IT Pro Verdict

The Acer beTouch E130 takes Android and puts it in a smartphone with a BlackBerry-like miniature QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is well made, and those who spend a lot of time typing text might find it tempting enough to try Android. However, the small, cramped resistive touchscreen is ill-suited for activities such as web browsing, making the Acer beTouch E130 frustrating to use for many people.

By Sandra Vogel

published 8 October 2010

in Reviews

BlackBerry fans will adapt quickly to the E130's keyboard. The keys are relatively large and feel responsive. They are big enough to find with the pad of a finger, and the predictive text entry system works quite well. It isn't the fastest and most accurate mini keyboard we've ever used, but it's not far off.

A small trackball sits above the mini QWERTY keyboard. It's similar to the trackballs we've seen before on the original BlackBerry Pearl and some HTC Android phones, such as the Hero. It rolls comfortably under the thumb and is a good alternative to finger swipes for navigating the Android interface. The trackball is flanked by the usual Home, Menu, Search and Back buttons that we'd expect to find on an Android phone, as well as Call and End buttons.

Acer has skinned Android, but not so much as to be completely overpowering or to hide the native Android look and feel. One notable change is that the tab you normally slide upwards to get into the main apps menu needs to be slid horizontally from the right edge of the screen towards the left. Once the draw is open you revert to scrolling vertically through the complete apps list.

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Sandra Vogel is a freelance journalist with decades of experience in long-form and explainer content, research papers, case studies, white papers, blogs, books, and hardware reviews. She has contributed to ZDNet, national newspapers and many of the best known technology web sites.

At ITPro, Sandra has contributed articles on artificial intelligence (AI), measures that can be taken to cope with inflation, the telecoms industry, risk management, and C-suite strategies. In the past, Sandra also contributed handset reviews for ITPro and has written for the brand for more than 13 years in total.