The mobile phone market is the most dynamic after the stock market.. considering the rate at which prices fluctuate on an everyday basis..
The choices available in the market for this class of products is also one of the largest available among products.. with manufacturers like Nokia, Samsung, Panasonic and recently LG making their presence felt here..
With such competition in a market, one would expect that the customer would be the king and the prices would be damn competitive down to the last rupee and the phones would be feature-packed down to the last transistor available..
But still, I personally feel that 90% of the customers end up paying a lot for a cell phone than what he/she actually should have paid. This can be found in the consumer electronics market as well where Sony is the market leader even though they price their goods substantially higher than the other products.. They charge on the brand name.. The customers let the brand name replace that essential parameter of knowledge of the product.. They trust a single brand(or range of brands) and thus the manufacturer starts pricing his/her product based on his assured market.. The situation of the cell phone market in India is the same, with Nokia having almost 90%(my figure) of the mobile phone market...
The cell phone market is divided into 3 classes.. the lower end, the middle layer, and the higher end market..
The review that I am writing for is for the lower end market.. This market was dominated for a long time by the Nokia 3310(a very nice piece, I myself had one till last month)..
Now last month I went out to buy a cell for myself and was I learned that the lower end market(which I classify as sub Rs.5000/-) had a total of 3 pieces for choices.. the unbelievably ugly Nokia 3315, and featureless Motorola C350 and the piece for which I am writing the review now.. Alcatel One Touch 311(OT 311)...
The very fact that this is the first review regarding this product shows the ignorance of the customers about this product. Now let me stop talking about the market rot and review the actual product..
OT 311 is a sleek piece.. Its is antenna-less(meaning it has an internal antenna, plus over C350) and it fits within a palm(plus over 3315), which makes it the most classy looking piece in its range.. Its also available in a range of cover colours, I myself got a blue cover piece..
OT 311 operates on the dual-band GSM frequencies of 900MHz and 1800MHz.. well how many sub Rs.5000/- cell pieces can boast of a tri-band operational frequency range..
Its got a feature rich display panel. Its got a number of cool background images to be set, along with that it prominently displays the date and the time.. Its also got the necessary range indicator, the message inbox full indicator, the vibrator on mode indicator, battery indicator, missed calls indicator , new messages indicator, message receipt indicator all packed into the panel.. Whew..
One cool thing about the phone is the text display mode... You can switch between two modes, a normal mode(which displays 7 lines on the screen) and a zoomed mode(which displays 4 lines on the screen).. So you can choose between easy readability and a larger view.
Its also got your normal features of message receipt acknowledgement, tone composer, message templates..
Another advantage is that it is WAP enabled, so you can surf the net with the cell..
And of course, as the phone says, its one touch.. you can dial your home, you can surf the net, you can switch the vibrator off all in a single key press..
Basically its a feature crammed phone with all the necessities and a few frills in... All for a damn cool price of Rs.4000/-..
Now let me enumerate some down-sides..
The phone is on the heavier side, its roughly 99gms in weight, thanks to its Ni-MH(Nickel-Metal Hydride) battery, as against the more popular and lighter Lithium ion battery(which powers laptops as well)...
The ring indicator is funny in a way.. the ring alert and the vibrating alert dont really co-exist.. The phone vibrates silently for about 10 seconds then starts ringing(without the vibrating alert) after that.. strange behaviour.. dunno what the Alcatel engineers were thinking of..
Otherwise, this piece is highly recommended.. It has absolutely no network range problems.. In fact I am told that Alcatel pieces catch the strongest signals among all phones..
A must buy in this segment..