Multimedia management
The Acer neoTouch offers a small amount of storage - about 300MB. This is barely sufficient and you'll definitely find yourself needing a higher-capacity microSD card.
The WinMo file manager on the neoTouch
The file manager is the standard Windows Mobile one and won't surprise anyone.
Image gallery stays the same, Albums are a bit better
Acer neoTouch offers two galleries available from the Multimedia folder in the Start menu.
The first one is the standard Windows Mobile 6.5, which is the same is 6.1, except for the touch optimized menu. It has no accelerometer features and you can't flick scroll images.
Windows Mobile 6.5 image gallery
The Album app is a new addition by Acer and may not be something innovative or beautiful, but is still better than the WinMo one. It's touch optimized and has accelerometer auto-rotation. Once the image is opened, you can zoom in or out or continue to the previous/next by sweeping a finger on the current one.
The new Album gallery
Scrolling to the next image is smooth and instantaneous with a single sweep of the finger.
Opening an image • overlay controls
Music and video - Windows Media player only
Unfortunately Acer did not include any music or video player and left the users with the embedded Windows Media player. As usual it's horrible at managing playlists with your favorite songs, and generally it has limited functionality and the interface is less than touch-friendly.
Watching varied video content is almost a no-go as there is a limited number of supported video formats.
Windows Media Player is a letdown
Core player comes to the rescue
Unless you really want to leave that Snapdragon sleeping in its lair, you may want to install a third-party multimedia player such as Core player. It successfully played all DivX/Xvid movies up to HD resolution, except those which use the AC3 audio codec.
Well, we have to admit that the neoTouch disappointed us when it came to HD. We expected most of the HD videos to play smoothly with that Snapdragon core inside, but we were so wrong. The official DivX HD commercials reached 15-16 fps only, while the videos recorded by Omnia HD hit the 19 fps mark. And that's as high as it went.
The Core Player
Anyway if you can skip the HD playback (it doesn't really make sense on a mobile screen anyway), you will be happy to know that all other videos we tried played smoothly with no audio problems or dropped frames. We ran some benchmarks with the Core Player against the HTC Touch Diamond and here are the results. As you can see, the difference is similar with the Spb benchmark results we did before.
28 Days Later DivX trailer
Acer neoTouch • HTC Touch Diamond
Transformers XviD trailer
Acer neoTouch • HTC Touch Diamond
Home-made DVDRip movie 640x272 resolution
Acer neoTouch • HTC Touch Diamond
The FM radio does the job perfectly
The Acer neoTouch built-in FM radio naturally requires the headset to be plugged-in.
The neoTouch FM radio has an excellent interface and offers memory for 20 radio stations.
The FM Radio on the Acer neoTouch
RDS is available too - so overall, radio is handled pretty well on the Acer neoTouch.
First-class audio output
Now that caught us totally off guard. Not only is the audio quality of the Acer neoTouch very good for a first attempt, but it is great all over. In fact not too many of the handset we have tested can rival the neoTouch balanced output, let alone the WinMo ones.
The frequency response graph is virtually perfect throughout the audible range. The noise level, dynamic range and stereo crosstalk results are also some way above the average others achieve in this test.
And here goes a table comparing the Acer neoTouch to some of its competitors.
Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Acer neoTouch +0.08 -0.24 -84.1 84.9 0.022 0.065 -81.8
HTC Touch Diamond2 +0.12, -0.60 -86.9 89.1 0.022 0.191 -86.8
Samsung I8000 Omnia II +0.17 -2.63 -88.3 88.2 0.0024 0.133 -32.8
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD +1.29 -2.74 -87.6 86.6 0.0023 0.255 -85.2
HTC Hero +1.04 -2.13 -91.3 92.3 0.458 0.902 -95.8
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0
Acer neoTouch vs HTC Touch Diamond2 frequency response
(Source : gsmarena.com)
Acer neoTouch review: Gallery, music player, video player, FM radio, audio quality
Acer-touched contact manager
Contact management is usually considered one of the strongest points of Windows Mobile. You have unlimited contacts list, unlimited info fields for each contact and brilliant synchronization options. Shame it's so damn ugly. Even when Windows Mobile reached its 6.5 version, the Contacts remained untouched.
The WinMo phonebook is still here
But that's no more. Same as HTC, Acer have added a new interface here which uses a small thumb icon for a person's phone (while HTC uses pictures), set against a gray background with a nice font. You can pick a letter of the alphabet by using the letter column placed on the right.
There is also an index search, where you see all used/unused alphabet letters and can choose one of them and see the contacts starting with it. We didn't find this option that helpful, largely because it was easier to use the handy letter column on the right. Still you can choose which of these two options will be your default or you can leave them both available.
Searching by gradual typing is also available.
Phonebook • searching using the letter column, index or typing
In contrast to the HTC's TouchFLO implementation, where editing all fields in a contact throws you back into the old WinMo skin, Acer did quite good job offering a whole new interface for this task. It uses the new phonebook design and colors and is nicely touch optimized. But don't worry - you still have a plethora of available info fields.
Editing a contact
Viewing a contact details is a whole new experience. Acer have done a great job again redesigning the whole interface into something quite stylish and visually attractive.
There are some functional changes too. The contact's information is divided into groups - names, communication and information. The new addition here is the social networking button which will open the Flickr/Facebook/Blogger account of the contact if available.
Viewing contact details
Good telephony
Making calls is always a priority for any cellphone - that still holds true for smartphones such as the Acer neoTouch.
The Phone application offers Smart dialing, so you hardly ever need to go to the Contacts list in order to dial a number. It also offers favorites tab where you can set up to 15 numbers for speed dial.
Smart Dialing • Dialing a contact • Call log • Favorites
During calls, the Acer neoTouch allows you to take some notes, as on every Windows Mobile device. Another OS feature is rejecting a call with a text message.
The Acer neoTouch scored a Below Average mark in our loudspeaker performance test, which was a nasty surprise. In fact, if there were a category lower than Below Average, neoTouch would have probably scored that instead. Those are some of the lowest results we've ever recorded. While it is noticeably louder when playing music through the loudspeaker, you are bound to have a lot of calls missed with ringing performance such as this one.
Here is how the neoTouch stacks up against some other handsets we've tested. More info on our test can be found here.
Speakerphone test Voice, dB Ringing Overall score
Acer neoTouch 58.2 59.0 69.0
HTC Touch Diamond2 69.1 66.6 76.7 Good
Samsugn B7300 OmniaLITE 73,9 70,4 73,7 Good
Samsung I8000 Omnia II 71.0 73.5 75.7 Very good
HTC Touch HD 77.7 73.7 76.7 Excellent
Old school messaging
The Acer neoTouch supports SMS, MMS and email. SMS and MMS share an inbox and a message editor and thanks to Windows Mobile 6.5, you can enjoy thumb scrolling in the inboxes and through longer messages.
Still the message tab remains the original and untouched Windows Mobile 6.5, where the only upgrade is the touch-optimized menu.
Threaded SMS is also available on the neoTouch, just as it is across Windows 6.5.
Typing SMS on the neoTouch
The email editor will hold no surprises for experienced WinMo users as it has not changed at all.
Setting up your email is easy as it is on most of the latest mid or high range phones. You type your email and password and all the other fiddly options are configured automatically.
Email set up • browsing the email inbox • reading an email • replying an email
Perhaps now is a good time to mention input options on the Acer neoTouch. Acer have equipped the device with two home-grown thumbable virtual keyboards. It's a commendable feature since the default Windows Mobile keyboards are fit for stylus use only.
The first keyboard is a full portrait touch optimized QWERTY and the second one is the same QWERTY in landscape mode. The regular WinMo QWERTY for use with a stylus is as usual onboard.
Handwriting recognition is also available and works just fine.
The keyboards on the Acer neoTouch • handwriting recognition
(Source : gsmarena.com)
