Acer is certainly planning on making a big splash in a crowded pool this week as Windows Mobile 6.5 finally hits the market. They have four new Windows Mobile phones arriving in the UK this week, each sporting a shiny new name and spec list. No word yet on when they will be available elsewhere.

The flagship of the quartet, the Acer F1, is now the Acer neoTouch and has the following specs.

• Qualcomm 8250 1GHz processor
• Windows Mobile 6.5 with Internet Explorer 6
• 3.8” WVGA Touchscreen Display
• Quad-band GSM / Tri-band HSPA
• 512MB ROM / 256MB RAM
• 5 MegaPixel Autofocus with LED flash
• microSD slot (support up to 32GB)
• WiFi 802.11 b/g & Bluetooth 2.1
• Motion Accelerometer
• 3.5mm audio jack

As for the other three phones, the Acer C1/E1 will be called the beTouch E100/E101 and the Acer L1 slider will be called the beTouch E200. These three have lower specs then the neoTouch and seem more like feature phones to me.

This may be the first and last big Windows Mobile release from Acer however as they have the Acer A1 Android phone due out in November, and a report in Digitimes indicates that they are shifting at least half of their smartphone development staff away from Windows Mobile and into Android. This is following the lead of HTC who announced last month they were massively increasing their Android efforts in 2010 at the expense of Windows Mobile.

Will there be any vendors still creating Windows Mobile phone by the time Redmond finally gets WinMo 7 out the door? We may end up pinning more of our WinMo hopes on the leaked “Pink” phones then we realized.

Zealot (476 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).