Alcatel OT-E801 user reviews
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User reviews4
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.
Peter Davidson 7 March 2007
Good: The idea - cheap and cheerful
Bad: I got the memory card to work at last, but no sound
Comment: I may be silly, but do you have to have a headset to play MP3s? I got this second hand, no box or user manual so if I get help that would be great. Overall it is a nice tidy work phone or for a kid's first mobile.