Alcatel’s looking to bring affordable Android devices to Europe with their OneTouch series. We stopped by their humble abode here at Mobile World Congress just to see what type of value they provide for their customers. There were three phones on hand starting with the OneTouch 990.
Alcatel calls this their flagship Android handset. It has a 3.5 inch capacitive display, Android 2.2, a 5 megapixel camera, a 600MHz Qualcomm MSM7227 processor, and Alcatel’s custom user interface on top. It’s going to cost about 180 Euros off contract when it finally does come out sometime in Q2.
I was a bit underwhelmed by what was supposed to be their flagship. The software ran incredibly slow, moving around the homescreen was difficult, and the display made everything look uglier than it probably was. The phone is still considered a prototype, however, as it still has a few months to go before it’s ready for prime time.
They had two other phones – the 908 and the 890 – which are considered their lower-teir phones. The funny thing is that they ran a lot smoother than the 990, though they both have slower processors. (We weren’t able to determine which architecture it was, however.) The 890 is an interesting device, though, in that it doesn’t have a capacitive display. It also has no 3G radios.
We’re told they felt people who were going to use this phone wouldn’t need to use 3G data, so they elected to exclude it to keep costs down. This device also had physical call end and send buttons and a 2 megapixel camera. It’ll launch with Android 2.1 but she said there was no word on if it’d ever be upgraded.
The 908 was a bit better – it had the same display size as the 890, but it uses capacitive technology. It also excludes call end and send buttons, and it has Android 2.2 out of the box. And unlike the 890, the 908 will include quad-band 3G radios. And it also has the same processor.
They were rather uninspiring, but for the market they’re aiming for they’ll have to do. The 990 will cost 180 euros, the 908 will cost 130 euros, and the 890 will be 99 euros once they’re all out sometime before summer.