Acer neoTouch S200 Review

Introduction:

Smartphones have been gaining popularity over the last years and their sales continue to grow rapidly. Acer is one of the youngest players on the smartphone market and the manufacturer stakes on Windows Mobile. The company has recently released several new handsets and this review is focused on the most technologically advanced one – the Acer neoTouch S200 (known as the newTouch S200 in France and the US). Codenamed the F1 when initially announced at MWC2009, this is the second WM smartphone on the market that features 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor (the Toshiba TG01 is the first). The neoTouch S200 runs Windows Mobile 6.5, enhanced with additional applications that provide access to popular social networks. Moreover, it comes with large 3.8-inch resistive touchscreen, 5-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, accelerometer and 3.5mm jack. All these features mean but one thing – the Acer neoTouch S200 caters for the most exigent and exacting customers.

Here is what´s in the box:

•    Acer neoTouch S200 (newTouch S200)
•    Wall charger
•    miniUSB cable
•    Screen protector
•    Stereo headset with 3.5mm  jack
•    User guide
•    CD with user manual

Design:

The combination of black color and gray framing on either side of the Acer neoTouch S200 makes the phone look conservative and austere, while the sharp edges hint at a covert, aggressive trait. It´s made entirely of plastic, but doesn’t feel cheap. Unfortunately, it simply loves fingerprints and you will have to clean it on regular if you want it to retain its good look.

The overall size is acceptable, given the huge resistive touchscreen display that measures 3.8 inches, comes with native resolution of 480x800 pixels and 65k color support. It delivers bright and crisp images, but you need to hold it at an angle in direct sunlight in order to use it. Even then, you might have certain troubles discerning what´s on screen. The loudspeaker, proximity and light sensitivity sensors are above the screen, along with the LED indicator, but they are all well hidden and hard to spot right away.



You can compare the Acer neoTouch S200 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

All buttons below the display (all in all 4) are touch-sensitive and utilize the resistive technology. They come with non-standard designations and left to right you have send key, Home, Back (step back in the menus) and end key. Our only gripe relates to the implementation of the “step back in the menus” function, because way too often we found ourselves not in the menu we expected.



On either side you will find the power on/off button, 3.5mm jack, stylus, volume rocker, reset key and camera shutter. We don’t have any gripes about any of them and we believe you will find the buttons easy and handy to use. There is a miniUSB port at the bottom and we don’t like that, because the new microUSB standard is becoming more and more popular.



The microSD and SIM card slots are under the plastic back panel and this is something that people who change their memory cards often are certainly not going to like. The 5-megapixel camera is at the top, in the company of a LED flash and loudspeaker.

Interface and Software:

The long wait for Windows Mobile 6.5 is over and there are quite a few handsets on the market running the new operating system, including the Acer neoTouch S200. Unlike previous models of the manufacturer (X960, M900 and X900), what you get with the phone is not the Acer Shell interface, but skin-deep personalization of the standard WM face and despite the customization, you will clearly feel you are using Windows Mobile, unlike, for example, with the Samsung Omnia II I8000.

The home screen personalization Acer Home and this is a grid of 9 icons that allow quick access to applications and functions with 6 of them being customizable to your liking. You´ve got several pre-installed, nicely looking themes that lend color to the simple face of the OS.



Aside from the standard phone contacts, Acer provides own version of the app with a row of letters on the left that allows faster filtering. You can choose between fast-dialing a contact, sending SMS or MMS by either sliding your finger over the contact entry or pressing the icon on the left. There are positive novelties about creating contact entries as well. The info tabs are ordered in a logical sequence and they are large enough, so you can use your finger without any problem. Moreover, a “social networking” button pops up when you select a contact and it gets you to the Blogger and Flickr accounts of the person. The odd thing is that you don’t have the option to browse the Facebook profile of your phone contacts, despite the Facebook application that comes preinstalled on the phone. Moreover, we need to point out that the Social Networking application crashed on several occasions, which comes to show it has not been properly integrated.



Aside from the standard search in your phone contacts, you can place an extra tab at the top (using the Index button) that makes a keyboard with letter alignment much like navigational systems (A, B, C, D, E, F…) appear on screen. It, however, filters by first letter only and not like the app on Symbian S60 5th edition devices. Despite that, Acer has done a good job with the phone contacts and we like their version better than the standard that comes with the operating system.



Acer´s creativity is also evident in the Calendar that sports an alternative version called Agenda. The overall visual style is pretty similar to the phone contacts – pleasing and optimized for bare fingers. You have a month view and a tab at the bottom of the screen, indicating all entered events for the particular day. Selecting the latter will show them in full screen, so you can see all of them if there are many. Everything has been designed in such a way that even people who have never used Windows Mobile will not have troubles. This is good indeed, but we believe prosumers would rather go for the standard Calendar, because it offers more options and is better suited for complex schedules.



The last personalization is an alternative application dedicated to settings that also comes with finger-friendly interface. This is, however, where Acer´s creative impulse has ended, at least in terms of Windows Mobile interface. All the changes will certainly make a lot of people happier, although they are just a few and lack polish. Alongside of the versions that HTC and Samsung provide, the personalization looks insignificant. We believe Acer has made a step in the right direction, but obviously, a lot more efforts are needed before their personalization pack catches up with the competition.

Social Networks:

Acer vaunts the neoTouch S200 for its out-of-the-box social networking capabilities. We gather they mean the Social Networking icon in the main menu that allows access to Facebook, Flickr, Blogger and YouTube. Let´s take a closer look at these.

The Facebook app is actually the standard one for Windows Mobile that can be downloaded free of charge by any WM smartphone owner through Microsoft´s app store – Marketplace. Once you´ve entered all details, you will find yourself in an interface that consists of five tabs. You can set your current status, poke your buddies, leave comments, watch videos and pictures and share yours. As a whole, we are satisfied with the Facebook app for Windows Mobile and our only gripe relates to the fact that everything loads slowly, no matter the internet connectivity.



The next app is YouTube. We like its interface, because it´s simplified and at the same time, beautiful. The videos are displayed at the top and you browse between them by sliding a finger to your left or right, with information about the currently selected clip appearing below. The application switches to full screen when you click on a video, and watching content on the 3.8-inch display is a nice experience indeed. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t allow for video uploads, which is, of course, a basic function when it comes to YouTube, so this is its major disadvantage.



You won´t be able to do much via the Flickr client. There are just two options – to share a picture and browse the content you have already uploaded on the network service. You can see the available albums and an index showing the number of pictures in each of them… and that´s pretty much all. We are far from impressed, because there is nothing social about the application - you can share pictures, but not browse other people´s albums.



The Blogger app comes with rather simplified interface and doesn’t deliver great functionality. When creating a post, you can enter text only, meaning no other multimedia content is allowed. This is a major shortcoming, because it´s been a while since blogging equated to words only. We highly doubt it that the app will be used by many Blogger users, given they can also post via emails (containing multimedia files).



You must be wondering if the phone sports a Twitter app. Well, it doesn’t and there isn’t one available at Windows Marketplace for Mobile either, so you will have to search and get it from other source. MySpace application is also conspicuous by its absence, but we found one at the online store. As a whole, we expected much more from the Acer neoTouch S200 in terms of social networks and we feel disappointed at what we saw. We don’t really think that 4 preinstalled apps, three of them featuring pretty basic functionality, can be referred to as great social networking integration.

GPS:

The Acer neoTouch S200 sports a built-in GPS to help you find your way in the madhouse that most modern cities are. It is a really snappy performer and Google Maps that delivers comprehensive maps and navigational options is preloaded on the device, so you will not be disappointed.



Office documents:

One of the characteristic aspects of all Windows Mobile phones is the integrated Office functionality. Thanks to its huge screen, the Acer neoTouch S200 comes really handy. You won´t have any troubles opening Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents created with Office 2007 or 2003. It would have been great if Acer provided a PDF editor though.



Internet:

Internet has become an integral part of our daily routines and is an important aspect of any modern device. The Acer neoTouch S200 allows access to the Web over cellular networks and Wi-Fi. The phone comes with Internet Explorer 6 that works relatively fast, thanks to the snappy 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. Web pages get visualized much like on a normal computer and navigating on such a huge display is easy and fast. Parts of the Flash elements fail to load due to the lack of full support. The 360-degree views on our website make for an illustrative example, as well as the videos on websites like Viddler.com and Vimeo.com. Zooming in and out on things is as easy as a double tap – this is not the best implementation of the function we have seen, but it´s passable on the overall. Ultimately, we prefer using Opera Mobile, because it´s the better browser, plus it sports a more appealing interface.

Camera:

Sharing pictures is quite popular these days, but you need a proper camera to capture all these interesting moments. The Acer neoTouch S200 is equipped with 5-megapixel camera and LED flash. It´s relatively fast and the average time to take a single snapshot is 2 seconds, but you will have to press the screen to capture a new one, because this is not possible using the camera shutter. The speed, however, is not as important as image quality.



Snapshots taken outdoors in natural lighting conditions are not really good - they are blurry and lack enough details. As a whole, the image quality is mediocre and the pictures are good enough for being shared over social networks, where content gets published at lower resolutions, but that´s all. Those taken in bright artificial lighting are proper, but things rapidly deteriorate with stills captured in the dark or in places where there is not enough light. We blame the flash, because it doesn’t light up objects properly and as a whole, is pretty useless. Moreover, we encountered a bug that makes your pictures utterly unusable and appears without any reason in particular.




You can capture videos in MPEG-4 at maximum resolution of 640x480 pixels and 30 frames per second. Their quality is above average and as a whole they are good enough for normal computer screens, YouTube and social networks.

Acer neoTouch S200 sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution

Music and Multimedia:

You will have to rely on the standard application that comes with the operating system to listen to music and watch videos. The version is not any different from the one that WM6.1 features, so there is nothing to surprise or impress you. We are of the opinion that the alternative players found on Samsung and HTC made Windows phones are much better.

You will not experience any problems like stuttering, lagging or video and audio playing out of sync when watching MPEG-4, H.263 and H.264 clips with width of 800 pixels and bitrate over 1,300 kbps. Well, there are occasional artifacts, but in most cases they relate to the video compression. Having in mind the large screen, you can definitely spend some of your spare time watching movies.



Come to audio playback, the boxed headset pair performs below average and the situation is much worse when listening to music through the built-in loudspeaker – there is constant crackling noise, despite the fact it´s not really powerful.

Performance:

We have almost made it to the end, but before we finish, we just have to tell you we are really pleased at the operational speed of the Acer neoTouch S200. The 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 256MB RAM can handle multiple applications running simultaneously without a hitch. The thing is the inadequate optimization of the operating system becomes quite evident at times, when the phone gets really sluggish or crashes for no reason in particular.

It seems the first phones equipped with Snapdragon processor are affected by one and the same issue relating to the in-call quality. Just like the Toshiba TG01, using the Acer neoTouch S200 for talks is a painful experience. What you typically hear is sharp, monotonous and more often than not, unintelligible voices. The situation is slightly better on the other end though. Sound itself is loud, but turning down the volume doesn’t lead to a positive change in its quality. There isn’t a single good thing we can say about the loudspeaker and we consider it utterly unusable.

The phone is equipped with 1,350 mAh battery and its capacity is higher than the one of the Toshiba TG01 (1,000 mAh), but the average talk time that both devices provide is the same – 5 hours. This is simply not enough, especially if you use your phone for work during most of the day. In case you decide to surf the Web, no matter if it´s over 3G or Wi-Fi, you will have to charge your Acer handset on a daily basis.

Conclusion:

It´s time everyone heard the verdict. Guilty as charged! Just a joke, of course. Now, let´s get to brass tacks. The Acer neoTouch S200 is a Windows phone that is equipped with really capable hardware components, but its software has not been properly optimized, which leads to occasional lagging. Moreover, the social network integration that Acer promised is perfunctory – aside from the Facebook app, all the others fail to deliver even basic functions like video upload on YouTube. To top it off, the Acer neoTouch S200 is a mediocre performer in terms of in-call quality, which is not a minor disadvantage.

Everything about the Acer´s first 1GHz handset goes to show the manufacturer needs to put a lot of efforts into their devices before catching up with its major rivals - HTC and Samsung. We would recommend that you opt for the Samsung Omnia II I8000, HTC Touch Diamond2 or wait for the HTC HD2 if you intend to get a device with huge display and 1GHz processor.

Acer neoTouch S200 Video Review: