Acer intros smartphone line, misses Windows Mobile 6.5

Acer has officially announced its foray into the mobile phone market, and though its bread and butter will of course continue to be its computer business, the company actually expects to get 10 percent of its revenue within three years from the growing smartphone sector. Four devices were introduced today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as part of the new Tempo line, all of which feature touch sensitive displays and run the soon to be outdated Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system from Microsoft.



The Acer M900 stands out from the rest featuring a full QWERTY slide out keyboard along with a 3.8-inch WVGA touch screen and 5MP camera with flash. Meanwhile, the Acer F900 has a similar spec sheet to the latter but drops the physical keyboard and downgrades the camera to 3.2MP. Two additional models, the DX900 and X960, will get you less screen real state to work with but still boast a range of features such as HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0 and a GPS module for satellite navigation and other location-based services.

Acer clarifies battery capacity mismatch

I received an email today from Acer, regarding the stories floating around the net about a recent battery mishap. If you recall, what essentially happened is that many people reviewing the 10-inch Aspire One found themselves blessed with a 5800mAh battery, whereas the actual unit shipped with a smaller capacity 4400mAh battery by default. You could see where the confusion could come in, with reviewers seeing one spec for battery life and end users actually getting another. Acer did mention post-shipments that the units which received 5800mAh batteries were an exception, saying it was a mistake.

Now, the company has clarified that situation via email. According to them, the larger capacity batteries are merely a result of part availability. With all their shipments, they say, in the event of any hardware shortage, a component may be substituted for a more expensive piece. The email details that they do this in order to keep the same SKU and pricing, without having to worry about part availability. Acer also said that in the event any component is actually downgraded from what the spec is, a new SKU would be created.

In short, it doesn't seem like Acer was up to any wrongdoing, and indeed they do pitch the 10-inch Acer Aspire One as a device that has a 4400mAh battery. You can read the full email after the jump.