With so many smartphones out on the market, it really pays to be a savvy buyer. You really don't have to spend a big chunk of your salary on a smartphone unless of course, you want a phone just for the big brand name!
If you're after modern smartphone features and aren't too concerned with the branding name, the Alcatel 1X is a very good choice because it comes with most smartphone features found in flagship phones but, at a price your wallet (or purse) will thank you for.
Flagship features you get wit the Alcatel 1X include Face Key, which is a facial recognition feature that you can use to unlock your phone. The Alcatel 1X uses the front-facing camera to detect 100 points on your face and draw a 2D image of your face. Some phones are capable of detecting 30,000 points on a face, allowing them to create a 3D image of a person's face, which is obviously more secure.
Being able to unlock your phone with your face is super convenient because you won't have to use pin or pattern security. Some phones like the Alcatel 3V are also capable of fingerprint unlocking. There is no finger print sensor on the back or under the screen of the Alcatel 1X so, you can not unlock the phone with your finger.
If you plan to consume a decent amount of media from the Alcatel 1X, you'll be glad to know that the Alcatel 1X has a good loudspeaker with decent volume level and dac amplifier that also delivers good sound quality via the headphone jack.
There are two sound enhancement settings that can be enabled and disabled to boost the volume level for a speaker, and to enhance the audio clarity when listening to music with earphones. The Alcatel 1X does come with a decent pair of Alcatel branded wired earbuds.
The Alcatel 1X 2019 runs Android Oreo version 8.1.0 out of the box, which came out 2 years ago. The current version of Android operating system is Android 10, which improves GPU and CPU performance over the previous Android versions.
The Alcatel 1X 2019 only uses a single front facing camera with 5 megapixel resolution, fixed focus, f/2.4 aperture and 1.5-inch sensor size with 1.12μm pixel size so, picture quality is good in daylight conditions. The front facing camera can also record video but only in 720p at 30fps.
There is only 16GB of internal storage space available but, the Alcatel 1X has a microSD card that supports up to 128GB capacity, which is pretty good considering that most flagship phones no longer support expandable storage space. As far as RAM, there is 2GB of RAM available, which is more than enough to handle multiple apps and gaming.
To give you an idea of how the Alcatel 1X 2GB of RAM fares in 2019, the iPhone 7 and iPhone, both have 2GB of RAM, while the iPhone X has 3GB. Most flagships released today have 4GB of RAM so, the Alcatel 1X does pretty well in the RAM department considering its super budget price tag.
The dual cameras on the back of the Alcatel 1X phone don't have much of a bump because they only protrude 2mm, allowing the phone to naturally rest flush on its backside. The rear cameras include a 13 megapixel resolution main camera with f/2.0 aperture and 1/3-inch sensor size, and a 2 megapixel resolution depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture and 1/5-inch sensor size to help capture bokeh-style portrait pictures, burst shots, light tracing, panorama and time-lapses (1/2 second, 1 second and 2 second time lapses).
The Alcatel 1X main camera is equipped with auto-focus, using one sensor to automatically focus, which is okay but not as good as phase-detect auto focus (PDAF), which integrates two sensors for auto focus.
As good as PDAF is, it's not as precise and fast at focusing as dual pixel autofocus, which is currently one of the best auto focus systems for a smartphone. The Alcatel 1X does produce good still photos in natural daylight but under low light conditions (very cloudy days) or sunset, the photos aren't going to be as good mainly because of the main camera image sensor pixel size, which is only 1.12μm.
The Alcatel 1X camera image sensor isn't able to capture as much light as a larger pixel size (i.e. 1.4μm). The more light the camera sensor can capture the better the photo will look even at night time.
The Alcatel 1X video camera performance is capable of 1080p resolution but only at 30 frames per second (fps). 1080p is good resolution detail for most situations but higher frames per second (i.e. 60fps) come handy for smoother capture when recording fast moving situations.
There is no optical image stabilization (OIS) built-in to the main camera but there is electronic image stabilization (EIS), which is software based and does a similar job of stabilizing shaky video footage the same way you can, using a video editing application such as Adobe After Effects or Premiere Pro.
The electronic image stabilization in the Alcatel 1X seems to work very well considering that it doesn't have a floating lens element that make OIS phone cameras so good.
Some phones support both 30fps and 60fps at 1080p and 2160p and, even higher frame rates (i.e. 960fps) for slow motion video capture, which the Alacatel 1X isn't capable of.
The Alcatel 1X you see pictured is the 2019 version, which is not to be confused with the previous 1X version of the same phone, which only has one rear camera and a screen resolution of 480 x 960 pixels. The Alcatel 1X 2019 version features a 5.5 inch IPS LCD display with a HD+ (High Definition Plus) screen with 1440 x 720 pixel resolution.
Being an LCD display, the Alcatel 1X has very good brightness and color resolution compared to amoled and super amoled displays, which are the latest screen technologies available to smartphones.
There are advantages with amoled displays, including better viewing angles and better power consumption because with amoled displays pixels can light up individually, meaning better battery life overall compared to LCD screens, which light up the whole screen.
The battery performance of the Alcatel 1X is on par with what you expect with LCD screens. Charging the internal 3000 mAh battery from flat takes a little over 3 hours via 5V/1A input.
The overall body height of the Alcatel 1X is 146mm (in portrait) and its width is 69mm, making the Alcatel 1X a sizable smartphone but not a heavy one as it only weighs 130 grams. The Alcatel 1X super lightweight has been achieved via a polycarbonate back panel. The phone is just 8mm thick so it has nice slimline design.
The Alcatel 1X supports the highest aspect ratio currently available on smartphones -18:9 format- which provides an even larger display area than the 16:9 widescreen format, which the Alcatel 1X also supports, as well as 4:3 standard definition and 1:1.
While the Alcatel 1X supports a large aspect ratio, it only supports them in lower resolution. So, 18:9 aspect ratio with maximum 8 megapixels, while 16:9 with maximum 9 megapixels. The aspect ratio that is natively supported by the Alcatel 1X is 4:3 (13 megapixel resolution).
The Alcatel 1X can also support 16 megapixels by using software interpolation to upscale the native 13 megapixel camera resolution, which works okay but the quality of the image isn't the same a native 16 megapixel resolution camera.
The Alcatel 1X is a bezel-less phone with a flat dragontrail 2.5d glass screen so, the screen doesn't curve around the edges.
Being a bezel-less phone, the Alcatel 1X is all screen without any part of the phone's frame showing on the front, which is nice although the Alcatel 1X has black borders around the screen, unlike boderless phones whose displays are edge-to-edge without any borders.
The volume rocker and power button are located on the right side, while the sim card is located on the top left side of the phone and features two slots for a nano sim and micro SD card or two nano sims; hence dual sims.
The 3.5 mm headphone jack is on top, the microphone and loudspeaker are located on either side of the micro USB port. The microphone quality is very good, thanks to dual noise cancelling microphones and the integration of high definition (HD) voice, which naturally boosts/ amplifies the volume sound.
As far as connectivity and network speed, the Alcatel 1X integrates NFC, bluetooth 4.2 and it's capable of fast internet speed (up to 150 Mbps downlink speed and 50 Mbps uplink speed) for streaming Netflix movies and YouTube videos.
The Alcatel 1X doesn't support 5GHz Wifi but does support 2.4Ghz Wifi, Wifi direct and Wifi hotspot so, you can connect the Alcatel 1X directly to, say, a printer that supports Wifi direct and send print jobs directly from the Alcatel 1X bypassing your home router.
The Alcatel 1X 2019 app drawer is filled with tons of pre-loaded apps, including on-screen recorder, office suite, play store, sound recorder and fm radio. The apps are automatically organized alphabetically in the app drawer.
Other useful features you get with the Alcatel 1X 2019 include night mode, which is a built-in feature that lets you adjust the color temperature and make the light of the screen display cooler (blue) or warmer (amber/yellow) to suit your mood.
Night mode doesn't affect the brightness of the display so, it doesn't have an impact on power consumption. You can enable night mode manually or you can automatically schedule a time and date.
Func shortcuts give quick access to five apps of your choice that you can access when the phone screen is locked. Gestures let you swipe down with 3 fingers simultaneously so, you can take a screenshot.
There is also an app cloner to clone two versions of the same app, say, the facebook messenger app so, you can open a second account. DuraSpeed boosts the performance of a current app you are using by restricting other background apps.
Along with the Alcatel 1X 2019 and wired earbuds, you get a high quality micro USB cable for charging and data transfer, a sim card tray tool and a UK 3 pin power adapter that can output 5V/1A. The Alcatel 1X 2019 is available from Carphone Warehouse. Check out the TCL 10L phone review and the Alcatel 3X 2020 smartphone.