Acer Tempo X960 smartphone review

We’ve been waiting to get our hands on one of Acer’s Tempo smartphones for a little while now, following on from the company’s acquisition of phone manufacturer E-Ten last year. The Acer X960 is the first Tempo model to land in the What Laptop office, and while it lacks stand-out features, it remains a well-equipped handset.

The most noticeable thing about the X960 is its size – at 14mm in depth it’s thicker than most of its rivals, and it’ll leave a definite bulge in your pocket. That said, the X960 is a comfortable phone to hold and use, and sits nicely in the hand.

Style-wise, the X960 owes more than a little to previous E-Ten, with similar two-tone colouring, a contrasting stripe around the sides and top, and GPS imprinted in big letters on the top. Build quality will also be familiar to owners of E-Ten handsets, using the same soft-touch plastics on the rear. It’s robust, and easy to grip without fear of dropping it.

The screen measures 2.8 inches, and smaller than its rivals such as the HTC Touch Diamond 2 or LG Arena KM900. The VGA resolution results in crisp image quality, and colours are also vivid and bright. It’s a responsive panel, making it easy to navigate, and there’s a stylus tucked away in the bottom corner of the handset.

So far, so good, but the X960 struggles against the best in class when it comes to the interface. Windows Mobile 6.1 is installed, but where HTC has neatly integrated its own TouchFLO software on all its Touch models to make the OS more finger-friendly, Acer has largely left Windows Mobile alone.

There’s a generic shell installed that offers a more attractive home screen – you’ll also be able to choose a 3D home screen, although this does little for usability. The shell also brings a custom start menu with it – letting you add your applications to the menu for quick access.

It’s not as neatly integrated as TouchFLO, and switching between functions quickly brings you back to the Windows OS. The biggest problem with this is the fact that windows have to be closed in different ways – some by pressing the X in the top corner, some by pressing OK, some by pressing close – leading to an unintuitive environment.

The Acer X960 also falls between rivals when it comes to data entry. We’ve finally become accustomed to usable onscreen keypads and accurate text correction software, thanks to the likes of Apple’s iPhone and HTC’s Touch Diamond 2, but the X960 feels more like a previous generation handset. 

You’ll be able to choose the standard Windows Mobile keyboard, which is impossibly tiny and only usable with the built-in stylus, or a larger QWERTY option bundled with the shell. The latter option is better – the keys are still cramped, but placing a finger over a key makes it larger, and it’s possible to enter text.

Unfortunately text correction is nearly none existent, so you’ll have to delete any mistakes and start again. In practice, it proved a lot more time consuming and frustrating than the excellent onscreen keypad featured on the Apple iPhone or HTC’s Touch Diamond 2.

The X960 fares a lot better when it comes to features, with 3G/HSDPA connectivity, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth all built-in. As hinted by the large GPS imprint on the case, there’s an integrated GPS chip. It’s a SiRF Star III chip – offering the most accurate guidance currently available – so you’ll realistically be able to use the Acer as a satellite navigation device.  A quick launch button on the front takes you straight to Google Maps.

Storage comes in the form of MicroSD, and a mini-USB port makes it easy to sync with your laptop. The 3.2 megapixel camera offers reasonable image quality, but is no better than average. 

Overall, the Acer Tempo X960 is a competent device, but there’s little to help it stand out in an overcrowded market. Rivals offer larger screens, smaller dimensions and a better user experience, and Acer will have to up its game if it wants to become a player in the phone market. That said, if you're after a smartphone SIM-free, the X960 makes a little more sense. Available from £340, it's around £140 cheaper than the HTC Touch Diamond 2. It just depends how much you value usability.

For more information, visit Acer.