Quality at an affordable price

ONE OF THE cheapest 4G smartphones to hit the Thai market, Alcatel Onetouch Flash Plus boasts a generous 5.5-dispay, fast performance and a good camera yet is retailing for less than Bt5,000.

The Flash Plus smartphone runs on Google Android 4.4 KitKat operating system and is powered by an octa-core 64-bit processor running at 1.5 GHz. The graphic processing unit (GPU) is the Mali-T760 MP2.

The Flash Plus has 2 gigabytes of RAM or working memory and 16 GB of internal storage, which is expandable with a microSD card of up to 32 GB. About four GB of internal storage is taken up with system files leaving 12 GB available for the user. The IPS display has 1280 x 720 pixels, which is good enough for watching video clips and viewing photos.

The Flash Plus looks attractive too, with a slim 7.95mm-thick body and curved corners. It weighs only 147 grammes.

The phone has dual SIM slots with SIM management function. You can set one SIM for data connection and the other for voice calls. It supports 4G LTE and 3G HSPA+ connections.

I tested it on TrueMove H’s 4G LTE connection and was impressed by the download speed of 55.21 megabits per second and upload speed of 19.65 MB/s.

While connected to the 4G LTE network, my snapshots were backed up to my Dropbox account in no time. Posting snapshots to my Facebook was a breeze and I could check both my mails and Facebook feeds quickly and smoothly.

The test found that the phone had impressive performance, especially considering its low price. The touch screen and menus were very responsive and the screen scrolled fast.

The Flash Plus has a good quality front camera with 8-megapixel resolution, an f/2.4 lens and 84-degree angle. The wide-angle lens allows you to include many friends in your selfie shots.

And the front camera also comes with an advanced beauty selfie feature that removes eye bags, applies white balancing for a more even skin tone and reduces the appearance of wrinkles so that you can boast about your self-portrait shots on your social networks.

The front camera also supports a voice command, allowing you to take a selfie simply by saying “cheese”.

The rear camera too is good quality. Flash Plus’s main camera uses the Sony IMX214 image sensor and f/2.2 lens. The sensor is back-illuminated and thanks to the bright f/2.2 aperture lens, the Flash Plus can capture good quality photos even in |low-light conditions.

I found that the Flash Plus captured sharp and clean photos both indoors and outdoors. Shooting modes include Face Beauty, PIP (picture in picture), HDR, Filter, and Fix Me.

The Fix Me mode is interesting because it allows you to manually set exposure compensation, contrast, brightness, white balance and ISO as well as sharpness.

The Filter lets you choose fun filters, including Mono, Sepia, Aqua and Whiteboard. The PIP allows you to superimpose your face, captured with the front camera, on a shot captured with the main camera.

The Flash Plus also supports the fun gesture feature. For example, you can double tap on the screen to wake it up. Or you can draw letters that will launch applications without waking the screen first. For example, you draw “c” to open the phone call function, “e” to open the email app, and “z” to open the Internet browser.

Another bonus is the phone’s ability to play High-Resolution Audio songs in Flac 24bit/192 kHz. I tested the Hi-Res song playing with Sony MDR-1A BT Hi-Res audio headphones using the headphone cable. The music was very enjoyable with plenty of detail, ambient sounds and powerful bass.

Alcatel Onetouch Flash Plus is available exclusively from www.Lazada.co.th for a limited period at a starting price of Bt4,690.

Alcatel has a main service centre on Rama IX road and customers can drop the phones for service at one of the several Big C stores that serve as collection centres.

 

Key Spec

- OS: Android 4.4 KitKat

- Networks: GSM Quadband 900/1800/1900, UMTS 900/2100, FDD-LTE: B1/3 TDD-LTE: B38/39/40/41 

- CPU: octa-core 64-bit processor 1.5 GHz

- Memory: 2 GB

- Storage: 16 GB, expandable with microSD card of up to 32 GB

- Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro USB, A-GPS

- Display: 5.5-inch HD, 1280 x 720 pixels, IPS 16M colour display, Capacitive 5 points touch 

- Cameras: 13-megapixel main camera, 8-MP front camera, 1080p video recording

- Audio format supported: MP3, MIDI, FLAC, Vorbis, AAC, AAC+, AMR, PCM, M4A, OGG, OGG+, Apple lossless 

- Video format supported: H.264, H.263, MPEG-4, XVID, VP8, VC1, MKV 

- Battery: 3,500 mAh

- Dimensions: 152.3 x 76.4 x 7.95 mm 

- Weight: 147 grammes