Verdict
The Alcatel 1S is another passing punk phone with little to recommend it beyond a sub-£100 Mary Leontyne Price rag . It ’ll do a job if that really is the extent of your budget , but as ever , pass a picayune more money commence you way more time value .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
The Alcatel 1S is another ultra - low-cost smartphone from the budget brand , offering lowly spec in a humble formative eubstance for less than £ 100 .
We ’ve been here before , of course , with the likes of theAlcatel 1and the Alcatel 1X. In truth , while the suit for a super - affordable smartphone has never been stronger , we ’ve never been massively entrance with Alcatel ’s cheap and cheerless coming .
Could the Alcatel 1S be the cut - price phone to win us over ?
Design and Screen
With a launch price of just £ 95 , you would n’t expect the Alcatel 1S to be much of a mantrap . Sure enough , it ’s a viciously functional affair , with an all - in - one credit card rearward screen that wraps around to comprehend the position .
There ’s a pernicious curved - rooftree pattern to this rear cover , though it ’s completely suave to the sense of touch . It also proves to be a total fingerprint magnet , at least in this Elegant Black shadiness . I ca n’t verbalise to the lighter Twilight Blue option .
The hindquarters of the phone also domiciliate a fingerprint sensor , which is a design feature that appear to have been airdropped from a old smartphone era . To its credit , the unlocking process is reasonably honest , if not peculiarly speedy .
give this primarily plastic building , the Alcatel 1S is a surprisingly chunky gadget . It ’s 8.8 mm thick , and it weighs a not inconsiderable 190 g. Unsurprisingly , there ’s noofficial urine or junk immunity rating .
This being a cheap headphone , you get the benefit of a 3.5 millimetre earphone jack on the top edge of the earphone , but just a individual boney speaker on the bottom edge , right alongside the Micro USB charging porthole . You read that right : there ’s no USB - C here .
On the left hired hand edge , Alcatel has provided a passably superfluous Google Assistant button . Above that is the SIM time slot , which also let in a microSDXC time slot . It ’s a dear job really , give the paucity of fixed storage , which stands at a mere 32 GB in this mental testing model .
The Alcatel 1S ’s display is as humble as its design , and surrounded by thick bezels . There ’s a teardrop nick on the top edge , which is another component that seems to be taken from a bygone era .
It ’s nicely sized at 6.52 inches , and it ’s neither surprising nor disappointing that this is an IPS LCD panel . We ’ve only start come across AMOLED display in £ 200 sound fairly recently , after all .
Nor is it a picky problem that therefresh rateis only 60Hz . Given the inevitable performance limitations that come with a phone of this price , it would n’t have made a lot of common sense to try and tug the gravy boat out here .
There are two principal topic with the display . One is that it does n’t get very shining at all , which is a trouble in even regular daylight conditions . It ’s also not very sharp , with a answer of just 720 x 1600 or HD+ . Put plainly , a lot of depicted object simply does n’t appear very good on this screen , whether that ’s Netflix videos , photos , or web pages .
expectation postulate to be retain in check at the uttermost low - death of the smartphone market , of course . With all this being say , at least the CRT screen ’s colours have a turn of pop to them , which is n’t always the case with low grade liquid crystal display .
Camera
Alcatel has equipped its speech sound with a treble camera system , though in recitation there ’s just a undivided utile detector . That takes the form of a very small 1/3.06″ 13MP panoptic sensor , backed by a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor .
The guess it takes are just about acceptable in perfect day conditions , but they easily endure from overexposure issues when arena get very bright , while shadowy areas tend to fall into mirky blackness . There ’s little in the agency of suitable HDR recompense .
On the sunny days I predominantly fritter on , everything had a decolorize - out look as the photographic camera failed to rein the brightness in .
With that said , shooting in serious lighting is just about your only option here . There ’s no Night Mode whatsoever to turn to when the light drops .
With no ultrawide or telephoto planning , you ’re quite circumscribed when it comes to framing choice too . There ’s a Super Macro mode for those close - ups , but with a mere 2MP resolution , expectations need to be keep in bank check .
The 5MP selfie tv camera is quite serviceable , leave you frame carefully . Again , it shinny with extremes of visible radiation and shade , and contingent is n’t up to much . But hide tone and colouration are n’t too poorly rendered regard .
Performance
The Alcatel 1S chug along on a 12 nm Mediatek MT6762D Helio P22 chip . We ’ve seen this downcast - close chip used elsewhere in the Lenovo Tab M10 HD tablet , and while the provision of 3 GB of RAM assure a slightly smooth experience , it ’s a similarly sluggish performer .
An average Geekbench 5 single - core score of 135 and a multi - core score of 793 confirm as much . Even theMoto G22 , which we criticised for its sluggish performance , beats those figures by 20 % to 30 % – albeit for 50 % more money .
It no doubt helps that this limited processor is n’t having to push around many picture element on that low-down - res exhibit . Even so , navigating around the Alcatel 1S ’s menus is a wallowy , intermission - filled experience , and apps take an eld to laden .
The phone is never downright unusable , but it nor could it ever be described as fluid . There ’s always a rent to remind you that the hardware is n’t quite up to the chore that ’s been position out for it .
At this point , I would normally expose a telephone set to the graphically plentiful ( and extremely tweakable ) secret plan Genshin Impact . However , the Alcatel 1S ’s limited storage space mean that I was ineffectual to load the extra file call for to get the game running .
Not that this is too much of a downer . It ’s secure to say that if any form of mobile gaming is high on your priority inclination , you probably postulate to be spending at least another £ 70 on your next phone .
Battery life
One of the reasons the Alcatel 1S ’s thick-skulled , sound body is such a mystery is that it runs a rather small 4000 mAh barrage fire . Step up into the £ 150 + class and you may expect to recover 5000 mAh cellphone as standard .
Again , the phone ’s dim , low - res display avail out in this gaze . An hr of Netflix streaming waste pipe 8 % of a billing , which is a moderately normal result regardless of how much you splash out on your telephone set .
The inability of the Alcatel 1S ’s Helio P22 buffalo chip to start the 3DMark Wild Life benchmark test meant that I was ineffective to scat the regular TrustedReviews test .
barrage life really is n’t a elemental worry here , however . render the limitations of the hardware and the probable market for the sound , it ’s improbable to be subjected to fleshy use anyway . For the form of light , occasional tasks to which it ’s more attuned , the Alcatel 1S will well get you through a day or more .
The provided 10W Micro USB courser takes an age to recharge , however . I recorded it taking almost an minute to get from empty to 50 % , and a short over 2 hours to get to 100 % .
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Should you buy it?
. With an RRP of less than £ 100 , the Alcatel 1S is one of the cheapest phones on the market .
. The Alcatel 1S tv camera system shinny with very bright and very moody condition , lack detail , and does n’t have an ultra - panoptic choice .
Final Thoughts
We ’ve been covering Alcatel phones for a act of years now , and some familiar reflection and criticisms proceed to go for . The Alcatel 1S , like its predecessors , is exceedingly cheap , which is its one outstanding virtuousness .
For less than £ 100 you ’re draw a functional smartphone that can handle all of the staple . For anyone who simply wants a phone for calling and messaging , that may just be enough .
However , for anyone search for a bit more from their earpiece , it does n’t quite pass muster . Its archaic Saratoga chip fails to offer up any fluidity , its display is dim and low - res , and its television camera organization only operates effectively in lustrous yet even lighting .
Trusted Score
How we test
We test every mobile phone we survey thoroughly . We practice industriousness standard examination to compare feature decent and we use the phone as our main gimmick over the review catamenia . We ’ll always tell you what we encounter and we never , ever , take on money to review a product .
FAQs
No , there ’s no prescribed IP evaluation so we do n’t know for certain how it would react if expose to piddle or dust
There are two colours : Elegant Black and Twilight Blue
No , you wo n’t get the latest monetary standard of mobile data with this machine
Test Data
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