The Alcatel OT-209 was stupidly cheap when it cost 99p. But that seems exorbitantly expensive compared to its new price — just 1p on pay as you go from Carphone Warehouse.
This badboy may be ugly as a mud fence on a rainy day, but it does the job without any fuss. In fact, we deemed it well worth buying, even at its previous sky-scraping price.
The OT-209 is no smart phone, but it makes calls and sends texts with ease, and even has a tiny torch you can use to light up the pile of money you just saved.
The phone is available on a Talkmobile pay as you go plan, which gives you calls for 8p a minute and texts for 4p each.
You’ll have to top up with £10 to get the deal, which starts at midnight tonight on the Carphone Warehouse website.
The deal isn’t quite as sweet as Asda’s £9 Alcatel OT-222, which came with £10 free credit, and effectively earned you £1 for every one you bought. We bought 50,000 and plan to retire on the profits.
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Alcatel, famous among skinflints across the land for its serviceable budget mobiles, is threatening to go all lah-de-dah by bringing out an Android smart phone. Worry not, cheapsters, because it’s set to cost just £99.95.
The OT-980 is Alcatel’s first Android-based slider phone, with a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen and a Qwerty keypad, reminding us of a low-rent Palm Pre.
But for this price it looks remarkably well stacked, featuring Wi-Fi, HSPA data up to 7Mbps, a compass, a multi-IM client, an MP3 player and a 2-megapixel camera. It will be available on pay as you go from Carphone Warehouse and online, in cherry red and silver colours.
Smart phones are often hideously expensive — just take a look at how much the new BlackBerry Torch will set you back — so it’s fantastic that companies such as Alcatel can produce phones for the cheap end of the market, with most of the functionality that makes smart phones smart. And without trying to stretch a contract out of it either.
“We position our product to bring aspirational feature sets and design to new price points,” said Alcatel’s William Paterson. “We have always done pre-pay and think there is an opportunity to change with the Android.”
Phones such as the OT-980 will make it easier for those on a microbudget to take on an app-friendly Android phone, whereas before they might have had to plump for janky old Symbian.
It’s the latest attempt by Alcatel to provide cheap phones targeted at specific markets. Last month we saw a pink and black Microsoft Kin-styled device in the VM202, which only cost £30 and was aimed at young social networkers.
Just a week later it reached out to skint emailers with the Alcatel OT-802, a BlackBerry-styled Qwerty phone priced at £45. Fine, but pretty short of the features we expect today, particularly 3G browsing.
But with Android 2.1, the OT-980 carries a powerful version of the mobile OS, if not the latest. More expensive phones don’t manage this version, such as the Motorola Dext, which is permanently stuck on 1.6, while the Sony Ericsson Xperia is still awaiting a 2.1 upgrade.
We’ll be extremely interested to see how a sub-£100 phone can handle Android, and whether it proves adequate for your app and Web-browsing needs. Key concerns will be how responsive the old-fashioned resistive touchscreen is, and whether its processor can handle the Android smoothly. We’ll have a full review soon.
All the single ladies (all the single ladies), put your hands up for the Alcatel OT-808. It isn’t the first Qwerty clamshell mobile phone we’ve ever seen, but is possibly the first to be square rather than rectangular. In fact, it looks almost exactly like a make-up compact. That’s probably what Alcatel had in mind, because the OT-808 is “designed exclusively for women”. Squee!
What that means is: it’s pink, and a bit rubbish. Despite prominent social-networking features, the phone isn’t 3G. It boasts the super-speedy Opera Mini 4, so that should help speed up Edge-based browsing times.
The phone sports a 61mm (2.4-inch) screen and blue-backlit keyboard. Built-in widgets include a calculator, an organiser, a currency converter and a voice recorder. It’s an MP3 player and FM radio too. There’s a 2-megapixel still and video camera which doubles as a webcam, streaming audio and video to the Internet. It supports microSD up to 8GB and plays H.263 and MPEG-4 video.
But don’t worry your pretty little heads about all those silly old numbers, ladies. Instead look forward to a good old gossip with your BFFs on instant messenger courtesy of Palringo, which pulls in various different IM accounts so you can chat with all your friends.
As well as pink, the 808 also comes in dark chrome. If you want to keep your options open, check out our favourite pink phones.
The Alcatel OT-808 will be patronising women everywhere on pay as you go, exclusive to
Carphone Warehouse, for £50. If you’re a chap, don’t be tempted — remember, it’s “exclusively for women”, so if you even pick it up in the shop your knackers will fall off. If you need us, we’ll be out in the club, sippin’ that bub’ and you’re not gonna reach our telephone.
Need a phone that costs less than the spare change you can find in your sofa cushions? Orange is offering the Alcatel OT-S319, a pink phone with basic features, for a mere £4.50 when you top up with a tenner, leading Orange to claim that it’s the UK’s cheapest mobile.
The OT-S31 offers cheap-and-cheerful features including an MP3 player, an FM radio, and a battery that boasts seven days of talk time or 12 days of standby time.
It’s marked down from a lofty £9 until 8 April, but you may want to shop around before you commit that carefully ironed McGuyver.
Carphone Warehouse is offering your choice of an LG GB102 or Samsung E1100 for a mere £3.95 with a £15 top-up, both on Virgin Mobile.
Our own mobile deals section will point you to several pay-as-you-go phones under a fiver, including the Nokia 1661, which is a splurge at £4.95 on O2 or Virgin.
Unfortunately, we can’t tell you if any of these phones are any good — we haven’t dipped our review toesies into the lake of rock-bottom bargains lately. Let us know in the comments if there are any super-cheap phones you’re aching to read more about.
