Monthly Archives: June 2009

The Acer F900 has surprised me in many different ways so far and is almost unique in certain aspects of how it runs. I will try to explain the good and bad below because this is a perplexing smartphone which does some things very well and others not so. The interesting thing is that the not so good parts can be easily fixed and the good parts will be there forever…

Camera

It takes photos very quickly and the shutter speed is similar to those seen on the Treos or iPhone, but the images often turn out blurred and without good colour reproduction. Even in good light, the photos looked poor on the Acer. Now, and this is the odd bit. The photos looks pretty sharp on my PC which is unusual because it is usually the other way around?

However, video recording is very good and even action shots came out well with no delay or jogging from the lens when viewed on the Acer, but not so good on the PC. I can’t quite work this out, but the camera on the whole gets a thumbs up from me.

Screen

The screen is huge and lovely and perfectly adequate indoors. The display easily matches the larger HTC models and is obviously of good quality components because it accepts touch presses perfectly. It feels more natural to use than most of the Windows Mobile competition and makes general navigation super smooth. Outdoors you do need to crank up the brightness to full if the sun is bright and this produces a positive experience, but beware the battery implications. Finally, the gravity sensor works well and showed no delays when changing orientation.

Battery

The battery is huge at 1530mAh and should power this phone for a couple of days at least, but Wi-Fi did have an impact when I tested it. However, varied usage took the battery down to 60% on the first day; 3G, Wi-Fi music and video were all tested. Given the size of the battery and the screen, it feels about right, but I have the caveat of not having played with it over a long period so can’t fully judge it at this stage.

General performance

Not too shabby. Everything plods along nicely and video playback is very smooth. I didn’t notice any slow downs during intensive use and the memory held up well. It would be nice to see more RAM included, but this seems to be one of those smartphones that just does the business and performs as you need it to all of the time. Considering the number of features onboard, the F900 performs easily as well as the high-end HTC devices I have tested recently.

Connectivity

Everything you could need is present and it all works quite well. GPS reception is adequate in a car, but I could not get a lock indoors. To be fair, very few receivers to get such good locks, but some of the later ones do.

Wi-Fi is fine and it is difficult to differentiate between this setup and the ones in other phones and the rest of the connectivity set is as complete as you would expect in a high-end Windows Mobile smartphone. An FM Tuner is also included, but works about as well as most smartphone FM Tuners do i.e. not well at all.

Data Entry

A screen only device will always cause problems to those of you who are used to physical keyboards, but I have to say that the soft keyboard on the F900 is better than any I have seen on other devices. It is hard to describe what makes it so good, but it worked very well for me. Transcriber and the other standard input options are also available, but this is one device where the main keyboard will actually win out.

Software

There is a huge amount of extra software onboard of which the majority are small tweaks. Some of these could be bundled together into one larger application, or are replications from the settings, but it is good to see so much added. The screenshots offer an impression of how much extra is included and some are useful, but not to the point that I want to go into too much detail.

Call quality and signal

Call quality is good to the ear, but the speakerphone can distort at high volumes. This is becoming quite a trend with Windows Mobile phones and it would be nice to see manufacturers making more strides in this area. Both are adequate for normal daily use, but cannot hold a candle to the Nokias and BlackBerry’s of this world for call quality.

Conclusion

The F900 is a mixture of a cheap looking design which performs much better than some of the better looking smartphones in this category. It fits in between everything, but is not like anything else, if that makes sense, yet still manages to perform well for the majority of tasks. As an entertainment device it delivers for video playback and music (use your own headphones though) and the screen enables easy viewing of complex web pages and large documents.

It has its faults, but these tend to be superficial and some software additions, such as Spb Mobile Shell, will make it feel like a top quality unit. The F900 sits in a highly competitive area of the Windows Mobile market and does not have the quality feel of the HTC high-end devices, but it does offer a good alternative. The question remains as to if it justifies a price point of £400? From a specifications point of view it does, but I personally would expect to be holding something a little classier in my hand and would be tempted to pay the extra £100 for a top of the range HTC.

Available from Clove for £412.85