Alcatel 1 (aka Telstra Essential Plus) review By GizmoJoe

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to another episode of gizmo Joe. Today we are going to be taking yet another look at the Telstra essential plus now this phone is also known as the Alcatel one, or maybe the Alcatel j1, because that's what it says in the settings, I'm not really sure what this phone is. All this I know is that it runs Android 8.1, but it's Android Go, which is sort of a slimmed down version for lower powered phones. So if you guys watch my unboxing you'll know that I wasn't particularly impressed with this phone, but I said, for you know, 50 to 100 dollars. It would be, are I either as a secondary phone or something for somebody that doesn't use the phone all that often or even as a junker phone that you can give to a teenager who doesn't know how to take care of things yet and smashes stuff up. But I've had a bit of time with it to play around with it, and I'm ready to give you sort of my closer sort of impression, and I'll start off with the good stuff.

The first thing that I can say about this particular phone is that it does feel snappy. The response on this guy is actually fairly decent, and I think that it has more to say about the Android go operating system more so than the phone. The phone itself is only running a MediaTek 673 9 processors, which is fairly low spec, especially for today's sort of demands, so I mean you're not going to be doing any sort of gaming or anything on this particular device. If you look here, I did download Geek bench 4, and if we take a look, so the CPU scores are pretty abysmal, so I ran it. The single core score is 579.

The multi-core score is 1500, that's pretty low. Again, it's not a deal-breaker, but it is fairly low. Spec I mean you can look at just some the comparisons here. I mean these are phones that are ancient, and you know this thing coming out in 2018 is getting a fraction of that score. It's pretty bad Philly the multi-core score same situation.

There you're looking at you know it's performing way, way below 2018 standards. If we look at the kind of compute score, it doesn't look like I ran that one sorry, that's your imaging processing and stuff like that. But if you look here, resolution 480 by 853, so again this is an 18 9 aspects. Ratio phone you look at about almost 5 inches is 4.95, but to have a 480 display is just real. Cheap I mean I would expect to have at least a 720 on a device.

That is a hundred bucks, which is what Telstra is actually asking for. With this particular device. I mean I, think about the Xiaomi Redmi series and stuff like that, and even the lower spec ones still come with a 720 HD display, which I just don't think that there's any excuse really to put a 4u display in these things and I mean I said before in the unboxing video that the viewing angles were horrible and that has not changed. This is on full brightness by the way and the screen is just you can't see it unless you're looking straight on, and it's got a sort of weird shimmer almost to it. I know it's hard to see in the video I can't really describe it, but it just sort of looks like I, don't know it's like phasing in and out of existence or something I, don't know how else to describe it.

It's really bizarre and it kind of like it makes me feel kind of nauseous, almost like I, wear, glasses and so like it's just I, don't know it's like an optical illusion. That kind of makes me feel weird I mean not, not like I'm gonna, you know, fall over or lose my balance or anything, but it's just it's just very distracting when you're trying to use the phone so like I said I mean it comes with all of your Google stuff. As you would expect, I mean this is an Australian phone. It comes with you know, sold by an Australian retailer. But if we look at the camera, I'll put some photo samples up.

I know you guys can't really see these. It looks ok from a distance, it's kind of like that line and clueless where she's like. Oh, you know talking about one of the other girls that she goes to high school with, and she's like oh she's, a Monet and the guy's like what does that mean? Oh, you know from far away it looks okay, but up close, it's a big old mess and I feel like that's the perfect way to describe this camera again. It's only five megapixels, so I mean there. You have to taper your expectations, but this particular camera is pretty bad.

It's pretty, pretty poor I mean one of the other things that I would mention. Is that when I know, you can't really tell based on just this video in the way that I my low-tech way of capturing videos, but it's its weird like when you take a photo, and you move the know as you do. You move the phone a bit just to get whatever you want and frame, but it's almost like because the screen is so poor. It's like it's almost like a sort of polarization effect where it's like you know, you're moving the camera, and then it's its almost like polarized, like you're, looking at a negative or something it's really bizarre, I, don't know if that's the camera software I don't know if that's just the poor quality of the screen, but it's really distracting. It makes taking photos of real hassle, and it's just it's a painful camera to use it's the same thing with the selfie shooter again, it's just the screen is so poor that any sort of movement, even so slight it just totally skews the color.

Furthermore, it totally skews everything almost to the point where it looks like a negative. Like you know, an old film camera. You know you get the negative real before you want to go, develop them that's sort of what it looks like it's like a polarization almost, and it has to do with this weird sort of screen, shimmer thing like when you move it around so yeah. So basically, the reason why I wanted to do this separate video was to tell you that all right performance-wise, it's not too bad. As long as your demands aren't all that great.

If you're, using this thing to make phone calls just do some text messaging, maybe some light internet browsing, it's gonna, be fine! Anything beyond that. Forget it you're not going to be doing any gaming on this thing no way. The camera is so awful that is borderline useless, but I would even venture further than that and say that the device itself, even though it has some redeeming factors- everything is let down by the screen. The screen is so poor that you just can't do anything with it. It is, is awful outside you tilt it slightly, and it gives this weird polarization shimmer effect.

It's just non-usable and I think to sell this for $100. Now again, I got mine for 49 bucks, but it was half off. So the retail price on this device is 99. Bucks I just think, that's a scan. It's just not you can get something from you know, Xiaomi or Huawei, or something like that.

Where you're a hundred dollars is much better well-spent, I mean I, know that there's a real kind of pull in buying a really cheap device, but I mean this is a case of you know you get what you pay for, and it's its actually quite shocking that they would have such a high price tag on this now. If this was fifty dollars, and that was its normal price, even sixty bucks, maybe even seventy-five, maybe I- wouldn't have much of a problem with it, but at a hundred bucks I just think that the screen itself is so poor. It makes it almost unusable anyway, if you're in Australia. You can pick these guys up, and I want to say that Telstra is getting rid of them and mass, because I'm pretty sure they're still on sale, see if I can find them and if I can,, I'll leave a link down in the description, but they're 49 bucks I'm, not sure if they're still doing the Google Home Mini for free I mean that alone is worth it. So I would say, get this phone and then throw it out and then keep your Google home.

Mini, because these guys retail for about 80 bucks and Australia, you can get it for 49 with a junky little phone along with it, but that alone is the better deal, but if I can find that deal, I'll put a link down in the description if you're thinking about getting this I would give it some serious second thoughts. I personally, would not pay more than 50 dollars for this device, and even then it's probably stretched because I think I could probably apply my $50.00 to something else. That would be significantly better anyway. That's gonna! Do it for this episode of gizmo Joe, don't forget to Like to comment and subscribe. I come with new videos.

Every single week anyway, have a good one. This is gizmo Joe signing off.

Source : GizmoJoe