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Acer Tempo X960 Windows Mobile smartphone

Sound but samey satnav smartphone

There's A-GPS on board backed up by Google Maps, and Acer makes a big thing of it by adding the satellite icon on one of the front-mounted buttons. It found satellite signals easily enough and updated quickly when we were on the move. Unfortunately, there's no satnav software supplied, not even a trial version, although all the main flavours are available as Windows Mobile downloads.

Acer X960

Besides the 3.2Mp camera, there's an additional camera for conferencing

The 3.2Mp camera is OK, but certainly nothing spectacular. It takes about six seconds to launch, so it's not so good for quick snaps. There's an LED flash, but not a lot of other features – 3x multishot, effects, image frames, light settings and that's about it.

There's a digital zoom, but it's not available at the maximum picture resolution of 2048x1536 pixels (640x480 for video). The overall picture quality is passable, but nothing to distinguish it from the three megapixel crowd. Edges aren't as sharp as we'd like and colours tended to look a bit washed out. Video will record at a maximum of 640x480 pixels, but it's very quick to blur where movement's involved.

The Acer X960 has separate music and media players on board can handle MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, AMR, SP-MIDI, MIDI, MMF, AWB and RMI audio formats, with 3GP, MPEG4, WMV, H.263 and H.264 for video. The music player accessed from the home screen is pretty basic, with no playlist option, though you can sort your tracks into favourites.

Acer X960

A-GPS included, but not even a trial satnav application installed

Windows Media Player offers the option to watch video in full screen mode or within the player's skin. However, you'll need to delve into the Windows Start menu to access the player in the first place, although you can always add a shortcut to the Acer Shell screen. Playback was hassle-free and we were able to watch hi-res WMA videos, but they wouldn't necessarily expand to full-screen dimensions. Widescreen formats retained black bars at the top and bottom.

Next page: Verdict

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