Acer unveils Tempo line

Acer smartphones coming before year's end

Acer will ship four of its previously seen smartphones, the A1, C1/E1, F1 and L1 at the end of September. According to a Wednesday report from industry daily Digitimes, the Taiwanese company is outsourcing production of the devices to Compal and Inventec. This information comes from sources at Taiwanese handset component suppliers, the paper cites.

The A1 handset is powered by the open source Android operating system and has been pegged earlier for a September release. The other three handsets will run on a Windows Mobile platform.
The L1 will be based on Compal existing design, while the F1 and A1 will be new Acer's own designs built by Compal. Inventec, meanwhile, will build its own design in the C1 and E1 for Acer. Arima Communications may also join the two in competing for Acer's smartphone business in 2010. The company already develops Android-powered and Qualcomm-based smartphones.

As rumored, the DX900 has just been relaunched as an Acer smartphone. The good news is that aside from that phone, Acer has unveiled 3 more smartphones at the Mobile World Congress.

The Tempo line is their new series of smartphones, and aside from the DX900, they also introduced the X960, F900 and M900 as maiden models of their brand new line of Windows Mobile-powered devices.

 

X960
• 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• 3.2-megapixel fixed focus camera
• Pre-installed GPS software (Navigon try-and-buy, for Europe market)
• High speed HSPA connectivity
• New easy-to-use virtual keyboard
• Direct access to key applications via widget-based home screen

F900
• 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• 3.2-megapixel autofocus camera
• Pre-installed GPS software (Navigon try-and-buy, for Europe market)
• High speed HSPA connectivity
• New easy-to-use virtual keyboard
• Direct access to key applications via widget-based home screen

M900
• 3.8-inch WVGA touch screen
• 5-megapixel autofocus camera
• HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth
• slide-out Qwerty keyboard
• Fingerprint reader
• 2.5 mm stereo jack
• Windows Mobile 6.1, Outlook, Office

DX900
• 3.8-inch WVGA touch screen
• 5-megapixel autofocus camera
• HSPA, WiFi, Bluetooth
• Fingerprint reader
• 2.5 mm stereo jack
• dual-SIM support
• Windows Mobile 6.1, Outlook, Office

All of these smartphones come with a microSD card slot for additional memory and run on a Samsung 533MHz processor.

It’s not as impressive as what we were hoping for, but its a pretty safe and decent initial offering for a newcomer in the industry.

[Via acer smartphone]