Alcatel 3V review: A budget-smartphone with 2K display

Alcatel launched its new budget smartphone Alcatel 3V at Rs 13,068. Here's what we think about the Alcatel 3V.

By Karan
|

Alcatel introduced its Alcatel 3V back in February at the MWC 2018. However, in India, the device was made available recently and sets you back by Rs 13,068 The 3V is close to an appropriate device to people who are looking out to buy a smartphone with a good battery life, some modern features and good specs within a budget.

 
Alcatel 3V review: A budget-smartphone with 2K display

We received the company's 3V and we did play around with it and thus have brought to you this comprehensive review. Here's what we think about the Alcatel 3V.

Design

Design

Design-wise, we must say that Alcatel has worked hard to deliver a premium look and feel to the Alcatel 3V. While the metal frame encases the phone, the rear panel features a plastic build. The build quality of the phone looks good and feels great in-hand, however, the handset feels much lighter than other smartphone phones. The company has managed to match the color of the metal frame with the color of the smartphone. In our case, we have got a Spectrum Black variant of the Alcatel 3V.

Apart from that, the Alcatel 3V houses a SIM slot and the power key on the right side, while the volume rockers can be found on the left. The phone comes with dual speaker grills at the bottom - one for the microphone and another for the speaker. Besides that, a micro-USB charging port, 3.5mm headphone jack is also placed traditionally.

As said earlier, the device is pretty light weighing in at 155 grams and uses a dimension which suits the popular 18:9 tall aspect ratio display.

 

Display
 

Display

The company claims that the Alcatel 3V comes with a 2K display. Considering the price of the smartphone, the screen looks quite impressive. The clarity and brightness of the display look very soothing to the eyes. The only drawback to the 2.5D display is that it doesn't use Gorilla Glass, so there are chances of damaging the screen.

The Alcatel 3V comes with a bright and well-saturated display. As we said there is no Gorilla Glass protection over the top, so you might be investing some good amount in a screen protector. The display is surely a fingerprint magnet and so is the rear panel which comes in the glossy finish.

Under the hood

Under the hood

The Alcatel 3V comes with a 6-inch 2.5D curved display with a resolution of 1080×2160 pixels. The pixel density of the smartphone is 402 ppi along with an aspect ratio of 18:9, it has a screen-to-body ratio of over 75-percent.

The smartphone is powered by a quad-core MediaTek MT8735A SoC clocked at 1.45 GHz, clubbed with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. If that is not enough then you can expand the memory up to 128GB via micro SD, thanks to the 3V's dual nano-SIM slot.

On the software front, the Alcatel 3V runs on Android 8.0 Oreo flavored with Alcatel's Joy Launcher overlay. You do get some gesture control in the device. The interface of the smartphone looks very easy to use and the size of the icons is adjustable. We tried running more than ten apps at the same time, and we found out that switching apps on the device is smooth. However, at times we did notice some stutter on the UI.

The phone comes with a dedicated screen recorder, which helps you to record the screen. You can also access the feature directly from the home screen.

The Alcatel 3V offers dual nano-SIM slot, Bluetooth 4.2 support, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot and micro USB 2.0. Apart from that, the smartphone also offers rear-mounted Fingerprint scanner, accelerometer, gyro, proximity and compass.

 

Camera

Camera

The Alcatel 3V does follow the trend and comes with a dual-camera setup with a combination of 12-megapixels and 2-megapixels sensors in the rear. The apertures of the camera sensors are set at f/2.2 and f/2.4, respectively along with an LED flashlight. At the front, the smartphone houses a 5-megapixel camera along with an LED flash. The camera sensors also come with features like Phase detection, autofocus and HDR.

We have tried testing the cameras of the smartphone in different lighting conditions. The Alcatel 3V camera offers modes like Auto, Pano, Time-lapse, Social, Light Trace and Portrait. The most interesting mode among the lot is the Social and Light Trace modes. The Social mode allows you to click pictures and videos and directly share them on your social media accounts like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and more.

You can also mail the pictures immediately after clicking it without even going to the mailing app. TheLight Trace mode will allow you to capture a light picture in open exposure so that you can click some fast motion picture in low light condition. Here are some pictures which we have clicked in different lighting condition.

 

Performance

Performance

In terms of performance, we have noticed the Alcatel 3V performs well and we have hardly witnessed any lags while using the phone. We also played some games on the phone like the Dead Trigger, PUBG and Spiderman; all the games ran well. None of these slowed the phone down in the slightest. Although, while playing the games we did realize that the phone was getting some temperatures. However, the operating system was smooth and we didn't need to force stop any of the apps during our use. We have also tested the phone on the AnTuTu Benchmark and the scores we received was 42569.

Well, coming to the battery performance the smartphone is backed by a 3000 mAh non-removable battery. While using the Alcatel 3V we have noticed that some apps do kill the battery at a substantial rate.

While playing the game we noticed that the phone was consuming more power. Specifically, we noticed a drop of 16 percent battery while playing basic games. One of the odd experiences that we had while using the phone was that it occasionally and automatically switched off while it was on a standby mode. (More than45 per cent juice was left on the phone while it happened and it might have to do more with a software problem rather than the battery because once we updated it, the device didn't show such issues.
For an average user the phone will last for a day or more, but if you are a hardcore user then you might need more than a single charge in a day. We have used the phone for watching videos, browsing Facebook and playing games and we got 6-7 hours of battery life.

We have tried using the Alcatel 3v with the extreme power saving mode, which has improved the battery life slighter than before. However, it is a budget-friendly handset and it's better not to expect more from it. Charging only takes around two and a half hours to get fully charged from a completely drained one. It took half an hour to go from 55 percent up to 70 percent.

On the security part, the Alcatel 3V comes with security features like pattern lock, passcode lock, and fingerprint scanner. Apart from these, the company has also included the face unlocking feature. We have tried all the security features, where the biometric scanner proved its accuracy, the face unlock struggled a bit to unlock the device in a few instances. The face unlock feature unlocked the phone twice out of five attempts. This might disappoint many customers who are expecting face unlock to be great on this smartphone.

 

Verdict

Verdict

Overall, the Alcatel 3V which is priced at Rs 13,068 is not a bad deal at all. The phone looks premium though it comes with a plastic back panel. The good part about the phone is that it comes with an LED flash on both the cameras, which not a lot of manufacturers offer on their smartphones. The display resolution is pretty good. It does follow the modern design and though the fingerprint scanner is quite an old fashion with the advent of the Face Unlock feature, it is responsible enough to be impressed with.

If you don't rely and don't use the face unlock feature then the 3V won't disappoint you. So, if you are among them who are searching a smartphone in this price range then this might be a good deal for you. However, there are other rival brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and more who also offer handsets in the same price range. Devices such as Xiaomi Mi Note 5 Pro, MotoG5s, Oppo A83 and Samsung Galaxy On6 can give the Alcatel 3V a really good competition in the Indian market.

 

Here are the photo samples from the front and the back camera of Alcatel 3V.

Alcatel 3V review: A budget-smartphone with 2K display
Alcatel 3V review: A budget-smartphone with 2K display
Alcatel 3V review: A budget-smartphone with 2K display
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