After what seemed like a full lifetime of waiting, Acer's recently-launched
neoTouch S200 is finally making its way into some reviewing hands. The fine young cannibals over at Phone Arena have just given it the head to toe treatment, and we have to say, we're glad they've done the dirty work for us. This
WinMo 6.5 handset, according to their impressions, seems to be a not fully baked affair -- sluggishness and random crashing are both reported, as is a rather serious sounding call quality issue. The battery also seems to be inadequate for a workday, coming in at around five hours. Overall, the phone suffers from software optimization problems more than hardware issues. The one ray of light in all this is of course that 1GHz Qualcomm
Snapdragon CPU, which can multitask and handle several things at once without flinching -- but it's rather hard to get pumped about it in the face of all that sadness. Hit the read link for the full, exhaustive review.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Guess who @ Oct 20th 2009 12:17PM
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Acer products are pure unadulterated junk. The build quality is always sub-par. I can already hear the paid spokesmen commenting and tearing down my post but that's okay. We know who you are and that you have a dozen so-called friends who all use Acer products and have never had a problem. Go foam at the mouth somewhere else, We all know you're full of shit.
MGD_drinker @ Oct 20th 2009 2:52PM
Well I'm not going to champion Acer, never owned one or known anyone who did.
But, It is interesting to see Acer go from virtually no market presence in the US a few years ago to one of the top three computer manufacturers.
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/10/acer-and-apple-up-dell-slides-as-pc-sales-grow-during-3q09.ars
Smartphones are more demanding though, especially on the software side, to be competitive though, so it will be interesting to see if Acer can adapt.
I'm surprised Hp and Dell aren't pursuing the smartphone market more.
Plexus @ Oct 20th 2009 4:22PM
I never owned any Acer products either, so I can't say how good or how bad they are , but I see no reason why to buy this phone instead of The HTC HD2 (which I preordered and should be able to pocket in 2 weeks flat).
Moreover this phone aroused my suspicion as soon as I saw that they photocopied my old, trusty HTC touchHD's form factor .
Moreover HTC adds its excellent TouchFLO UI to make win mobile usable (they actually performed the miracle of making it a pleasure to use) , but for what I can see Acer is gonna try to push on their customers the pure, naked and unadulterated win mob torture, which I think no other phone producer anymore tries to do.
Obviously I can't judge the phone before trying to use it, at it is entirely possible that it will prove to be a winner, but so far nothing I see induce me to predict such an outcome.
martoto @ Oct 20th 2009 8:46PM
Well, let see what we have here in the review - almost all of the cons are because software. And it's true, there is not an useless fancy weather effects, no smooth gallery (out of use for more than 20 pics), and no multi-touch zoom in few apps. Poor Acer's marketing guys, they have nothing to put on an advert and take the fan boys hearts. Instead, they make a powerful device, with an excellent screen and decent battery life. In right hands this could be a real blast, for nearly half of the price of HD2 and still cheaper than HD (and yes, there are some first-class other UIs not only TouchFlo rules the world). What about the price to value ratio, not a word in this review? But fortunately there are other reviews, and opinions that said other things about neoTouch. And the people that do not relay on the hype, can find and use them in an appropriate way.
Doug @ Oct 21st 2009 2:30AM
I used it for a week. Apart form WM6.5 is not good enough. Although it is cheaper, it really has random crash (not sure it happens with other WM6.5), Loud speaker is poor in speaker phone mode, software cannot run when installed in the MicroSD.
Rapa @ Oct 26th 2009 5:47AM
I have an acer neotouch and it is better than other devices. You have to consider what you need and what interfaces with other softwares you have. An example if you work in a server with W2003S, ISAServer, MExchangeServer, Projectserver etc installed, you should consider buy a neotouch instead of a iphone !