e-ten

Acer smartphone available for preorder

Acer isn't yet an official entrant into the smartphone market and already it's having the same problems keeping secrets as established players Apple and Palm.

On Wednesday, a smartphone called the Acer DX900 popped up for preorder on the Web site of Clove Technology, a retailer based in the U.K.

It appears to be the same device as the E-Ten Glofiish DX900--same features, same look, just a different brand name--which makes sense since Acer bought E-Ten last year. It's being offered for the equivalent of $570 (unlocked, we presume).

Acer plans a high-profile introduction of several handsets … Read more

Acer smartphone launching Feb. 16

Less than a year after buying up smartphone maker E-Ten, Acer will debut its first handheld, a company representative confirmed Wednesday.

The Taiwanese PC maker has just begun distributing invitations to a press event that will be held next month during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Both President and CEO Gianfranco Lanci and Aymar de Lencquesaing, the head of the Smart Handheld business unit, will be on hand for the event. The invitation specifically says "smartphones" launch, so it doesn't sound like it's going to be an event focused on a single model or … Read more

MWg Zinc and E-Ten Glofiish: Two peas in a pod

Boldly going where few other tech journalists bother to travel, we at Crave UK make sure to check out as many new phone makers as possible--because you just never know. Only yesterday we plunged into the depths of sweaty London to see MWg's latest handset, the MWg Zinc II.

You're probably thinking who the potatoes is MWg? It stands for Mobile Wireless group, and it used to be O2 Asia--but O2 ditched it, so now it's gone solo and is coming up with some pretty interesting Windows Mobile handsets. The Zinc II is a compact handset that … Read more

Acer has smartphone on deck

Up-and-coming PC maker Acer is shifting its lineup a bit.

At its first-quarter investor relations conference in Taipei on Wednesday, Acer President Gianfranco Lanci said the company would release its first smartphone--a Windows Mobile device--by the end of this year or early next year, and that smartphones will account for 10 percent of company revenue.

Acer made its interest in the smartphone market very clear in March, when it purchased fellow Taiwanese company E-Ten, which makes smartphones under the Glofiish brand.

At the conference, Acer said E-Ten would shift entirely to smartphones and away from PDAs, which it has sold … Read more

Report: Dell getting back into handhelds

Rumors continue to persist about Dell getting back into the handheld business.

The latest is from Digitimes (which should be taken with a grain of salt) which is reporting that Dell has placed orders with several Asian manufacturers for smartphones, PDAs, and GPS devices. Digitimes says those devices would run Windows Mobile. That differs from the rumor floating around in late January that Dell was about to announce an Android-based handset.

As of this writing, Dell had not yet responded to requests for comment.

It's been almost a year since the company ended production of its popular Axim handheld, … Read more

Acer buys smartphone maker E-Ten

Continuing its spending spree, Acer announced Monday it plans to acquire E-Ten for $290 million.

Based in Taiwan, E-Ten has been around for more than two decades, and part of its business includes manufacturing Pocket PC phones and PDAs for other companies. But it's probably known best to consumers by its Glofiish consumer brand name, established less than two years ago.

With this purchase, Acer, also based in Taiwan, appears laser-focused on becoming a major mobile player. Thanks to its acquisitions of both Gateway and Packard Bell, it's already taken out Dell as the second-largest manufacturer of notebooks. … Read more

Photos: E-Ten's new Glofiish lineup

Yesterday Crave attended the U.K. launch of E-Ten's new line-up, which includes the Glofiish M800, the X800 (which we reported on in March) and the X600. These oddly named handsets look very similar to HTC devices and pack many of the same features too.

The X600 (pictured), for example, runs on Windows Mobile 6 and features a large colour touchscreen, EDGE, GPS, Wi-Fi, a 2-megapixel camera and an expandable microSD slot.

Considering E-Ten managed to squash all these features into a casing that's only 15mm thin, the X600 is a formidable smartphone, although we would have liked … Read more

Latest E-Ten Glofiish--a few downers

The QWERTY-enabled E-Ten M800 slider now has an official image and specifications, and everything said about it previously was true: It includes a VGA display, HSDPA connectivity, a SiRFstar III GPS chip and a 500MHz Samsung processor.

What wasn't confirmed then was the amount of RAM. We know now that it's a disappointing 64MB, just like the previous X800. Another interesting point we can see from the image is that it has touch-sensitive buttons under the display. We'll wait to see how well this latest Glofiish works after we handle one in the flesh, once it's … Read more

'Glofiish': World's slimmest phone?

E-Ten has released an update to its pocket PC phone line, which some blogs are calling the slimmest handset of its kind in the world.

The X500 Glofiish--yes, it's really called the Glofiish--combines both Bluetooth 2.0 video and audio capabilities, 802.11b/g WiFi and an EDGE radio. The .6-inch thin phone, which operates on the Windows Mobile 5.0 platform, contains a 2-megapixel camera, a 400MHz Samsung processor, 128MB ROM and 64MB RAM of storage, and a slot for a microSD card.

While the E-Ten announced the X500 a few weeks ago, Mobility Site pointed out today'… Read more