Acer's Upcoming Tablets, Smartphone: A Visual Tour

Acer debuts a tablet computer and smartphone making it the latest company to challenge Apple and its touch screen devices the iPad and iPhone.

By Jared Newman, PCWorld

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Visual Tour of Acer's New Tablet and Smartphone

Once reluctant to enter the tablet game, Acer's coming out firing with details on new Android and Windows tablets, along with an oversized smartphone. Here's a closer look at the upcoming touch screen products, all due in the early part of next year.

For a report from the New York City press event where Acer announced its new products follow this link.

Iconia Dual-Screen Tablet

Like Toshiba's Libretto W100, the Acer Iconia is a "concept" laptop with two touch screens, but it's much larger, with each 1366-by-768 resolution screen measuring 14 inches. The Iconia will have an Intel Core i5 processor, integrated Intel graphics, up to 4GB of RAM, up to 750GB of storage and a measly three hours of battery life. It'll launch in February 2011 for an unknown price.

Iconia: The Ring

Acer plans to add lots of custom software on top of Windows 7, including touch-based photo, video and music browsers, a social media reader and a virtual scrapbook for storing Website clippings and taking notes. Central to the software element is the "Ring," a navigation menu that pops up when you place five fingers on the screen. Typing's going to be a royal pain, though.

10.1-inch Windows Tablet

Acer plans to launch a 10-inch Windows 7 tablet in February. For tech specs, we only know that the tablet runs on an AMD processor and has built-in 3G and Wi-Fi. It measures 0.59-inches thick and weighs "less than 1kg," or 2.2 pounds).

Windows Tablet Dock

The best part about Acer's 10.1-inch Windows tablet is the included keyboard docking station, essentially turning it into a detachable laptop. However, I don't see any USB inputs for a mouse, which might alleviate the dreaded gorilla arm when docked.

4.8-inch Android Smartphone

Acer's pushing the boundaries of acceptable smartphone size with a 4.8-inch screen and 21:9 aspect ratio. And unlike Dell's Streak, which would could never quite commit to a product category, Acer cheerily calls this device a "smartphone with the soul of a tablet." Resolution is 1024-by-480, and there's an 8-megapixel camera with flash, but no front-facing camera. Flash 10.1 will be supported. Other specs, pricing and release date are unknown.

Acer's Android Tablets

Acer's taking no chances with both 7-inch and 10.1-inch Android tablets, coming April 2011. The smaller version is notable for beating Samsung's Galaxy Tab on resolution with a 1280-by-800 display. It also has a dual-core processor, front-facing HD camera and Flash 10.1 support. The larger tablet uses Nvidia's Tegra 2 processor and offers 1080p video and “complex 3D games.” Both models support 3G, Wi-Fi and HDMI output. No word on price.

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