTC Tattoo -- in fact, it apes the Tattoo's design pretty closely in some respects. Unlike Acer's higher-end Android phones, the E110 uses a custom skin that seems pretty well-suited for its QVGA resolution, and it's still managing 3.6Mbps HSDPA in your choice of 900 / 2100 and 850 / 1900 flavors for different areas of the world. It feels as cheap as it looks, but as long as it's priced appropriately, we still think it's a reasonable way to get new audiences on the smartphone bandwagon.

Follow the break for more impressions, shots, and video!

Acer beTouch E110 hands-on

Acer neoTouch P400 hands-on

Acer Liquid e hands-on

Moving up the range a bit, we've got the neoTouch P400 and beTouch E400. What makes these phones fascinating is that they're identical -- the only perceptible difference is that one runs Android while the other runs WinMo 6.5.3. It's the first time we've seen a manufacturer so totally share hardware ID between operating systems, and we don't see any reason why it shouldn't happen more often -- especially now that we've got Windows Phone 7 Series in the pipeline and users are more likely than ever to say "if only this ran [some other operating system], I'd buy it."

Acer neoTouch P300 hands-on

At the top of the line is the Liquid e, Acer's warmed-over Liquid with Eclair swapped in place of Donut. There's not a lot to say about this phone, really -- if you liked the Liquid, you're guaranteed to like the Liquid e even more (unless you hate Android 2.1 for some curious reason). Though it continues to run underclocked from its 1GHz maximum, we think we have a feel for why Acer did this -- the phone's bone-stock UI is quite speedy already, so the battery consumption saving probably seemed well worth it.

Acer beTouch E400 hands-on

The black sheep of the bunch would have to be the neoTouch P300 on account of its slide-out QWERTY keyboard -- the only phone here to have such a thing. We came away with the impression that it's a solid low- to midrange WinMo 6.5.3 device, but also with the realization that it's not enough anymore to simply be "solid" -- you've got to have an angle, something to catch a customer's eye, something to add mystique to the product and the brand (like the HTC HD mini's yellow internals, for instance). The P300 doesn't stand out in any way, so we're thinking it'll be pretty tough to draw attention to it unless a carrier deal falls into Acer's lap.

[Spaldinggreat Posted Feb 17th 2010 8:56AM]

Surely you could easily impliment some kind of power saving back end software that would automaticly lock and unlock its full processor potential as it see's fit, giving everyone the best of both worlds. Either way, they need to seperate themselves from the pack a bit, be sexy ace. do it.

[gurkha Posted Feb 17th 2010 11:19PM]

@Spaldinggreat
i found one review in youtube by italian guy.. he said the screen sucks .. like if you press it you can find that screen wobble ..

it has build quality issue .. i hope next version will be 3.7'' .. and better quality sceen !

[GeekGirl Posted Feb 17th 2010 9:42AM]

thats ugly!

[GeekGirl Posted Feb 17th 2010 9:43AM]

I love android, but looks like a toy:(

[commenter7 Posted Feb 17th 2010 10:06AM]

Its using the nexus one UI, interesting, is that the base UI for 2.1?

[LiqwidZero Posted Feb 17th 2010 10:14AM]

@commenter7

Probably, since HTC didn't impliment Sense UI on the Nexus One, I'd say that is 2.1 in the flesh.

[N0b0 Posted Feb 17th 2010 10:09AM]

There is a mistake:
"Moving up the range a bit, we've got the neoTouch P300 and P400. What makes these phones fascinating is that they're identical -- the only perceptible difference is that one runs Android while the other runs WinMo 6.5.3"

Isn't it the neoTouch P400 and the beTouch E400 that are the same?

[AnotherAlex Posted Feb 17th 2010 10:21AM]

@N0b0 Most probably, since (sic) "The black sheep of the bunch would have to be the neoTouch P300 on account of its slide-out QWERTY keyboard -- the only phone here to have such a thing."

[TrumanHW Posted Feb 17th 2010 11:19AM]

all they had to do in my world was release it on tmo with an OMAP processor, android and a keyboard. That's hot, sexy and different to me.

[lsmaverick Posted Feb 17th 2010 11:33AM]

Sorry if I sound uninformed, but does the Liquid E support AT&T's 3G? I see that it has the 1900 frequency, but I'm not sure if this means it'll run on the carrier. If I can use this on AT&T with 3G, I am definitely more compelled to buy it as the carrier doesn't have any Android phones as of yet. And knowing AT&T, it'll take at least a year before they finally released the phones that were promised to us...

[degofedal Posted Feb 17th 2010 1:19PM]

The most annoying thing about the Acer Liquid non-E is the placement of the power button (I press it all the time by accident) og no Android 2.1. Overall its a pretty nice phone.

[joshky Posted Feb 17th 2010 4:40PM]

@degofedal
didnt acer say that the users will be able to update the original liquid to 2.1 when it came out?

[degofedal Posted Feb 18th 2010 2:29AM]

@joshky
Thats what I read somewhere too, but I don't get why a new model is needed. There hardware is identical.