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Acer beTouch E400 early review: It's business time for Android

Business types will find a lot to love about the Acer beTouch E400, an Android phone with one dainty foot in Microsoft territory

Richard Trenholm
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
Richard Trenholm
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The new Acer beTouch E400 is on display at phone show Mobile World Congress, so we thought it'd be rude not to have a play with it. Even though it's an Android phone rather than Windows Mobile -- soon to be renamed Windows Phone 7 Series -- it's packed with Microsoft integration for the businessman about town. Or woman, obviously.

The E400 runs Android 2.1, powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm processor. It has a giant 81mm (3.2-inch) touchscreen. It's resistive, meaning that poking the screen's surface presses down the layer beneath and registers your touch. You can use a stylus with a resistive screen, but it won't do multitouch. Still, you have plenty of space to swoosh and swipe about, and it's fast and responsive.

The stylus may prove popular among fuddy-duddy business types. They'll no doubt also be delighted with the built-in Microsoft Exchange support, so they can read emails from human resources while they're watching Top Gear. They'll even be able to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the E400.

If you're a cool youngster, you'll be more excited by the cool light-up home button. It changes colour depending on battery status, or if you have a new message. Shiny! Twitter app Twidroid is also built-in. Should you be carrying an Acer netbook in your designer backpack, the Acer Sync feature automatically syncs and stores your calendars and contacts wirelessly from the cloud to your phone, laptop and desktop computer. The 3.2-megapixel camera has a built-in flash and will geotag your pictures to stick them on a map.

Click through our quick hands-on gallery to be touched by the beTouch E400.

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The only thing that bothered us in our quick hands-on was that the feature which drags the list of app icons up from the bottom of the screen was a little sticky. It just didn't have the peppy scrolling feel you get from capacitive phones such as the iPhone.
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Switching the phone on its side flips the Qwerty keyboard. Unlike many phones, the E400 gets the balance right between decent-sized keys and space to see what you've written.
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The Acer beTouch E400 will be available in April.

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