It may sound unbelievable, but it's true. For just £20, you can buy an MP3 player with a 128MB memory card that's also a phone! There's not much else to it, but if you just want a phone that's dirt cheap, makes calls and plays a few of your favourite MP3s, then check it out.
Strengths
At the time of writing, the Alcatel OT-E801 only costs £20, which makes it one of the cheapest mobile phones on the market. It's also rather cute and small, fitting easily in a pocket, and it weighs only 79g.
The OT-E801 doesn't have a stellar list of features, but that doesn't mean it just makes calls. There's a built-in MP3 player that can be controlled via three music buttons on the left-hand side of the phone and an expandable microSD slot so you can add more memory.
Our model came with a 128MB microSD card that holds around 20 to 30 songs, but it will accept up to 2GB microSD cards that can hold 1,000 songs. The music player is quite straightforward to operate and you can set the play mode to shuffle.
You also get two cute Java games, one called Russia that's a copy of Tetris and another called Bricks that's a copy of Arkanoid. These are quite entertaining, but don't expect any 3D graphics.
Weaknesses
The Alcatel OT-E801 is pretty basic: it doesn't have a camera, an FM radio or a Web browser. Its keypad can be difficult to use, because the keys are completely flat and squashed together, making them difficult to distinguish. The screen is small (28x30mm), making text messages appear squashed.
There are also a few noteworthy problems with the MP3 player. For starters, we found it rather difficult to get our PC to recognise the OT-E801 and only succeeded after plugging and unplugging the USB cable several times until finally it was recognised as a mass-storage device.
Searching through tracks isn't particularly easy, with only the track name displayed in a list format. Once you select play, you don't get any album art or additional information.
You also can't play any file types other than MP3, which means if you've used iTunes to rip your CDs to your computer and left the default settings as they are, your AAC files won't play. (If you want to find out what format your iTunes songs are stored in, you can right-click on a track and click on properties. The file's format will appear at the top, next to 'Type of file'.)
Our final niggle with the MP3 player is that there's no 3.5mm jack, which means you can't use your own headphones with it -- you have to use the proprietary ones. So if you've just bought a pair of expensive headphones for listening to music on a mobile phone, then the OT-E801 isn't the right choice for you.
The sound quality is also rather tinny compared to other music phones such as the Sony Ericsson W950i. We imagine the proprietary headphones have a good deal to do with this. Songs that feature a lot of bass didn't sound good and while it's not the worst MP3 player we've tested, it's not going to impress any audiophiles out there.
Conclusion
With such a low price tag and a useable MP3 player, the Alcatel OT-E801 is a good first music phone. If all you need is the basics, then it does what it says on the tin.
If, however, you're a seasoned music phone user and you're looking for a bargain then this is too cheap. While it looks cute, its weaknesses make it much less attractive than anything from the Sony Ericsson Walkman range.
Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Nick Hide
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User reviews4
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thniels 13 October 2007
Good: Pretty and it has MP3
Bad: Poor menus, low sound quality and messy MP3 navigation
Comment: The phone looks nice and it has an MP3 player, but when that is said, there is not much else nice to say. I never figured out how to upload new wallpapers or ring tones. Wallpapers? Not a big issue, some would say. But in this case the wallpapers that are there, are of colors that work very poorly with the text colors available on the phone so it can be a real pain to read the text - particularly in sunlight.
The menus are "untidy" - as in "not orderly" laid out. It is difficult to navigate and not very obvious where what is. The buttons on the phone are adding to a pretty product but they are definitely not finger friendly. It is better than the Motorola aluminum foil Razr keyboards, but then I guess everything is.
If you don't answer an incoming call, you get a message the next time you activate the phone. Nothing unusual about that. The unusual thing is the place where these lists are stored on this phone - in a menu called Call Memory placed under Network Settings. I am sure that many of those functions I have not yet found (and not mentioned in the manual either) are there but scattered merrily around the menu hierarchy like this one turned out to be.
The reason I bought this phone in the first place was because I wanted a phone with an integrated MP3 player. It is there and it works... sort of. The songs cannot be managed in a folder structure and whenever the player is activated it points to the first song. So if you want a decent library of songs and needs to play from song number 117 - you are in for a gymnastic experience, tapping down through the songs... tap... tap. When you then find the song and play it, it is but a whisper from the plasticky ear pieces. The ear pieces fit poorly and don't sound very well. And, of course, the pin out of the USB connector is proprietary - just like every other phone on the market. So a better pair of ear phones means a soldering iron.
With a 2GB card you can have a song library to last for hours. At least if the battery could deliver. In standby - that is without talking, singing or texting, the phone has power for a couple of days. Not impressive. If you then start talking or even worse, listen to songs, battery time is almost a contradiction in terms.
I carried it with me on a plane the other day. In an optimistic hope that perhaps I could listen to Corey Barker while reading Kurt Vonnegut. First of all, I couldn't hear anything over the jet engines. At full volume I could still hear the flight attendant announcing that all phone be turned off but I couldn't hear Fish Ain't Bitin'. Of course, I wouldn't want to be the one that caused to plane to crash, so I wanted to turn the phone into flight mode... it doesn't have one. It appears that each and every other phone that can do other things than make calls, has a "flight mode" where radio transmitters are swithed off while periferal functions are kept active. This one doesn't. Not that it mattered much - I couldn't use the player anyway and simply turned it off and read the darn book instead, listening to screaming kids and jet engines. Not entirely unlike reading a book listening to Einstürzende Neubauten those 25 years ago.
Patrick Johnson 28 July 2007
Good: Cheap from Woolworths
Bad: Buttons too small but usable
Comment: Got this on orange for £24.99 with 256mb microSD card and £5.00 credit on Orange. Makes calls and plays MP3's if you say £10 for mp3 player for one same size, if you go to wrong shop that is. And then you see the phone really only cost £10.00 as there is the £5.00 credit which you would have to put on anyway. So bargain, only bad points keys too small and only next song and last song and play button. But does work and good headphones for the money. And comes with all the stuff you need to play on phones out of the box.
alexander tuxworth 17 May 2007
Good: Light, small, looks resonable, cheap
Bad: Small buttons, no loud speaker, no data sync to pc
Comment: Just bought one of these today as it was the cheapest new phone on the market apart from the motorola F3, which was just to basic. As I only need to make/receive calls this phone is very good in that respect and the mp3's a bonus. In general I'm pleased although menus not as nice as Nokia and having to use proprietary headphones makes the mp3 player less useful as I'm far less likely to have them with me than standard 3.5mm's.
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