I’ve already mentioned one of the key reasons behind this old-school feel: the Alcatel 1 (2021) is actually the Alcatel 1 (2018). It’s got the same design and the exact same measurements: a 137.6 x 65.7 x 9.8mm body with a 134g weight. However, any form of media will hit it hard. An hour of Netflix streaming sapped 18% of a full charge, while an hour of YouTube Music streaming sapped 7%. By way of a comparison, the Moto G22 (a very typical affordable phone) lost 3% and 1% respectively in the same tests. It’s another example of a specification that seems to come from the smartphone past,” I said from the wintery depths of 2018. In early 2023, this component is practically a fossil. Of course, with such an unusually small, dim, and pixel-sparse display, that battery is having to drive a lot less action than usual. With performance so limited, meanwhile, you won’t want to use the phone for much more than light phone calls. On those terms, it’ll get you through a full day without too much issue. The fact that the battery is removable means you can extend this quite easily, but buying extra batteries will add to the cost significantly, at which point you might as well buy a better phone. Alcatel 1 review: Camera

And, lastly, the Google Play Store will also notify Android Go users of new or recommended apps that have a Lite or Go version. And Go apps also give you control over whether each individual app is allowed to work over cellular or is restricted to Wi-Fi only.Android Go apps do launch faster than the standard apps – 8 seconds versus 12 seconds when I tested this with Google Maps – but there’s not much, if any, uplift in performance over the regular apps. That said, it’s only through Android Go that demanding apps like Google Assistant are able to work on phones with 1GB RAM. Like its predecessor, the Alcatel 1 (2021) only comes with a 2000mAh battery. That’s less than half the capacity of most modern Android phones. Viewed from the front, the Alcatel 1’s design could be mistaken for a white iPhone 5S. The casing is plastic right the way around, though, so it doesn’t feel anything like it. Alcatel describes the phone’s unibody case as a “premium” design with a “metallic finish”. It’s neither of those things, unfortunately. Needless to say, performance here is awful in every way. Apps take an age to load, menus creak and groan, and everything appears to move along at a snail’s pace. Don’t expect to jump into the camera app when you spot a shooting opportunity either. GSM-Forum > GSM & CDMA Phones / Tablets Software & Hardware Area > Alcatel > Alcatel TCL Phones and New Models

So how much smaller are they? On the Alcatel 1, the regular Maps app takes up 89.5MB, while Maps Go is a mere 375KB. Quite the difference! Functionally, though, the regular and Go versions are quite different. For a start, the ‘Find my location’ feature is less reliable on Maps Go, and the step by step directions breakdown has the look of a much older, more primitive version of Maps. There’s also no ‘Share’ function on Maps Go for forwarding the journey information on to others. F/2 aperture, Sensor type: CMOS, Autofocus, Continuous shooting, Digital zoom, Geotagging, Panorama, HDR, Touch focus, Face detection, White balance settings, ISO settings, Exposure compensation, Self-timer, Scene mode It was more revealing than I anticipated. It turns out the Alcatel 1 (2021) is exactly the same phone as the Alcatel 1 (2018), only selling for even less money. The likely culprit for this is the Alcatel 1 (2021)’s meager 1GB of RAM. We typically balk when a phone has just 2GB or even 3GB of RAM these days, so 1GB is slightly scary. Unsurprisingly, Genshin Impact won’t even install on the Alcatel 1 (2021). Slightly more surprisingly, nor will Vampire Survivors – a more recent but decidedly less technically demanding 2D game.That extends to the phone’s display, which is the same 5-inch 960 x 480 TFT LCD. In my review of the Alcatel 1 (2018) I called this panel “a small, dull, blurry and overly reflective screen, which is all but impossible to use outside on a bright day”. Can you guess what I think of it here at the beginning of 2023? The Alcatel 1’s display is also pretty low on quality. In our tests, it produced 71% of the sRGB colour gamut and of those colours only white was accurately replicated. The rest were wildly off the mark: reds, pinks, purples, blues, greens, and grey tones were all a long way from what they should be. Despite those large bezels, this feels like a remarkably small phone by modern standards. Even the Asus Zenfone 9, which is the smallest Android phone I’ve used of late, feels large alongside it. The closest comparison I can draw here is the iPhone SE (though obviously not in terms of quality).