Alcatel 3V Hands On Preview

What's the Alcatel 3V?

The Alcatel 3V is the middle child of Alcatel's new smartphone family. It features a 18:9 extra-tall display like the rest of Alcatel's 2018 devices, but has faster hardware than the Alcatel 1X, and is a little less showy than the Alcatel 5.

The Alcatel 3V follows the stock standard smartphone design formula for 2018: glass front, metal rim, and a curved shiny pack. But rather than using glass for the 3V, Alcatel has used OPVM, which is essentially a high gloss plastic. It looks like glass, and picks up just as many fingerprints.

Alcatel 3V first impressions

It's almost a little hard to believe the Alcatel 3V is a sub-$200 phone. If you're not looking to closely, you could almost mistake it for a HTC U11 or Galaxy S9. Well, if you ignore the Alcatel logo on the back.

Sure, the back isn't glass and the screen doesn’t curve, but Alcatel has done a great job of creating flagship vibes at a budget price. The vibrant 1080p+ display is also very welcome.

Camera quality is fine for the price, at least if you have enough light. Portrait mode manages to blur the background behind your subject reasonably well if your subject is a person, but it can struggle with other objects. Lowlight performance can be quite unreliable however; you can end up with significant motion blur even when shooting stationary subjects.

The Alcatel 3V's performance is also reflective of its sub-$200 price. It's perfectly usable, but there were a couple of times were apps took look enough to open to make me question whether the tap had actually registered. Performance was smooth after the app had actually opened, though.

It doesn't quite outperform its price-tag, but the Alcatel 3V certainly doesn’t feel like a $200 phone. It proves a budget phone doesn't have to look budget, and its leagues ahead what spending $200 on an Alcatel device would get you last year.

Alcatel 3V camera samples

Alcatel 3V pricing and availability

The Alcatel 3V will be available in Australia for $199 as a prepaid device through a yet to be specified telco. $199 is the carrier subsidised price. Alcatel expects the 3V to be available around May. You'll be able to get it in blue or black.

Alcatel Australia contributed funding toward WhistleOut's trip to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress 2018. 

Alex Choros

Managing Editor + Group Telco Editor | X | Instagram | Threads | LinkedIn

Alex Choros is the Managing Editor of WhistleOut Australia and an award-winning journalist. He's been writing about consumer technology for over a decade and is an expert on the Australian telco sector, to the point where he knows far too many phone and internet plans by heart. In addition to leading the WhistleOut editorial team, Alex is responsible for ruining the office Sonos with his troubled taste in music.

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