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Acer Tempo X960 Windows Mobile smartphone

Sound but samey satnav smartphone

Acer's own graphical user interface, the Acer Shell, is a welcome sight, and we preferred it to the DX900's use of Spb's Mobile Shell 2.1, which was a bit clunky. Either is better than relying on the basic Windows Mobile 6.1 interface that lurks beneath.

The new interface looks like a stylised office desk with widgets for email, calendar, call log and text messages. The home screen is, in fact, three screens in one; calling up additional layers with a brush of the screen to the left to show contacts, gallery and music player. Another brush reveals the Internet browser, settings and Quick Menu. The latter can be populated with up to 15 shortcuts marked as large, thumbtastic buttons.

Acer X960

Acer's Shell interface presents a virtual office

Acer X960

A brush stroke to the left reveals another screen

Acer X960

Another stroke, another screen

The Acer X960’s connectivity is comprehensive, with quad-band GSM, HSDPA 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0. There's also a VGA camera just above the screen for video calling), The default browser is Internet Explorer 6, which gets the job done but lags behind the likes of Opera in terms of usability and speed. There's no option to view web pages in landscape mode, which is a great shame, and that titchy keyboard means that one-handed browsing isn't really an option.

For messaging there's support for Microsoft Exchange and we had no trouble setting up a POP3 email account. Microsoft Office allows can both read and create Word, Excel and OneNote documents, as well as view PowerPoint docs.

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