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Acer W4 Windows Phone Mango mobile doesn't offer tasty specs

Acer has shown off its first Windows Phone Mango handset at this year's Computex exhibition in Taiwan. Its specs won't make anybody drool, though.

Andy Merrett
Andy Merrett has been using mobile phones since the days when they only made voice calls. Since then he has worked his way through a huge number of Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson models. Andy is a freelance writer and is not an employee of CNET.
Andy Merrett

Acer has shown off its first Windows Phone Mango handset at this year's Computex exhibition in Taiwan. The W4's modest specs place it in the middle tier of current smart phones.

The W4 uses a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm processor, so it's not going to be as snappy as some of its more expensive brethren and may stumble when multitasking. The 3.5-inch touchscreen has a 480x800-pixel resolution, which isn't as retina-searing as that of some other handsets, such as the HTC Sensation.

The rear camera has a reasonable 5-megapixel resolution, but photos of the phone suggest it has no front-facing snapper. The case is charmingly shiny, but the phone looks rather chunky overall.

There's no official word concerning the release date or price. We're expecting Mango phones to arrive this autumn, though.

When Mango phones do arrive, there should be an avalanche of them. Besides Nokia's highly anticipated Windows Phone 7 handsets, we expect Fujitsu, ZTE, HTC, Samsung, LG and Dell to cut themselves a delicious slice of Mango. The software will still have a hard time capturing market share from Android and the iPhone, though.

What do you think? Is the W4 a contender, or should it have been smothered at birth? Let us know in the comments section below or on our Facebook wall.