Kealamauloa blog

Acer Announces Big New Smartphone (For AT&T?)

Could Acer's new 4.8-inch smartphone be the company's breakthrough product on AT&T? The PC maker's new widescreen, tablet-like phone may arrive just in time for the company to try its luck with the U.S.'s largest GSM carrier.

Announced today, the unnamed Android-powered smartphone has an unusually stretched-out 1,024-by-480 screen, which the company said offers the same width as a PC Web browser, "so Web sites don't need to be resized and adjusted."

The phone has an 8-megapixel camera on the front and a 2-megapixel unit on the back, along with HSPA 14.4 and Wi-Fi for Internet connectivity. Flash support in the browser means that the phone is running at least Android 2.2.

Acer has made smartphones for years, but it hasn't yet sold any through major U.S. carriers. A few have slipped onto the U.S. market through smaller carriers such asin Missouri.

At the Mobile World Congress trade show last February, Acer's head of mobile-phone products, Aymar de Lencquesaing, said the company wasin 2011.

"Going into 2011 we feel that the time has come, we'll be ready, and we'd like to go into business with [AT&T]," he said at the time.

A tweet from analyst Ross Rubinthat "Acer says it is pursuing carrier distribution in the U.S. and other markets for new tablets and next-gen tablets."

AT&T, for its part, has shown that it's open to trying to sell 5-inch giant Android tablet-phones, as the carrier approved the .

An April 2011 launch date for this phone means it's likely to be shown and handled at this year's Mobile World Congress, which is always a big show for Acer. So we'll probably get many more details on February 15, when MWC begins.