Acer launches a couple of new Android phones

Spot the difference

When Acer acquired smartphone company E-Ten back in 2008, it seemed to be the one PC OEM (apart from Apple) that had understood the importance of mobile devices and looked set to become a major player in the smartphone market, and beyond.

Towards the end of last year Acer launched the Liquid - an Android 1.6 device powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon - which looked capable of taking on the handset incumbents. Since then, however, things have been a tad low-key. Acer snuck out a new handset among a bunch of other new products last month and was showing a Liquid with go-faster stripes at Computex, but that's about it.

Today, however, we get not one but two new handsets, both sporting the ‘beTouch' moniker. The beTouch E120 has a relatively small 2.8 inch QVGA screen and Acer is sticking with Android 1.6. To be fair to Acer, it is positioned as an entry-level Android phone, but it still has to go up against good efforts from the likes of LG, HTC and Sony Ericsson.

The beTouch E130 differs from its sibling primarily in the form of a fixed QWERTY keyboard. Where the E120 is aimed at consumers, this seems to be targeted more at the business market. As you can see below, it shares many of the specs of the E120.

Acer hasn't revealed pricing for these two phones, but they'll need to be cheap. The beTouch E120 will be available from the middle of next month, which the E130 will come out in August.

BETOUCH E120

BETOUCH E130