Lets talk about the new tablet from alcatelThe six-inch screen gets bright. Colours are a bit washed out compared to rivals, but for day-to-day app usage you won’t notice. The 720p HD resolution is also well down on many rivals and the relatively-large size means that there’s only 245 pixels per inch. But while photos and VR( !) apps might not look as good as they could, at least icons and text are larger than usual which will be a boon for those who are fed up of squinting at the minuscule lettering on small, Ultra HD screens.The Operating System is a basic Android 7 and is simple enough to use. But it doesn’t take long for the limitations of the 1.1 quad-core processor to rear their head. Even basic apps can take a good few seconds to start-up and responsiveness is relatively-low compared to the rest of the market. Loading mail apps ( and emails themselves) can take an extra second or two but scrolling through them is fast enough.
A high-end, computationally-demanding game like Need For Speed No Limits takes an age to load and while it looked playable it wouldn’t respond to any controls. Dropping down to Angry Birds, loading times were a bit slower than usual but not by much. There were many short hangs and the game plodded along but the game just about remained playable. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable though. Pokemon Go took a long time to load up. It can be laggy and slow but it’s playable.
There’s a fingerprint reader on the back which is an impressive feature at this price. However, it’s not the fastest or most reliable unit we’ve seen. It frequently took several attempts to recognize our finger but at least the feature is there. You don’t have to use it.
There’s a fingerprint reader but it’s not the quickest or most reliable.
We should note that despite this phone being 4G, when we used it, it only ever connected at HSPA speeds. This was still fast enough for most tasks and seeing as the phone won’t appear on the market until next month, we can forgive foibles in this area. But it’s worth noting as it shows that this phone might not work at 4G speeds in other markets – at least without some tinkering with settings. This could especially be an issue if buying a grey import model.
All in all, even if you’re not used to smartphones, you’ll still feel like this is a slow and a sometimes-frustrating phone to use. But it can still perform most functions.