A few months ago Alcatel sent me a new phone because of issues with the previous device I had.I was expecting a similar model for them to send me one of their higher specced models. The one touch star 6010x arrived at my door a few days later.
First impressions were. Dang! Why have they put an iphone in the box! To the untrained eye it looks like an iphone, many people in the town have asked me about it, including one apple geek who thought I had a prototype Iphone in my hand. He actually went to buy one as a result of looking at it.
The phone has a decent set of specifications, including
- MediaTek MT6577 Dual core running at 1GHZ
- 512mb Ram
- 800*480 amoled display
- Gorilla glass touch panel
- 2.4gb free space
- Micro SD slot can take up to 32gb officially (works with 64gb)
- Android Jelly Bean, practically stock
- 5.55Wh 1500mAh battery
The phone performed really well with many tasks, including social media, video making and editing. Due to the (to some in the industry) limited ram on the phone more aggressive applications or games, the dual core processor does cope but pushing the phone to it's limits does cause it to overheat a bit. I'm sure it's to be fixed in a firmware update.
Audio quality is impressive, a tad quiet but protecting peoples ears is a good thing. The supplied headphones surprisingly are fantastic, no. EPIC is the word I'd prefer to use as they perform greatly, with good all round sound and can take a huge pounding with bass. They sound fantastic. External audio quality is fantastic and loud too. Earpiece is quiet if the noise cancelling microphone is blocked in any way (cases do this) but still audible
Image quality again is very impressive here. Instead of maxing the Mediatek chipset with a 8, 12 or 14 MP shooter They went with a conservative 5MP sensor, benchmark tools claim it's a sony sensor. The quality of the images it can take I would suggest it's a sony or high end autofocus camera sensor.
The screen is very clear and crisp. Made tough by gorilla glass. it survived a fall out of my pocket while cycling.just a small mark on the bezel.
Now we get to build quality. Sadly one of the weaker points in this handset. The phone looks solid and in daily use Betty (all my phones must be named) felt nice but while using it heavily you could feel it creak in the corners. It wan't too much of a worry, then I realized that how the phone flexes in my pocket was the cause of Micro SD Card failure. As the card slot has no locking mechanism when the phone flexes the card moves, just enough to lose the card from the phone. Annoying when using the phone for music or voice recording. A piece of duct tape reduced the frequency of this happening.
Sadly the build quality killed betty. While doing laundry, moments after contacting Alcatel saying i was happy with the phone. I lent down to pick up the basket of clothes to hear the notification that the card has come loose. I pulled it out of my pocket to check the phone to be greeted with a blank screen with nothing displaying, usually its lit up with a warning on hot swapping.
On locking and unlocking the phone the screen was still blank. on getting it inside I discover to my horror the amoled screen has cracked while in my pocket. Betty has broken.
I have contacted alcatel to find out how much it'll cost me to repair her. Let's hope she can be saved.
Paul
