Alcatel Go Play Review
What we love:
- Great price
- Solid performance
- Decent camera
- Shock and water resistant
What could be improved:
- 'Youthful' design won't be for everyone, youth included
- Those maddening port covers!
As Australia turns in droves towards BYO phone plans, there has been another big, unexpected winner in the mobile market — the low-cost phone manufacturers. Alcatel is soaring, currently holding third place in the Aussie phone markets with 9% of the market share, and all on the back of budget-conscious handsets like its popular Idol range.
The new Alcatel Go Play should have no problem continuing this trend, with a raft of features we don’t often see in a phone that costs under $300 to buy outright.
The basics are all in place, with 5-inch touchscreen, an 8-megapixel camera and support for Australia’s fast 4G networks. We tested the phone with aVaya SIM card on the Optus 4G network and it worked without a hiccup.
Our major reservations are almost all aesthetic ones. The Go Play comes in a range of colours and they are all pretty full-on. The back-cover has a textured rubber finish which sort of looks like splashed paint, like corporate graffiti. The Go Play is undoubtedly aimed at a younger market, but we’re not sure they will love the ‘youthful’ design. We’re sure there are plenty of people out there that will love this look, but it would have been nice to see subtler colour options for this great phone.
And then there is the port flaps. The Go Play is both shock and water resistant, something that we commend, but to achieve this Alcatel covers the charging and headphone sockets with those pesky plastic covers that are designed to infuriate nail-biters and the less coordinated among us. The Go Play and a couple of drinks don't mix.
Google Android provides the backbone for the Play, offering all of the core apps you’ll need from day to day — Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome web browser, YouTube, Hangouts — plus access to the Play Store to access the billion or so other apps available.
Alcatel adds a few custom apps to the mix, with its own camera and gallery, a web browser alternative and a few quirky extras like Screen Share: a screen capture software for recording video of the things you do on the phone.
There is also an app built into the Home Screen called OneTouch Stream. This is a news and content aggregator, sort of like Flipboard, that displays a list of news headlines, auto-suggests apps to try and has a few wallpaper options to switch to. We didn’t find it offered anything truly useful, but it also didn’t seem to be a drag on system resources, either.
Performance is a strong suit for the Go Play, despite its low price. Scores on benchmarking apps like Geekbench suggest middle-of-the-road processing, but this is compared to the big guns in the industry, like the new Samsung Galaxy S7 and isn’t really a fair comparison. For everyday use, the Go Play nails it.
The rear-facing 8-megapixel camera pretty good, considering the price. The camera software includes the expected collection of settings presets, like an HDR mode and a Panorama photo function.
The photos we took were all reasonably good. The camera’s auto-focus is fast and accurate, and the results almost always successes. We did find that the general colour balance leans towards a greenish hue, and it doesn’t love low light, even dim light. But if outstanding photos are high on your list of priorities, you’re looking in the wrong price bracket.
Overall
The price is right and the Go Play works well. There’s little you can do with a top-end phone that you can’t also do with this wallet-friendly smartphone. The 5-inch screen is a great size and the camera is decent.
If you can look past the ‘fun’ design decisions, or if you love them, then the Alcatel Go Play would be a great alternative to any other phone costs 3 to 4 times as much.
لا يوجد تعليقات
أضف تعليق