Acer announces latest WinMo 6.5 phones

The Acer F1 concept
The Acer F1 concept

Acer has shown off prototypes of its next slew of smartphones at an event in London, with the pick being F1, a full touchscreen costing up to £445 and released in the second half of 2009.

The F1 (its codename, with the proper title to be applied closer to launch) will sport a high resolution screen (which we assume will be HVGA) with home screen widgets and gaming capabilities.

It will also use a 5MP camera with LED flash, and has four simple buttons at the base of the screen for navigation, including call / reject and a home screen link.

The Acer L1

The L1 also uses a touchscreen but incorporates a slide-out keyboard as well, and is designed for 'simplicity', according to Acer, although it didn't give out many details as to why this label is applied.

There's a 3MP camera on the back with an LED flash, and it uses a four way directional button on the front as well as a touchscreen. It also has an accelerometer, presumably for gaming and orientation, and will likely cost £265.

The C1 is designed to be the phone that 'facilitates users' move up to smartphones' according to Acer, with its being dubbed 'My First Mobile Internet Phone'.

It will likely cost up to £49 and will feature a touchscreen and a jog wheel and the ability to pack in two SIMs, either on EDGE or 3G. It comes in a variety of colours and packs a 3MP camera, albeit without flash.

The other 1

The final handset, which we've learned will be called the E1 but wasn't mentioned, will retail for slightly less than the C1, and there aren't too many other specs out there about it, other than like all the others in the 'X-1'family it will roll out with Windows Mobile 6.5, and will launch a month after its brothers.

Acer also announced it would be bringing six other handsets later this year, and even better: they might not be running Windows Mobile. The possibility of Android was raised, and Aymar de Lencquesaing, senior corporate VP for Acer, refused to rule it out.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.