Acer strikes up new Tempo

But are its smartphones out of tune with the moment?

MWC Acer introduced a quartet of smartphones at Mobile World Congress this week, all members of the Tempo band, though it's clear rival manufacturer HTC is calling the tune when it comes to hardware and UI design inspiration.

Acer's Tempo M900: better camera than the rest

All four Tempos - the M900, F900, DX900 and X960 - follow the Windows Mobile template laid down by HTC. All have a large touchscreen - 3.8in in the case of the M900 and F900; 2.8in on the other two - ready for tapping, and they all have a stylus, should your fingers be too thick.

There's also the inevitable 3D UI added on top of Windows Mobile's own flat interface.

The F900: keyboardless

The M900 has a slide-out Qwerty keyboard, but it's stand-out feature is the integrated fingerprint sensor that sits where the navpad usually goes. It has a 5Mp camera - the others have 3.2Mp snappers. Like the F900, it has on-board GPS and an FM radio.

The DX900 does boast a pair of SIM slots capable of taking 2G and 3G cards.

The DX900: two SIM slots

All four phones can connect to HSDPA 3G and lesser networks, and have front-facing cameras for video calls.

In short, they've all a full feature set - what Acer has to do now is convince companies and individuals its phones are different from all the many other Windows Mobile smartphones out there, quite a few of which - enter HTC - are better looking.

The X960: tweaked UI

As yet, there's no word on pricing and availability - Acer is presumably waiting to experience serious interest from carriers before saying. ®