Acer neoTouch (S200) Smartphone

At first glance, the S200 is very impressive with its sleek looks in black

with a silver strip running across the sides. It is glossy but other than that

the phone looks pretty good. The phone has a 3.8-inch WVGA resistive HD

touchscreen dominating the front of the phone with the LED indicator, phone

speaker, proximity and light sensors above it and the Call connect, Home, Back

and the Call end touchscreen buttons below the screen. The 3.5 mm audio jack is

at the top and the bottom has the mini USB port. The phone charges through the

port and can be charged from a laptop or PC as well. The power button is on the

left side top and the volume rocker, reset and the camera buttons are at the

right side of the device. The back of the device has the acer logo etched at the

bottom and the stylus, 5MP camera and the LED flash are positioned at the left

side top with the speaker grill on the right.

The S200 runs on Windows 6.5 OS with Acer's proprietary Acer UI 3.0 for

navigation. The 3.8-inch touchscreen is resistive and has a resolution of

480x800 pixels. Its touch sensitivity is good and the response time is quite

good as well. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 1 GHz processor and the 3D graphics

accelerator make the device snappy and the screen crystal clear. The menu has a

unique honeycomb setting and has all the programs on the device in place.

To talk about the basic functionality, the neoTouch in all its glamor and

features, fails to impress in this test. The call quality while calling from the

Acer neoTouch is just average both on the handset and loudspeaker modes.

The 5MP camera performs averagely, even with the autofocus and the LED flash.

The device clicks images at a maximum resolution of 2592x1944 pixels and offers

some five effects along with white balance and self-timer but does not click

great images. In advanced setting, the user can play around with ISO,

Anti-flicker, Brightness and Contrast. The videos at a resolution of 640x40 and

at 30fps are just passable. The device enables geo-tagging as well in the POA

mode to record your current location.

The neoTouch has all the connectivity options that one would desire in their

smartphone. It has Bluetooth, GPRS, Wi-Fi and A-GPS. The web browsing on the

Internet Explorer mobile is quite a good experience. The GPS takes some time to

be configured, but once done it works quite well. However, it just points out

the co-ordinated and sadly the device does not come with navigation facilities

or pre-installed Google maps.

The battery life of the device is a downer though. The charge in my case did

not even stay for a day with some calls, some Internet surfing and some music.

Overall, the device is a good smartphone with all the necessary ingredients

of a smartphone in place with the UI, power and the abundance of connectivity

options. However, the downers; the camera, lack of customizability, weak

loudspeaker, resistive touchscreen, among others leave a huge gap to be filled.