Acer V350 sporting a 720p display revealed through GLBenchmark

It appears that Acer is working on an upper mid-range handset that will be unveiled sometime next year, as a handset has recently appeared on GLBenchmark showing an Acer smartphone with the codename V350.

The GLBenchmark is a good place to see upcoming handsets, as tests are usually carried out here and the data is logged on its servers, giving a glimpse of some of the features that the handset will come equipped with once it gets officially revealed.

From the benchmark, we can see that the Acer V350 runs on Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor. Another highlighted feature of this handset is that it features a 720p display, but as of yet, there is no word on the size of the screen that will be fitted on the Acer V350. Apart from this, details about the handset are scant.

Acer working on a new smartphone with a 720p display

It is believed that the Acer V350 will be unveiled at either the CES 2013 event or at the Mobile World Congress event, both of which will take place in the first half of next year.

In related Acer mobility news, a budget friendly tablet that goes by the codename B1-A71 had also popped up on the GLBenchmark a few days ago. This tablet will compete directly with the rumoured budget offering from Asus, which is codenamed ME172V and tipped to be a Nexus tablet.

The Acer Iconia B1-A71 had recently been cleared by the Federal Communications Commission and is believed to make its debut at the Consumer Electronics Show slated to take place in January 2013.

From the GLBenchmark, a few details of the device had been revealed, such as it will run on Android 4.1.2 and will feature a screen size of 1024 x 552 pixels, which would translate it to an actual display size of 1024 x 600 pixels with a pixel density of 169 ppi. The processor noted on the benchmark is 1.2GHz dual-core and the GPU is PowerVR SGX 531.

According to a post on Benchmark.rs, this 7-inch offering from Acer will also come equipped with 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage, a microSD card slot for storage expansion, GPS and Bluetooth 4.0. The thread also features some press shots of the tablet giving us a preview of what it will look like once it gets officially unveiled.

It appears that the budget Nexus from Asus, the ME172V, will face some serious competition from the likes of the Acer Iconia B1-A71.

For those who do not know what the Asus Me172V is about, it is a tablet that is believed to be a Nexus branded device with a 7-inch form factor. The tablet will come in black and white colour variants and will be priced between $129 to $149. This is a bit more expensive than the previously perceived price tag of $99. This low end tablet from Asus will feature a 7-inch screen with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels and a TN panel rather than an IPS panel, which means viewing angles will not be as great. The device now is believed to sport a VIA WM8950 chipset featuring a single Cortex-A9 core and Mali-400 GPU along with 1GB of RAM. The internal memory found here is said to be 16GB and as far as camera optics are concerned, the device will feature a 1.3MP camera.

Hopefully, the Acer V350 smartphone and the Acer B1-A71 tablet will be launched in the near future and we don'tneed to wait too long for an official release.