Alcatel OT-S319 > Reviews (4)

WHY BUY THIS PHONE?
Alcatel OT-S319

I first came across the cheap little phone when a friend of mine was over from Australia and needed a phone with a UK sim. One way was to get her phone unlocked and then put in a UK sim in her phone or the other solution which she went for was to buy a cheap UK phone with sim included. We looked at Tesco but their cheapest was £19 so I went across the street to the Phones4U and found this cute little phone in either pink or black for £9.95 but you have to buy £10 worth of credit so it comes to £19.95 but of course you need credit anyway to make any use of the phone so it is a great little buy.

My friend bought hers and I was so impressed that I decided to buy one too. I wanted mine just to get orange Wednesday cheap tickets for the cinema. I already have a HTC phone through BT that comes with our broadband and another old phone on Tesco mobile that I have had for about 10 years but it still does what I want it to. Unfortunately neither of these phones can be unlocked for some reason and I have asked at several of the unlocking places around Derby, and there are quite a number, and all say the same thing. So I bought this phone purely for my orange Wednesdays but as cinema tickets are so expensive it will only take 4 cinema visits before I am ahead and the phone has paid for itself.

The phone is on orange and is on PAYG and I would think that if you were willing to pay the sort of money that is needed for a contract that you would be unlikely to accept this phone as it is extremely basic.

WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

The phone is small about 9cm long by 4cm across and only 1cm deep and it only weighs a tiny 90g. It is a flip phone or clamshell design with the screen in the top part that flips open and the buttons in the bottom part. I like flip phones as they take up so little room but give you a decent sized screen and numbers and it is also impossible to make calls by accidently pressing numbers while the phone is in your pocket or handbag. I chose the pink one as did my friend as it is easy to spot in my bag and less desirable for stealing (not sure if a £10 phone is that desirable anyway). The phone is rounded and slim so I find it very comfortable to hold. The charger cable fits in a mini usb point in the bottom left hand corner behind a small plastic or rubber hinge which is very neat and took me some time to find!

NOW LET’S OPEN THE PHONE

Open the phone has a good sized (nearly 5cm) screen at the top with 128 x 160 pixels of bright clear coloured images which you can change should you feel the need. The top of the main phone section has the on/off button in red on the button of the four buttons surrounding the OK button in the middle so it is very clear and obvious even to a phone novice. Surrounding the OK button is a round circular button that can take you up or down or sideways on the screen. If you press the top right hand button near the Ok button it takes you to a screen with symbols for all the applications so you can choose what you want from there – media album, address book, games, WAP, messages, Shortcuts, settings, call history or tools.

Don’t get too excited the media is actually 64 pre set MP3 ring tones of limited interest, and the images are also pre set and you don’t seem able to add you own but I may be wrong there. You may be able to do this by paying extra but I can’t honestly get too excited about ringtones and images on my screen background so I shall not be looking into this any further.

THE KEYBOARD

The numbers are quite large and clear and have a back light so the keyboard can be seen when it is dark. It is the standard texting using the number buttons and pressing two or three times depending on the letter wanted. The numbers are easy to use but the lip at the bottom of the phone where the top fits into the bottom does make the bottom row of buttons a little tricky to press if you have large fingers but I don’t find it too much of a problem.

TEXTING

Now this is where I have a big problem with this phone. Bear in mind I bought it to text the most basic text “film” to 241. Well I was nearly in tears of frustration the first time I tried to do this as it would NOT let me text film. It didn’t matter how I tried to trick it the stupid phone kept predicting anything and everything thing else except film. I have discovered that when i press the number 3 three times it gives me any one of the 3 letters possible and I have to select and clear till I get the right one then we move to the next letter and play the same game and so the very simple task of sending a four letter text requires me to spend about 5 frustrating minutes going backwards and forwards to get the correct combination of letters. If this was the phone I depended on for all my texting i would probably have thrown it in the bin by now but as I only have to battle once a week to get this four letter text out then I’m not too worried. But that is why I have held on to my ancient Sagem as I could not be bothered with this fuss and I send texts quite a lot using that phone. I keep the old phone for my Homestart contacts and this number is only for them that is why I keep it.

OTHER FEATURES

The phone memory allows a record of 20 dialled, 20 received and 20 missed calls. There is an internal memory or 50kb but I’m not really sure what that means in reality. There is no camera but for a tenner you would not realistically expect that in my opinion. There are a lot of other features included in new phones that are not available on this basic beast such as 3G Bluetooth, infrared port , WLAN, 3G or HSC SD but there is a USB connector which is also the charger so you could charge it through a computer or laptop I am thinking but I have not tried it. There is also no radio but there is a WAP browser which I have not tested so not sure how much this costs or if indeed it does work. There are two games pre-installed, chicken and UFO, neither of which get me too excited but might amuse children I guess. I would only be interested in solitaire or mind games and can’t be bothered with platform type games like these.BATTERY

The battery life on this is very good, with the fully charged battery lasting several days, and I have found it only takes a couple of hours to charge back to full.

The charger it comes with is a lot smaller than my other chargers and has a very light normal 3 pin plug which I think is a big plus as some chargers are so heavy.

SUMMARY

This is a neat attractive looking phone which has irritating foibles such as the difficulty in texting. It would suit someone wanting a cheap phone to make calls rather than text. There are no fancy features but it what might be described as an honest phone, it does what it does which is not a lot but it is VERY cheap and for my own personal use it does what I need it to do and cost me very little. I would say it is probably not worth a lot more than it sells for. It is a good emergency phone, great phone for someone wanting a cheap UK sim phone or for a child or teenager who may be prone to losing phones. I would recommend it for anyone looking for acheap basic phone.