Acer has gone gaming mad, expanding its existing Predator line of PC gaming gear out into mobile and coming up with an 8-inch tablet and this, the Predator 6 smartphone. “This will dominate any games you throw at it,” an Acer executive said during the September 2015 press conference, where the phone was announced.
It won’t be dominating anything much yet, because it’s still a work in progress, but we got the chance to handle a prototype model. Although it wasn’t complete enough to activate, the time spent did give us a good idea of the final design and feel.
It’s called the Predator 6 because it has a 6-inch display, the resolution of which will be HD, but whether that’s not final. Acer wants to use a 10-core MediaTek processor inside the Predator 6, with 4GB of RAM. Gamers love to have serious processing power at their fingertips, and that’s the kind of headline-grabbing spec many will love.
If the thought of a deca-core phone chip sounds like science fiction, it’s not — MediaTek announced the Helio X20 earlier this year. It’ll be built around big/medium/little philosophy, with a whopping 2.5GHz dual-core taking care of the hard work, with two quad-core chips running at 2GHz and 1.4GHz handling everything else. A 21-megapixel camera is expected to grace the rear panel.
Directional haptic feedback
Another feature we’ll see is the inclusion of Predator TacSense, Acer’s directional haptic feedback system. Made to provide a more immersive gaming experience, vibrations are separated on the left or right hand side of the body, so they can match which way a car is turning in a racing game, for example. During the hands-on, an Acer exec hinted the phone may also act as a standalone controller, but didn’t go into detail about how this would work.
That’s all Acer’s letting on at the moment regarding the specs, but we did get to handle the phone. It’s designed and built to match Acer’s Predator tablet, with four red speaker housings at each corner, an aluminum rear panel, and lots of sharp lines. Don’t be deceived by the pictures, this is a big phone, and those speakers make the body an unusual shape that’s not very pocket friendly. However, it does look great, and is likely to appeal to anyone that likes to standout with a massive, flashy piece of hardware.
The Predator 6 will eventually run Android, but what version isn’t known. This is because there’s no final release date yet. MediaTek intends to have the deca-core processor ready for the end of this, or early in 2016. CNet reports the device will probably arrive in Asia first, but could see a wider release. Keen gamers should look out for the Predator 6 next year, according to Acer, so don’t expect much more on this one for a few months yet.
This is an updated version of an article published on 09-02-2015 by Simon Hill
