Acer beTouch E210 review

Acer’s new smartphone is a Blackberry-style handset with a 2.6in screen and QWERTY keyboard underneath. It runs Android 2.2, and despite its size it has all the smartphone features you’d expect on a larger phone – GPS, FM radio, Wi-Fi and a 3.2-megapixel camera. Storage is limited but there’s a microSDHC card slot and a 2GB card in the box, so in theory you could upgrade this to 32GB.

As well as being smaller than most smartphones, it’s also much lighter, but feels well made. On the right side is a volume rocker and the obligatory microUSB port for charging and PC connections, while the left side is reserved for the headphone jack. In the centre beneath the screen is a responsive trackpad button, surrounded by the four common Android buttons – Home, Back, Menu and Search – with green and red call buttons on either side.

We found the keyboard easy enough to use, although the glossy and rounded keys can cause your fingernails to slip off them. The keyboard has a backlight that’s activated when you press any button and the number keys are highlighted with white backgrounds; if you start typing a number, the phone is clever enough to start the phone dialler app. There are also special keys for Contacts, Camera and Messaging, and the latter doubles as a Mute button with a long press.

Android’s home screen has been modified slightly, with the app tray moved to the right side rather than sitting at the bottom, to suit the landscape screen. This is resistive, but with the keyboard to help with typing that’s not such a bad thing. It is cramped, however, and we had trouble reading web pages and using the office document viewer, as the applications’ toolbars, borders and other controls took up a much larger proportion of the screen than they would on a full touchscreen phone.