PETALING JAYA: The Acer Tempo M900 is not short of features but it is a little laggy.

I AM a sucker for a touchscreen phone that comes with a Qwerty keyboard.

It’s great to have multiple methods of inputting text instead of having to tap on a virtual keyboard when you have to input info fast.

So I was more than happy to get my hands on a review unit of the Acer Tempo M900 smartphone which has both a touchscreen and a Qwerty keypad.

Chunky candybar

With a dimension of 119 x 62 x 17.1mm, the candybar M900 feels a bit chunky in the hand. It tips the scale at 188g and for a mobile device, it’s a little on the heavy side.

The smartphone’s front is dominated by a shiny black fascia and when the display switches off, only the fingerprint scanner is visible at the bottom.

It looks cool but the screen is too reflective, rendering the display unreadable under bright sunlight.

At the bottom are the Call, End Call, Homescreen and GPS buttons, all of which are backlit in white when pressed.

On the sides are buttons to access the smartphone’s other functions as well as a 3-way rocker switch to navigate the user interface.

The Qwerty keypad is nicely hidden under the display, and slides out smoothly when pushed out.

Symbols and numbers that appear in orange can only be accessed when the function button is tapped. The function button is also required to access the comma and period keys. This is quite annoying because these are two frequently used buttons for typing messages.

The keypad also ships with a few shortcut buttons such as Start, OK and Zoom.

Overall, the individual keys are adequately spaced out and provide good tactile feedback.

JUST SLIDE: The individual keys are adequately spaced out and provide good tactile feedback.

Interesting interface

The smartphone comes preinstalled with the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system and runs on a Samsung 533MHz SC3 6410 processor.

It connects to Microsoft ActiveSync application to transfer and synchronise user data, so there is no need to install additional software on the PC.

The M900 uses a proprietary UI called Acer Shell, which looks like a digitised work desk with phones, calendar, rolodex and other items.

The desk is divided into three sections for easy navigation. Just swipe your finger on the screen to access any of the section.

Each item on the desk is linked to the phone’s feature — a tap on the tabletop calendar will bring up the calendar, the envelope is for accessing the e-mail application, the rolodex for viewing contacts and so on.

However, this feature takes up about 20MB of RAM, leaving only 35MB for other operations, which makes the system a little sluggish. (The review unit had about 53MB of free RAM before installing the Acer UI.)

You could uninstall the Acer Shell and opt for the default Windows Mobile Today screen for better response.

ROLL AND PRESS: The 3-way rocker helps users navigate through the smartphone's user interface (UI) fast.

Secure smartphone

The fingerprint scanner can be used to activate the device from standby mode or when accessing personal information. You can also set it up to lock a folder to store sensitive data.

It works quite well, requiring only one swipe to authenticate and gets it right most of the time.

The fingerprint scanner also doubles up as a navigation button for the user interface. It can be used as an 8-way navigation pad, 3-way rocker, joystick and more.

The smartphone’s 5-megapixels camera produced some good images especially for macro shots as images turned out crisp and sharp.

Like any typical camera phone, the image quality dropped when shooting in dimly lit environment. Even with the assistance of the built-in LED flash, the photos still turned out a little grainy.

As the smartphone also includes a GPS, you can also geotag photos with location info.

The M900 can also record videos at VGA resolution but movies can only be saved in 3GP format. More video formats would have been nice.

What really caught us by surprise was the GPS which worked wonderfully — it locks on to satellites really fast. And once you download the free Google Map application, you can easily find your exact location.

Minor problems

The smartphone’s resistive touchscreen isn’t responsive to taps all the time. Thankfully you can still use the rocker button to navigate the menu when the system isn’t responsive to taps.

The device also has problems when automatically orientating the screen — it takes quite long to turn the screen into landscape mode when the keypad is slided out.

CLOSER: The 5-megapixel shooter produces good macro shots.

And on a few occasions, the camera just failed to operate. Nothing short of a factory reset could get it working again. Moving on, the M900’s battery lasted about two days of standard use on a single charge which is pretty decent.

Conclusion

There are a lot to like about the Acer Tempo M900, such as the well-designed keypad and GPS. Plus, the built-in fingerprint scanner is great for keeping your data secure from prying eyes.

However, the phone’s performance is marred by a sluggish OS, which sometimes just doesn’t respond to commands.

Overall, the Acer Tempo is going to require a few updates before it can be a much better smartphone.

Pros: Big screen; nice Qwerty keypad; 3-way rocker; fingerprint scanner; good battery life; speedy GPS.

Cons: Insufficient RAM; accelerometer problems; screen visibility is poor outdoors.