Dual-role Acer Iconia Smart

Acer intros extra-wide, extra-smart 4.8-inch Android device

August 22, 2011, 8:00am

MANILA, Philippines -- Call it a smartphone. Call it a tablet. Call the new Acer Iconia Smart S300 whatever you want. It’s a device designed to defy categories and break barriers—not to mention, fit in your pocket.

Introduced as the latest in Acer’s line of next-generation touchscreen products, the Acer Iconia Smart is an extra-wide, extra-smart Android-powered device that combines the incredible browsing experience of a tablet computer with the ultra-mobile capabilities of a smartphone. It is the first of its kind, and it certainly looks it: made to turn heads from the get-go, the Iconia Smart sports a slim, stylish exterior that’s polished by a sleek metal unibody cover, curved at the back and brushed with waves of silver or black.

The revolutionary design of the Acer Iconia Smart S300 frames a wide, cinematic 4.8-inch screen as its centerpiece, which—along with stunning 1024 by 480 resolution at 21:9 ratio, plus Flash 10.1 support—has set the tablet and smartphone industries abuzz.

To put it simply, never has this been seen before. Now you can browse the Web and view full pages of your favorite websites without scrolling left and right; you can fit more text into a single screen and read an ebook or an E-mail without zooming in and out; and you can tap and look through photos, videos, apps, games, maps, feeds, and contacts, among other things, without squinting hard then harder.

You can also connect the device to an even bigger screen—say, your plasma TV or computer monitor—using Acer’s Clear.fi DLNA wireless sharing technology or the HDMI port with Dual Display mirroring feature.

The generous screen real estate of the Iconia Smart is complemented by its powerful media playback capabilities. You can, in fact, use the device to watch movies in their original format—something that few, if any, smartphones can accomplish.

Advanced LED lighting technology—the kind used in today’s LCD TVs—makes the display brighter and crisper; Dolby Mobile surround sound technology, meanwhile, makes audio sharper and richer.

The unique form factor of the Acer Iconia Smart S300 gives way to intelligent functionality, making the device simple and easy to use, either as a tablet or as a smartphone. It is powered by the lightning-fast Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system and a Qualcomm 8255 Snapdragon processor; Acer’s elegant and ultra-intuitive user interface, meanwhile, puts you in full control, with each task and app just a tap, drag, swipe, or pinch away.

Supporting these various motion gestures—and fluidly—is a capacitive multi-touchscreen display. The Iconia Smart also includes an integrated 6-axis gyroscrope and accelerometer, the combination of which creates a responsive motion sensing system—and, virtually, a console-quality gaming device.

There’s also a robust set of features that will enhance your productivity whenever you want to get work done—in the office, on the road, or from right at home. Internal storage capacity of 8 GB provides more than enough room for all-important files, multimedia, and apps.

High-speed Internet connectivity, via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, is set with a tap of the finger from the status bar.

A fully featured Android Gingerbread Web browser with Javascript optimization loads fast and easy, displaying your E-mail inbox, bookmarked websites, Google Maps, Facebook News Feed, Twitter links, or favorite YouTube channel on the Iconia Smart’s gorgeous panoramic display.

There are also hundreds of thousands of apps available for download from the Android Market, waiting to be unveiled in their fullscreen glory.

Also built into the Acer Iconia Smart S300 are two cameras. The first is an 8-megapixel snapper at the back of the device, with LED flash, a panorama maker, geotagging features, and HD 720p video recording capability. The second is front-facing, designed for making Internet video calls and shooting self-portraits.

All these make the Acer Iconia Smart S300 a device that’s truly one of a kind. Or, to be more precise, two of a kind: a tablet and a smartphone—only sleeker and wider, smarter and better than the rest of what the mobile industry has to offer.