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Cart is empty. View cart. Menu Rugged Phones Rugged Phones. Take control of your money with the all-new Finder app. Now available for free for iOS and Android. It's your new way to save, sorted. Alex Kidman was the tech and telco editor at Finder and is now a freelance technology writer. Alex has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New England and a serious passion for retro gaming. Alcatel as a brand is heavily identified with affordable budget phones.
The Alcatel 1x is exactly that. It's not an expensive phone, and for your very little money, you get a very basic experience, regardless of whether you're talking software performance, camera quality or battery life. The first time I took the Alcatel 1x out of its box, I was left wondering if Alcatel had reverted back to a phone model with a removable battery.
At just grams, and with only a 5. It doesn't have a removable battery, just in case you were getting excited.
Indeed, in design terms, there's really not that much to get excited about at all with the Alcatel 1x The 5. If you don't like notches, there's none to be found here, but that means it has noticeable top and bottom bezels. From the front, the Alcatel 1x almost looks like it could be the stand-in for just about any generic smartphone visual design. At the back, it has one interesting point of note. Alcatel's opted for what it calls a "pebble-painted" finish on the back of the phone, which comes in blue, pink or black. Pebble-painted doesn't mean that it's been daubed by Fred Flintstone's infant daughter, or for that matter that it's been smashed against rocks.
GENIUS PHONE: the all-new Alcatel 1X () gets a MediaTek MT chipset with 2GB of RAM and is loaded with a full-fledged Android Oreo. Other. Alcatel 1X’s powerful dual camera helps you capture what’s real. Alcatel 1X is completed with nature-inspired pebble-painted finishing that’s fingerprint, scratch and slip-resistant. Google and Android are trademarks of Google LLC.
Instead, what you get is a slightly soft, almost fabric-like feel to the back of the phone that does give it more grip than you'd find on a glass or straight plastic-backed phone. Still, while it's a somewhat pleasant surprise, you'll still realise very quickly that the Alcatel 1x has been built to a budget, and that budget wasn't high.
Buttons click cheaply, the back is soft but taps with an echo, and there's just nothing here that doesn't stretch beyond "basic" in build or design terms.
In the Alcatel 1x 's case, it features a 13MP primary rear lens, backed with a secondary 2MP lens for bokeh effects only. That's a very common play in lower-end smartphone cameras, so again it's not surprising to see it in play here. At the front, there's a 5MP selfie camera that uses interpolation to boost itself up to 8MP. I was a little surprised when testing the Alcatel 1x to see that when you flip the camera software around, it still offers a "portrait" mode. Sadly, it's a bit of very poor software design because if you do opt for the portrait mode, it simply reverts to the rear cameras, meaning that depth mode selfies are entirely out of the picture.
Even with a portrait subject, the Alcatel 1x struggled to deliver a convincing focus effect, all too often blurring out part of the subject rather than the background or delivering a fake-looking blur effect. Again, that's not shocking for a cheap phone, but it's not exactly desirable either. The Alcatel 1x is a budget phone, and it's not fair to assess it against anything but other budget phones. The problem here is that while nothing in that category is exceptional in camera terms, almost everything outshines the Alcatel 1x Focus is slow and often shifts, and you're just never going to get a decent low light shot or one from any kind of moving subject.
What's notably disappointing here is that it's running on Android 8, which means it's already a full Android release behind — and before long that'll be two full Android releases behind. This isn't so much a story of losing out on features as it is on security and productivity upgrades. Alcatel doesn't have a great track record for updating phones. It's a little baffling as to why the Alcatel 1x isn't running Android Go as that would allow it to make a lot more out of its meagre resources. It's especially odd because last year's Alcatel 1x was an Android Go phone.
As it is, the Alcatel 1x is cheaper than many of the other phones we've run through our standard benchmark suite — and it certainly shows when you compare it, even against other budget range handsets. Here's how it compares using Geekbench 4's CPU test:. Alcatel's range of preinstalled applications, beyond the Google services apps, is predictably ordinary.
You've only got 16GB of onboard storage to play with in any case, although you can at least boost that with microSD cards by up to GB if you feel so inclined.
It seems nobody told Alcatel this. The Alcatel 1x has a 3,mAh battery, which is fair for its price point, but not a capacity that's going to lead to easy multi-day battery life.
Using Geekbench 4's linear battery test, here's how the Alcatel 1x compared against a range of budget phones:. In less scientifically rigorous testing, I found I could get the Alcatel 1x through a day's battery life, but to be honest at least part of that was simply because I wasn't using it all that much.
It's slow, and the camera isn't great, so I was much less inclined to do so. Recharging is via microUSB, which again isn't a shock for a budget phone. Again, though, it feels like at this point in , we should be seeing the last of the older microUSB standard for charging. The Alcatel 1x isn't an expensive phone, and that's its primary selling point.
Indeed, it's basically its only selling point because if you can shift your budget just a little more northwards, you're looking at more attractive devices from the likes of Oppo, Nokia or Motorola to contend with. We're seeing a real fight in the budget space with better cameras and battery capacities leading the charge, and in this case, it feels like Alcatel's resting on its "affordable" image more than anything. Alcatel's budget 1X Cover your essential needs with the Alcatel 1X , including dual-lens camera and 3,mAh battery. If what you're after is a phone with more battery life, and your budget can jump up a little, consider the Motorola Moto G7 Power.
If you're after a phone that's going to be more up-to-date, the Nokia 3. Latest news Save big on Huawei's deluxe folding phone by pre-ordering through eBay now. Read more…. The Huawei Y7 Pro is a simple budget phone with a reasonably large onboard battery. The Huawei Y5 provides a touch of style in the budget phone space. To ask a question simply log in via your email or Facebook or create an account.
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