Monthly Archives: March 2010

Supplied by Clove

Main features

Unique slim and lightweight design
Windows® Mobile 6.5.3, full Microsoft® Exchange support and Office Suite
3.2” touch screen
Full slide down QWERTY backlit keyboard
Qualcomm 7225 processor
Microsoft® Office Mobile suite
3G+, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth™ connectivity built in
Exclusive Spinlets™ application provides free streaming of worldwide music and video, that can be shared with friends and family via the web or e-mail.
Windows® Media Player 10 – a great way to enjoy music, video clips and pictures on the move.
Instant access to Windows® Market Place

The P300 is a curious release from Acer, a company who has been heavily pumping out Android smartphones over the past few months, but it may have something to offer a segment of the market that requires specific uses. The form factor is far from original, but it does resemble the traditional mobile phone form factor more than most slide-out keyboarded Windows Mobile smartphone.

This is a pre-release unit and so the retail packaging was not included. In the box was just the AC power unit, a set of headphones (these were not great) and a USB cable for charging and synchronisation.

Hardware

The design of the P300 is, as I said, not original, but it is well built and slim enough to garner most suit pockets. The slimness (15mm) has been achieved by making the keys on the keyboard almost flush and you would think that this would cause problems. However, it is a very good keyboard and I had no problems typing on it whatsoever. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it goes to show that you don’t need lots of travel to achieve a useable data input structure. Acer has also managed to cram in four direction keys which are presumably to make up for the lack of a dedicated navigation key on the front.

There are two issues with the keyboard though that should be noted- the space bar is way over to the left when there is no reason why that should be the case. It takes up two keys widths and the bottom row centre keys are used up by a dedicated email / SMS key and a ‘@’ / .com key. Why? I can see no reason why these need to be placed in the centre and not the spacebar. It is bizarre, but reaches a new level of bizarreness when you consider that there is no dedicated ‘.’ key. Since when is having a dedicated email button more useful than a full stop in daily use?

Don’t worry though- you can always use the stylus if you need to. The only problem here is that it is truly awful. Firstly it is not easy to remove from the stylo and even worse, it is very thin and short. This makes for difficult onscreen handling and again I can see no reason why it needs to be so small. The fact is that Windows Mobile without a capacitive screen requires a stylus for some tasks so you may as well make it as big as you can.

The above issues are certainly not deal breakers and you soon get used to left-handed spacebar hitting, but the fact that there was no reason to make these non-standard changes makes little sense to me. The keyboard mechanism is superb though and feels like it will last the distance. Every part of the device feels well made and has a metallic feel all the way through. The look is understated in the extreme, but in a way that fits the corporate world rather than the consumer market. It is almost reminiscent of some Nokia phones such as the 5800 and it would be no surprise if someone told me that Nokia has actually made the device for Acer.

The screen is well sized and at the ideal point between practicality and super phones like the HD2. It is not a phone that will be used predominantly for media, but a test showed that it is more than capable of delivering good quality video output. The screen is good indoors, but like so many suffers outdoors when the conditions are bright. It is not totally washed out and you can work most of the time, but should be expect more in 2010? Yes.

The buttons are mostly well placed; there are none on the left hand side and a volume key plus camera shutter key on the left. The volume key is clever in that you can use it to adjust volume and by clicking it down it will also mute the phone- all phones should have a mute key in my opinion. There is a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top (good positioning) alongside the microUSB charge and sync port (bad position) which also houses the microSD port (clever). The on/off button is also on the top where you would expect it. The buttons below the screen consist of the standard home key and the call end / start keys- they look like they are flush until you realise that there is a small strip below the icons which you need to press.

Call quality is better than I expected and the speakerphone is adequate, but could be louder. It does seem as though the P300 is aimed at the corporate market and the specific areas that these users will need (email, voice etc.) are implemented well.

Battery life is surprisingly good. On the first day I made 40 minutes of calls and watched a 2 hour film- the battery was still over 60% and bodes well for busy days although a daily chase will likely still be necessary.

Software

What can I bring myself to say about a new device running Windows Mobile 6.5.3? Well, it all works as it should and is reasonably quick. I say reasonable because I did suffer from some freezes, but this is a pre-release unit so I won’t be too critical at this stage. The screen plays well enough with the new interface, but when scrolling through the icons I often selected one without meaning to. I suspect this is more to do with the marriage of screen technology and finger than its pre-release status.

Acer has added some touches of its own including Spinlets which provides free streaming of worldwide music and video. Again I am presuming this is a pre-release issue because it has some issues. Besides a few unexpected handling errors, clicking on a new music track brings up a download box which takes over 30 seconds to complete. Not exactly iTunes, and worse still when you adjust the volume using the side keys the track exits and you have to go back to it to play it again. I presumed this was a Spinlets issue, but the same thing happens in YouTube. On the subject of YouTube this app works surprisingly well- it does default to low quality video, but the loading times are almost instantaneous over Wi-Fi.

Other touches include a setting strip which pops up when you press the title bar- it works well, but looks quite amateur in its implementation. There is a search phone option which is by default help in the Utilities folder, should be system wide surely, and some other small touches which slightly change the default setup. Curiously Bubble Breaker is missing and only Solitaire remains on the gaming front and the rest is as you would expect. It may sound as if I am rushing through the software part, but I am struggling to find much to write about it. Windows Mobile 6.x really does need a refresh and unless you enjoy messing about with a phone just to make it easy to use I find it hard to get excited about the OS these days.

Conclusion

Acer has produced a smartphone in the P300 which is so similar to so many other Windows Mobile smartphones that it is hard to understand why it made the investment to produce it. The pricing is quite good at just over £300 and you get some decent specifications included, but I can immediately think of many other phones at this price point that produce a more pleasant and more practical experience. However, not many of them have a slide-out hardware keyboard onboard. The Touch Pro2 is £50 more, but bigger, and the HP Data Messenger is a full £110 cheaper and arguably as easy to use.

The P300 has to be considered value for money though because of the specs onboard and the fact that it retains a slim form factor while retaining a full QWERTY keyboard is impressive. It is by no means a bad smartphone, but I struggle to see what sets it apart from the competition. Stick Android and a capacitive screen on this phone and Acer would be laughing.