Acer is to introduce the beTouch E130 - one of the company's range of affordable handsets. As such, it doesn’t have the latest cutting edge features, but could be hugely popular nonetheless. 

The E130 looks somewhat like a Blackberry handset, with a comparatively small 2.6-inch screen with 320 x 240 resolution. It also has trackball navigation - just as many early Android devices - but still features a touch sensitive screen. It also has a 3.2-megapixel camera, but sadly no flash. 

What sets it apart from just about every other Android handset currently on the market is its front-facing QWERTY keypad, making it a great messaging device. We wouldn’t say the keyboard is as good as those found on Blackberry devices, but it's very quick to get to grips with. 

On the hardware side of things, the E130 has a 416MHz processor from ST Ericsson, 256MB of RAM and 512MB of ROM. It also has a microSD card slot.

Acer will offer two different versions, both with quad band GSM support, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. The difference comes down to 3G support, where Acer will offer a model with 900/2100MHz support for Europe and 850/1900MHz support for the US. 

It measures 115 x 63 x 11.5mm and should weigh in at about 109g with the battery. A black version will be available, in addition to the white version we've seen. Finally, it comes with Android 1.6, which is far from cutting edge these days, but does at least support most of the key features of the OS.

At present we've not been told when the handset will debut in the UK. Watch this space, basically.