Living with a $20 Smartphone By Austin Evans

Hey guys this is Austin and this is a $20 smartphone. This is the Alcatel One Touch Idol Pixi Glitz, because when I buy a $20 smartphone, I buy a $20 smartphone. Oh yes (laughs). This thing is tiny, 4G slash Wi-Fi capable, 3.4 inch touchscreen display, Android 4.4 KitKat and a two megapixel camera slash video recorder. I mean as much as I'm making fun of it, this is a full-fledged smartphone that cost me $20. Alright so since there's no back on the phone, let's keep digging.

Battery is 1,150 milliamp hours, that's actually not terrible, I mean it's really small but that's just probably not rockin' any kind of crazy specs. Okay, so now that it's assembled, it's not terrible, I mean, definitely plastic, it doesn't feel cheap, I mean I can kind of like flex it a little bit in my hands, it feels sturdy, it feels like it's not gonna fall apart. Get started, alright let's do it. This keyboard is tiny, wow, god this is a small phone, you know what, this is actually about the same size as the iPhone 4, I guess I've just been using too many big phones lately. First thing I'm noticing, the screen feels weird.

Is it actually plastic? Oh, it totally is plastic. I also like the giant buttons. Wait, what, that's a menu button, that's not a multitasking button, what? Okay so now that we're activated I'm actually really curious to see what's running inside this thing. Alright we've got a dual-core processor, that's actually not that bad, a half a gigabyte of RAM, and two gigabytes of internal storage. Oh, 320 by 480 screen.

Alright so basically this phone is straight out of like 2010. Whoa (laughs). Alright, alright hold up, let's take a picture of this. Mm, yeah, get a little video action going on here. Hey guys, my face is blown out.

Oh man this is cutting edge. You know, I still do keep coming back to it doesn't feel that bad. All jokes aside, obviously this is not going to destroy like a Galaxy S7 or something but for $20 I don't expect much out of a smartphone, I mean the fact that it has a touchscreen and runs Android for 20 bucks is pretty solid. So now comes the real test, can I actually live with this thing? For basic stuff like Twitter, it's totally fine. I've been using it all day and it's absolutely usable.

The biggest hurdle is just readjusting your expectations. The screen is small and low-res and it's just not very fast. You almost have to recalibrate yourself to expect things to take a couple extra seconds versus what you're used to. When you consider how cheap it is, it opens up a lot of possibilities. Even if you only wanna use it on Wi-Fi you're one Spotify download away from having a pretty solid iPod replacement.

The battery life is also decent, it's down to about 30% after a full day of use which is better than some full-fledged smartphones. The one thing that really isn't salvageable though is the camera, it is basically straight up unusable. You're not gonna wanna use this unless you absolutely have to. Going into this, I really wasn't sure what to expect. This is definitely not going to replace your current phone, however, it has a lot of interesting potential as a secondary device.

For $20 you're getting a full-fledged Android device and sure, it might not be the latest and greatest however Android 4.4 is still fairly well supported and it should be able to use most of the apps in the Play Store. Is the Pixi Glitz for everyone? Absolutely not. However if you've never tried Android or you just want a secondary smartphone, you could do a lot worse. So what do you guys think about a $20 smartphone? Let me know in the comments below and I will catch you in the next one.

Source : Austin Evans