Alcatel 3 (2019) review: What a 12 year old thinks

We’ve reviewed a lot of phones here at EFTM – and with the prices of smartphones tipping over $2,000 you might wonder how it’s possible to take an objective look at a phone that costs just $279.

And it’s true, I don’t think I could use a $300 phone consistently day after day having used $2,000 phones almost exclusively for 12 months!

But there’s one person who could. Jackson.

My 12 year old son is in his first year of High School. That means first year of having his own phone. At the start of the year we gave him the most affordable phone we could find – and chose the Huawei Nova 3e as that phone.

Originally a $399 phone, you can still buy the Nova 3e today for $299 – and Jackson has loved it. No complaints – loves the camera, plays games on it – all round good stuff.

So when I proposed that he test out the newly announced Alcatel 3 – he jumped at it – I wondered if he would want to get right back to his Huawei.

The Alcatel 3 has a 5.9 inch screen (It’s bigger than the Nova 3e – just), runs Android Oreo on a Snapdragon Octa-core processor with a 13MP&5MP rear dual camera and 8MP front camera. The battery is 500mAh bigger at 3500mAh.

So – what did he think?

Here it is for you – in his own words:

Battery

The battery can last for quite a long time. From full charge you can get around 9-12 hours of battery life and can last with stretched amounts of usage of games and texting.

Gaming

When playing little pocket games (such as clash royale) the game quality can be stunning and can also be much better reaction time and less lag in gaming. The touch sensitivity is much greater than some other phones of similar price ranges.

Design

The design of this phone is a nice mix between blue and black that  fades through black (top) to Blue (bottom) which looks super cool (and can look real cool when holding up) 

Screen

The quality of the screen is outstanding. Watching YouTube is incredible to get the highest quality on YouTube is amazing and is great for its price range.

Camera

The camera has a great portrait mode. The light exposure is way too much in some situations. The Emoji isn’t very good for its price. The dual lens can be seen very clearly when zooming in on it.

headphones/earphones

The quality of the earphones is amazing. You can hear others talking to you when it’s at a level of 50% but you can rank it up just a bit and then not be able to hear outer noises. The quality of music is like you where there to listen to them sing. Or podcast where you feel like you are actually talking to them

What I didn’t like?

I didnt like the ar emojis they didnt look good and didnt work very well. Another thing is the google sign in, if your account doesn’t support Google Assistant you cannot get past that into the setup – (Dad had to sign into his account to skip past that section)

Trev Says: So if that what a 12 year old thinks? Why are you spending so much on your kids phones? Alcatel 3 is worth looking at when it comes to market.