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MWC 2011 – Alcatel. A bunch of robots and bizarre phones

The company's showcase at MWC invariably remains in the same spot for many years. And invariably year after year you see similar and practically unchanging phones.

This year it is all the same: the stand is at the same spot with the same, or basically the same, phones.

Alcatel One Touch 990

This must be the star of Alcatel. It is a 3.5" (320x480) capacitive touchscreen smartphone on Android 2.2. it features a 5MP camera with autofocus, a memory card slot, a 600MHz processor and a 1300mAh battery.

OT 990 looks very simple, but there is nothing to criticize: it is available in different colors and is covered with soft-touch mat plastic. Among the Alcatel products it is the most modern and powerful phone. Alas, for the market in general is a two-year old phone without even a trace of any interesting features.

Yes, the smartphone has got its own interface but does not really change the picture. Alcatel OT 990 can only become significant on the robot market if the sales start shortly (so far the release has been scheduled on May 2011) with the price tag of 150-200USD.

Alcatel One Touch 807

It is an analog of the last year's Alcatel One Touch 806 – a candy bar QWERTY phone. Among the features the Alcatel guys stressed attention on the Wi-Fi. It is a regular phone with a proprietary system and Java applications support. In theory it must do well with:

writing SMSes
calling

And the practice proves it. The key pad in this phone, in my opinion, is simply awesome. The key are significantly elevated above the phone's body, you feel every press you make very good thanks to longer key strokes.

One Touch 807 looks very simple and despite all the color versions and glossy surface I cannot call it any interesting in terms of the looks. It must be due to the fact that Alcatel has been using this body style for many years. The phone has a 2.8" touchscreen with QVGA resolution.

Alcatel One Touch 803

Yet another WERTY candy bar phone that reminds of Blackberries. Besides the key pad it also features a touchscreen and is available in different colors.

Alcatel One Touch 355

Another typical QWERTY phone with a tiny "loophole" screen that could have been taken from a twice smaller phone. The phone has a basic functionality like sending/receiving SMSes and emails and a browser. That is pretty much it.

There were also two Android phones at the Alcatel stand: OT890 and OT908 – both are regular touchscreen bar phones. The first one operates on Android 2.1 the other on the 2.2 version.

All in all, the Alcatel picture looks ambiguous. On the one hand, the company does produce new phones and the pamphlet given at the stand presents about forty modern models and creates a false impression that the company is doing well. On the other hand, there is no progress, for three years running Alcatel has been ploughing the sands and presenting and selling same phones with hardly ever changing specifications and colors. They had 20 new phones two years ago, last year – more than ten, at MWC 2011 – about five. What is going to happen with Alcatel in a year or two?

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Artem Lutfullin (artem@mobile-review.com)
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Translated by Robert Mugattarov (mugattarov@gmail.com)