Acer Launches New Range Of Android Smartphones, Sort Of

Acer has been too busy selling monitors and laptops to care much about mobile phones, but now they’re going all in with not one, not two, not three, but an eyebrow-raising five new Android smartphones for the Australian market, including an exclusive Ferrari-branded design.

Acer has teamed up with Ferrari to put out a special edition that includes a Ferrari-branded Bluetooth earpiece and case. The Liquid E is essentially the same phone but shaves $300 off the price for not being a special edition. The Stream, which we first saw in May, is being marketed as an entertainment smartphone with very decent hardware specs, while the entry-level beTouch E120 and E130 have sub-$500 price tags. They all have a custom user interface running on top of either Android 2.1 or 1.6.

No one seems to know exactly when they’ll be available or who’ll be selling them. Acer said yesterday all five models will be available “as soon as the first week of September”, but the lack of details makes that seem unlikely. It’s understood that Acer is still in talks with carriers and a formal arrangement is still a few months away. Until then, your only option is to buy outright from unconfirmed retailers.

We’ll let you know as soon as we hear more. More specs below, from highest to lowest price.

Liquid E Special Edition ($999), Liquid E ($699)
3.5-inch WVGA multitouch capacitive LCD screen
768MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
5MP autofocus camera
Bluetooth, 802.11b/g, GPS, A-GPS
microSD storage up to 32GB
Android 2.1 (Eclair)

Stream ($799)
3.7-inch WVGA multitouch capacitive AMOLED screen
1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
5MP autofocus camera, 720p video recording
Bluetooth, 802.11 b/g/n, GPS, A-GPS
microSDHC storage up to 32GB
Android 2.1 (Eclair)

beTouch E130 ($499)
2.6-inch QVGA touchscreen
416MHz ST Ericsson processor
3.2MP camera
Bluetooth, 802.11b/g, GPS, A-GPS
microSD storage up to 32GB
Android 1.6 (Donut)

beTouch E120 ($399)
2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen
416MHz ST Ericsson processor
3.2MP camera
Bluetooth, 802.11b/g, GPS
microSD storage up to 32GB
Android 1.6 (Donut)

[Acer]


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