Leslie Amor Ureta
There used to be a time when bright, fun colors were the staple of an Alcatel phone. The small, liquid crystal displays (LCD) also made classic Alcatel phones rather distinct from its competitors. Back then, I was just beginning to explore the world of cellular phones and I thought that the Alcatel phones looked funky and cool (despite looking like some child’s toy), were a bit hard to operate and difficult to pocket. The tiny displays that showed too many icons, and the antennas sticking out of classic Alcatel phones definitely did not contribute to its good looks, ease of use or handiness.
These days the latest Alcatel phones seem to have evolved from a child’s toy to an adult’s classic handset. I really think that the Alcatel designers made the right decision to at least update the Alcatel phones’ looks.
One of the newest Alcatel cellular phones, the Alcatel OT-E159, has 3 colors: Thinking Black, Metallic Blue and Lipstick Red. Thinking Black was the color of the OT-E159 used by Technews for this review. The phone had a silver accent that gave a sense of tradition and timelessness. The phone’s exterior featured 3 LED images that blinked whenever a message or call came in, whenever the phone’s alarm went off or whenever there was a change in signal strength. By the way, I only experienced losing my phone’s signal strength once and I think it was mainly due to my service provider’s inconsistent service, not because of any fault of the phone.
In contrast to the 2-liner display on classic Alcatel phones, the OT-E159 comes with an 83 x 43 x 22mm display. The phone itself weighs about 75 grams, which is actually lighter than any of the phones I currently use. Its LCD may not be the best in terms of color and vividness but I felt nostalgic when I saw the images displayed underneath the screen. If you still remember the fad of inserting acetates underneath your LCD, then you get the idea.
The OT-E159 has sufficient spacing, for ease of use, between individual keys—a good thing for users who have had problems with the keypads on other phones. The phone has 20 pre-set, polyphonic ring tones but I feel that the tones, and for that matter the phone’s speakers, could use a little improvement. The audio quality was such that I was reminded of old transistor radios whenever I played the tones.
The Alcatel OT-E159 can store up to 250 names in the phonebook and 10 names on each list for dialed numbers, received calls and missed calls. As I became more familiar with this gadget, I realized that the phone had no other facility besides voice calls, SMS and EMS. EMS (or enhanced messaging service) allows the user to send pictures and tones to another with the use of the phone’s ‘The Mall’ feature. Given the name of the latter feature I speculated that enhancements for the latter are services that need to be purchased from Alcatel.
Unfortunately I was not able to use this feature; instead I explored the phone’s other functions. Of course a dictionary, a calendar and a calculator are functions that are available in this phone. The one function I spent a lot of time with (read: abused like crazy) was games; pre-installed in the phone was my childhood favorite Brick game (called Russian by Alcatel).
Under ideal conditions Alcatel claims that the battery life on the OT-E159 is 270 hours if kept on stand by; or about 10 hours of talk time. Given the way I abused the phone (mostly by playing the games) I was unable to really test that claim. Incidentally, just to give you an idea how I badly abused the phone, I allotted one-and-a-half hours everyday just to charge the battery.
In terms of looks, the Alcatel is no different from any other phone on the market. Unlike other phones, it is easy to maintain and nice to hold. I just wish that this already useful phone packed more features that can distinguish it from the competition.
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