If Alcatel decides to put its mind and effort in creating good quality cellphone products, it can deliver the goods. Proof of these are their latest offerings, the OT535 and OT735. Both have the same look and features except that the latter has an integrated camera. Gone are the user-unfriendly days, I assure you.
I decided to buy the OT535 as a replacement to my old but reliable Nokia 8210. I chose this model after carefully comparing and actually trying it with other competitor products in its class: Nokia 3100, Samsung C100 and Siemens M55. I'm not saying that these 3 products are inferior to OT535. It's just that I find this Alcatel phone better fit to my needs. Now to my review. I will not go to the technical details and specifications as you can find them in other sites. I will just tell you the features I like on this phone and perhaps, some criticisms as well.
The OT535 has about the same length as my 8210. Although it is a bit thicker, I would say it is sexier with its curvy design. The sides taper down to the keypad portion. The metallic aluminum faceplate gives it an elegant and classic look. I have got the unit with a blue face-plate.
MENU
NAVIGATION I can summarize it in one statement: Use the joystick, moron! This is all that you'll ever need to navigate majority of the menus in this phone. It's a 5-way directional joystick--left, right, up, down and press (to confirm your action). It's a real One-Touch concept unlike the old One-Touch models where it is only 3-directional. Although you have the left and right soft keys on the phone, their only use is when you are surfing via GPRS and when viewing MMS messages. Other than that, you just rely on the friendly joystick thus allowing you to operate the phone with only your thumb.
The menu presentation and structure, I would think is well thought out. Instead of giving you a long list of submenus and options, they are presented in tabs windows-style. And each tab only presents a short list of options so as not to bore the user in browsing down a long list.
SCREEN DISPLAY The phone has got a CSTN 4,096-color screen. Although it is low compared to the 65k offerred by Samsung C100, the large screen compensates for that as you can see images clearly in OT535. The phone activates a clock screensaver after a few seconds of inactivity. The exception is when you are composing an SMS and you leave it for a while. I think this is a good idea because you don't wanna start typing your SMS all over again.
PHONEBOOK The phonebook or directory is organized into folders but presented in tabs as well. You have a separate tab for Simcard records (where all phone records from the SIM are stored), the General tab (which contains all the records from the phone's memory) and the Personal and Professional tabs where you can assign items from the General tab. Plus you can add your own folders if you want. This is the phone's way of allowing the user to create his own groups. Once set, you can assign ring tones to each directory and perform other actions on each item on the chosen directory such as View, Modify, Assign Image (for call identification), Classify (copy),Transfer (via IR), Write Msg,etc.
The OT535 can store up to 800 phone numbers and you can assign multiple numbers under one name as well such as main, work, home, mobile, fax, pager, and other. You can also store email address, snail-mail address, personal notes (up to 4 tabs) and notes. That's a lot of information for one item. The phone supports the vCard standard so receiving business cards from other devices that support this feature like Nokia,Sony Ericsson and most PDAs is no problem. Exchanging this information with the phone's IR port is supported as well. Transferring all my contacts from my Nokia 8210 via IR worked without any problem. Synchronizing the phonebook with MS Outlook and Lotus Notes is possible with the supplied PC Suite.
SMS A phone has got to be user-friendly and fast on the response with this feature in order to get my nod as a Nokia user. I'm happy to say that OT535 passed my standards as a Nokia user. I tried typing as fast as I could and the phone did not jam and was able to catch up with my typing. Cool! The only adjustment I have to make is that the space key is on the 1 key and the period (.) key is on the 0 key.
There is also the T9 predictive text input if you want but I'm not comfortable using predictive text entry method. OT535 allows additional entries to its dictionary by the way. SMS messages can be stored in phone's memory by moving it to Archives (similar to a Siemens). SMS phone memory is dynamically shared with ring tones and MMS. As of this writing, I already have 45 text messages in the Archives.
VOICE CALLS Sound reception is good. It is crisp and clear. You can also use the speaker phone which I find very useful when driving. Its speaker is quite loud for a phone this size. It's even louder than my wife's Nokia 7650. Its microphone is very powerful as well. The other party can hear my voice even if the phone is almost 2 feet away from me (which is precisely how a speaker phone should be used!).
CUSTOMIZATION The phone was designed with this in mind. You can add ringtones if you want. The phone supports WAV, midi, amr, imy tones. But actually any tone can be used on this phone because of its recorder function. I tried recording Craig David's What's Ur Flava from my stereo and tested playing it on OT535. This phone rocks! I would say that OT535's polyphonic capability has a lot more bass in it. I can feel the phone thumping! The PC Suite also comes with an MP3-to-Wav converter. So using your favorite MP3 as a ringtone is no problem.
A color screen phone is useless without images and OT535 does not run short of this. You can choose anything from the stored images as your wallpaper. More images are in the PC Suite and the My One Touch wapsite. Images, as stated above, can be assigned on each contact to serve as a caller ID.
The phone also supports different themes (called here as Atmosphere). Menu colors can be changed as well. Speed dial and menu shortcuts can be assigned on the numeric keys. The key on the top of the screen can have assigned functions as well. The phone's voice-command features allows you to call up functions.
OTHER FEATURES OT535 supports GPRS(Class 10), WAP, complete MMS (image, audio, text) with slideshow, EMS, Polyphonic tunes and vCalendar to synchronize appointments with Outlook and allow appointment record exchange with most PDAs. A special feature unique to this phone is Voice MMS. It allows you to record up to 15 seconds of voice memo and send it via MMS. Very useful when you want to convey emotion which is not possible in a normal text message.
The OT535 also has two built in games which can be played Gameboy-style using the joystick and the 'action/shoot' key on top of the screen. You just need to rotate the phone sideways to play each game. Additional downloads are available on My OneTouch website.
CONCLUSION For its price, in the same range as Siemens M55, Samsung C100 and Nokia 3100, Alcatel OT535 I think can compete in terms of features and phone design. To those who want to try something different, I would say the OT535 is worth checking out.
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