We went hands on with Alcatel’s budget A3 and entry-level U5.
BARCELONA—Flagship phones like the LG G6 and the Sony Xperia XZ Premium got a lot of love at MWC 2017, but that doesn’t mean there was nothing worthwhile for lovers of affordable phones.
Aside from the metal-clad Moto G5 and G5 Plus, you have solid options from Alcatel in the form of the midrange A3 (above) and the entry-level U5. While they won’t dominate any benchmark tests, they will get you data connectivity, run most apps, and keep you connected with calls and text. We went hands on and overall they seem like a good midrange or entry-level options for those on a budget.
Design and Physical Features
The A3 is “affordable premium,” according to Alcatel. It has a build that mixes white plastic with a strip of metal along the edge for a clicky power button and volume rocker. The back has a grippy texture to it and the metal along the sides makes for a nice feel. You’ll also find a fingerprint sensor on the back, which is a nice feature to have and one we’re increasingly seeing on budget devices like the Moto G5. The A3’s dimensions are also compact, measuring 5.6 by 2.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD). I found it easy to use with one hand and lightweight due to the hybrid plastic and metal build.
On the front, you get a 5-inch 720p IPS display. It’s not as sharp as the 1080p panel on the G5, but at 294ppi it should be crisp enough you won’t notice any pixels unless you’re looking extremely closely. Brightness could be higher, but the screen was visible under the bright showroom lights; it probably won’t handle direct sunlight well. Below the display you’ll find a set of backlit capacitive buttons for navigation.
The U5 by contrast is meant for the masses. While the A3 has some premium elements to give it the midrange feel, the U5 is unapologetically a polycarbonate slab. Measuring 5.5 by 2.8 by 0.4 inches, its dimensions are nearly identical to the A3 and you’ll find both phones pretty easy to use with just one hand and equally light, but the U5 feels cheaper due to mushy buttons. The back panel has the same texture as the A3, but you won’t get a fingerprint sensor.
The front has a 5-inch, 854-by-480 display, which gives it a pixel density of 196ppi. That’s a bit sparse and here you will notice the pixels, though fortunately the screen didn’t seem grainy or washed out. That said, it was dim and I had some difficulty seeing under the lights of the showroom floor, so I wouldn’t anticipate being able to use it in direct sunlight. You’ll also find a set of capacitive buttons below.
Hardware and Software
The A3 is powered by a quad-core MediaTek 6737 clocked at 1.1GHz. It has 1.5GB of RAM under the hood and overall it can handle most tasks without much difficulty. When launchings apps and switching between them, I did notice a little bit of sluggishness, but the apps all opened and the phone never choked entirely. That said, 1.5GB of RAM isn’t very much these days so you will come up against the hard limit of RAM usage, in which case your phone will force-close apps.
This goes double for the U5, which has the same processor and clock speed, but only 1GB of RAM. Stuttering was a bit more pronounced when multitasking and you can’t push the phone too hard before you hit the limit. It did seem to run most apps, though, which is good if you don’t need much more than that and some web browsing.
The phone has a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. Despite sounding decent on paper, camera performance was hard to judge due to the wildly variable lighting conditions. Alcatel had one of its A5 phones with Alexa hooked up to a smart light and it was demoing voice commands, casting a part of the showroom floor into darkness at periodic intervals. Needless to say, the camera will struggle in those circumstances, though the A3 did manage to focus fairly reliably.
For a better idea of how the A3 camera fares, we’ll have to wait till we get a review unit. The 5-megapixel rear camera on the U5 and the 2-megapixel front camera also struggles with the same issue, but given its entry-level hardware, we don’t expect the camera performance to be its strong suit.
Both phones have micro SD card slots and support expandable storage. Don’t expect any connectivity protocols beyond Bluetooth 4.2 and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The A3 has a 2,460mAh battery, which seems like it should provide a decent battery life since the 720p display isn’t as hungry as 1080p panels on similarly sized phones. The U5 has 2050mAh cell, which we should also last you an average day’s use.
Both phones come running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Alactel’s UI layer running on top. We wouldn’t count on either of them getting Nougat, though, which is a hard pill to swallow for phones being released in 2017. The Moto G5, by contrast, comes with Nougat and may get at least one big update.
Stay tuned for our full review of both devices.