[General Topics] FloatingFatMan:
Ergonomic Design

The Tempo X960 sports Acers new styling of a slick black casing with a glossy transflective touch screen flush with the casing. It's constructed of a sturdy plastic with a chromium plated rim and a rubberised back to prevent slipping on things like car dashboards and feels extremely comfortable and light in the hand.

The screen is far enough placed up in the device that swiping with your thumb is very comfortable and reaching the 4 hardware bottons and D-pad on the front is also extremely easy on the hand.

The buttons here are your typical Call and Hang up on either side, the D-Pad in the centre, and also a GPS and Home key. More on those later. ;)

Also located on the front is the VGA front camera, primarily intended for 3G video calls, a light sensor for automatic brightness adjustment, and a raised slit for the ear piece. Hiding either side of this slit are the standard status LED's you expect on all Pocket PC's. Power, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Connectors

Starting with the left side, from top to bottom we have a place to fit a lanyard, a +/- volume rocker, a reset hole and the Record button.

On the bottom there is a single mini-USB connector which is the standard these days for Pocket PC charging and synching. This port also doubles as a headphone connector.

On the right side, from top to bottom, we have the power button, Micro-SD card slot, camera button and the bay for the included telescoping stylus.

All of these buttons and slots are flush with the chromed trim which is nice, though I found the SD card slot a little tricky to remove with my fingernail, Mind you, I have chunky fingers so that's probably at least partly the cause. It's not like we'll be opening this regularly anyway, you'll see why a little later. ;)

On the top edge we have the letters GPS.

Behind these hides the antenna for the highly capable SiRF III GPS chipset built in to this device.

On the back we have the main 3.2 megapixel camera with an LED flash and a micro mirror for those self portraits.

Also here are two small speaker grilles, though there is only one speaker actually in the device. Finally, we battery cover which is easy to remove, yet feels of good sturdy construction. This hides the 1530mAh battery and the SIM slot.

Right, that's the hardware covered, so let's switch this puppy on, shall we?

Software

Right, first of all, let's get one thing straight, Acer like black. If there's one thing you're going to see a lot of in Acer's phones, it's black. From the slick outer casing, to the software on the device. Lots and lots of black. I happen to like black, so this suits me right down to the ground. ;)

So... After that admittedly dull boot logo, you are then presented with the regular green Windows Mobile 6.1 startup screen. This hangs around for a short while, before you're presented with this:

This is Acer's all new singing and dancing Acer Shell 2.0. Don't ask me where 1.0 went, I've never seen it and I have no idea if it exists. Who cares anyway? We now have Acer Shell 2.0, and I happen to quite like it.

Anyway, it basically simulates an actual desktop, complete with window showing you the weather outside (by the way, this bit is animated! If it's raining, you'll get rain on your window ;) ), and from what I can tell, appears to be flash based. You can move objects around on the desk, you have three "panes" to help you do this, and on pane 3 there's even a shelf to put stuff too. You can also take objects off the desk if you should wish.

Here's a closer look showing all 3 "panes" of the desk. accessed with a left/right swipe of the finger.

BTW, if you're wondering why these pics are different to the bigger one above, it's because some shots are promo shots from Acer, and some are from the device in my hand. ;) These ones are from my device.

Tapping on any of these objects will open them up to custom applets such as contacts, email, weather forecasts, quick launch, bookmarks, and a rather nifty music player.

As well as the Acer Shell, there are also some other programs preinstalled, these include Google Maps, the new Internet Explorer 6 Mobile (which I have to say, is a massive improvement over PIE and even handles YouTube straight out of the box).

There is also the standard ETEN suit of applications, now rebadged to Acer, that many are used to on the previous Glofiish range of phones such as the GPS Viewer, Application Recovery, Backup, Memory Optimization, Task Manager, Profiles and so on, as well as the usual Windows Mobile stuff such as Office Mobile, MSN Messenger, Live Search.

Two new things of note. We now have a Notification Manager, which can notify you of new updates, and even download for Over The Air updating. Very useful, though I'd be careful of your data charges there. Also, we have what is quite possibly THE most important addition to Windows Mobile ever, and I thank Acer from the bottom of my heart for adding it; card reader mode.

Yes, that's right! When you connect to your PC, you will now be asked if you want to go in to one of three modes:

* Activesync

* Card Reader

* Internet Sharing

The middle one is the important one. Card Reader. When in this mode, the SD card in your device will appear as a normal drive on your PC, and you can transfer files at FULL USB 2 transfer speeds! No more being limited by the horrible speed restrictions of ActiveSync! Finally, you can stop carrying that little card reader with you... Thank you SO MUCH, Acer! :)