Alcatel 3L (2020) Smartphone Review with Key Features

Smartphone in 2020 is perhaps the most essential electronic device. With it, you can pay bills, make purchases, evaluate the possibilities of virtual entertainment and a lot of other things, which are often quite important in modern life. Therefore, it is not surprising that more and more people begin to study in detail the mobile device market before buying, and not just focus on the price and advice of sales consultants. And if earlier many users were wary of a not very popular brand, then the rapid growth in the popularity of Chinese smartphones convinced many that a good one does not have to have a big name. A review of the Alcatel 3L (2020) smartphone with the main characteristics will help you understand the advantages of the new product and help you find the main disadvantages.

It should be said right away that the new product has nothing in common with the Alcatel 3L (2019) or even more so with the 2018 model. The company is not too fond of coming up with new names, but the quality of their smartphones has increased significantly in recent years and most of the owners of Alcatel equipment today are satisfied with their purchase.

And in order to quickly assess all the capabilities of the phone without reading the article, you can use the table below with the main characteristics, price and technological capabilities of the device:

Design

Undoubtedly, today, to attract the attention of buyers? the product must have at least attractive appearance or amazing performance at a reasonable price. And if it is quite difficult to realize the second even for the giants of the industry, then with the first everything is quite real. Alcatel, it seems, also realized that its brainchild has little chance of attracting attention with pure hardware, and therefore has created a really interesting solution.

What immediately catches your eye about the Alcatel 3L is the large, elongated screen. Also, the phone has a nice shape with rounded edges, and the stylish and popular in 2020 camera teardrop notch only completes the picture. Interestingly, the device has rather wide bezels, but this is not too noticeable and does not spoil the overall impression. There is also a rather noticeable "chin", but it also looks quite natural without disfiguring the screen. In general, the appearance of the novelty cannot be called unique - it is a copy of many popular models, however, it must be admitted that it looks no worse than its competitors and certainly more expensive than it actually costs.

But what aesthetes and fans of bright design really should pay attention to is the back cover of the smartphone. The model has three color variations - the official names are Chameleon Blue, Dark Chrome, Agate Green.And if the green and black look just good, with interesting shades and color transitions, then the blue version already has a gradient transition to purple and black, which looks really impressive and unusual.

In addition, the rear panel has a triple vertical camera in the upper left corner - one of the main trends of 2019; a neat elongated LED flash is located under the sensors. Slightly lower and to the right is a fingerprint scanner, as expected - it may not be the most convenient place in 2020, but the model is budgetary (price is about $ 145), so this decision is quite justified. Below the fingerprint scanner is a large campaign logo (it looks surprisingly good), under it is the inscription "alcatel", even below it is read in small print "TCL Communication Ltd". The presence of the inscription is not too striking and does not spoil the impression, like the crossed-out bin icon on some Huawei smartphones (which also abandoned this idea in their new Y6s (2019)).

On the top edge, the device has a 3.5 mm mini-jack socket. At the bottom, there are dual microphone and speaker. Between them is a microUSB 2.0 charging slot. As for the controls, they are located on both sides of the device. On the right are the volume rockers and a SIM card slot, on the left is the power button.

Summing up the appearance of the device, we can safely state that the model turned out to be very bright and attractive, which, together with fashionable chips like a triple camera, a drop-cutout and an elongated screen, makes the novelty interesting for young people. And the attractive price only enhances this effect.

Cameras

In general, the budget segment and good cameras are stories from different chapters, however, it seems that Alcatel is serious about breaking this stereotype. So, in the official videos of the company, special emphasis is placed not even on the design of the device, but on the cameras. Of course, the decision to hyip on the trend of triple cameras with a resolution of 48 megapixels looks very logical, especially since they promise to cram all this into a state employee. So far, the smartphone is just getting ready for sale, but here's what is known about its triple sensor:

• The main camera is equipped with a 48 MP module with a good aperture f / 1.8, (wide);
• The next module is already more modest - 5MP (used as a depth sensor), but this is enough for an ultra-wide-angle camera. With the help of the sensor, you can easily take a selfie with a large company or photograph large objects at close range - it is able to accommodate more than the main one due to a wide viewing angle. By the way, this module has an excellent f / 2.4 aperture;
• And finally, the third 2 MP sensor with f / 2.4 aperture is called a macro camera - its feature is the ability to take photographs from very small distances (starting from two centimeters). Can also be used as a depth sensor.

In addition to all of the above, the cameras support 1080p shooting at 30fps, there is support for LED flash, HDR and panoramas. By the way, all sensors are intelligent, which the company does not hesitate to remind about in official trailers. It is also worth saying that the demonstrated capabilities of the camera are at a high level - the photos are bright and detailed, even with the use of the macro function.

The front camera of the device is already simpler. It is single and has an 8 MP sensor with an aperture of f / 2.0, (wide). There is support for HDR, face unlock and the ability to shoot video in 1080p quality at 30 frames / s.

Summing up a short summary, we can only wish the company good luck in implementing the plan, because the decision to insert a high-quality triple camera into a budget phone looks very attractive. In addition, the first presentations showed that the smartphone really has every chance of getting high-quality optics, and therefore recognition from buyers. Unfortunately, it is still unknown how the phone takes pictures at night, but the first tests should dot all the i's, while the model looks as attractive as possible for photography fans.

Power, artificial intelligence and attractive price

As a chipset for a state employee, Alcatel has chosen a rather interesting variant of MediaTek Helio P22 MT6762, which is usually used in devices of the middle price category. However, if you look closely at the company's latest smartphones, it becomes clear that this is not the first time it has used the 2018 chipset in its developments. Of the features of Helio P22, one can single out the ability to work with up to 6 GB of RAM, the rudiments of artificial intelligence, which is used in the Face ID function, which can unlock the phone by a person's face, as well as in support of modern navigation and wireless technologies.

Smartphones based on this processor are well suited for active games (giving out more than 75,000 points in the popular AnTuTu benchmark), because for a low price the user can play almost all new games, including PUBG at low graphics settings.

Performance

Despite the fact that the Alcatel 3L (2020) is positioned as a smartphone with a cool camera for reasonable money, its performance is also in order. However, it is quite difficult to win the competition in the mobile device market today due to just a good camera, especially if it is not Apple / Samsung branded technology or “people's” Huawei and Xiaomi. By the way, a series of skillful solutions and successful models allowed Alcatel to increase its share in the smartphone market and acquire many fans, so the company is on the right path, creating good quality equipment.

The 12-nanometer chipset Mediatek MT6762 Helio P22 is used, which is equipped with eight-core Cortex-A53 processors with a frequency of 2.0 GHz. For those who are not too fond of Mediatek chipsets, the company has changed its approach to development and focused specifically on the mid-range SoC. The results are already clear - the MT6762 Helio P22 outperforms popular SoCs like Snapdragon 625 and Exynos 7870.

The GPU is the mid-size PowerVR GE8320 SoC from Series8XE. Despite the fact that it was announced back in 2014, the graphics core supports OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 1.2, Android NN HAL API and Vulkan 1.0. As for the performance, it is at a good level for the price of the device - even PUBG Mobile runs on low graphics settings with a frame rate of up to 30 fps. For comparison, the fighting game Shadow Fight 3 demonstrates a frame rate of 40-45 frames, and in the online game Arena of Valor at low settings, 40fps is issued with a drawdown of up to 30 fps during a long game.

Technologically, the phone cannot be called super advanced either - except for the current version of Bluetooth 5.0, it can boast of an advanced Wi-Fi module using Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, or the presence of NFC.

The phone will be delivered in one version - 64 GB of ROM and 4 GB of RAM. Today, such figures are not surprising, but given the democratic cost of the device in the region of 140 euros, everything looks not so bad.

As a result, the Alcatel 3L (2020) is a pretty interesting smartphone for those looking for an inexpensive work machine for gaming on medium to low graphics settings. The model is perfect for children due to its cost and good features, as well as as a second phone, on which you can sometimes play and watch movies on the big screen.

Vault

What manufacturers just do not invent to attract the attention of buyers - they make an internal memory of 256 GB, add slots with support for external cards per terabyte, or even offer users a fantastic 12 GB of RAM.

Alcatel seems to have decided not to invent anything new and just made a model in the most popular frames now - 4/64 GB. Many may not like this solution, but objectively it looks justified - the phone is a budget phone and there is simply no point in “cramming” a large internal ROM into it (plus there is a slot for external memory, so everyone can increase the storage capacity by an additional 256 GB) ... Making a version with more than 4 GB of RAM is simply pointless, because the general level of the smartphone will not allow this potential to be revealed, and therefore the company's decision cannot be called interesting, but it is fully justified.

operating system

It is rare for a public sector employee to surprise in this section, but 3L seems to have succeeded. The smartphone will be sold with pre-installed Android 10.0 OS, which so far only a few flagship devices can boast. By the way, the company does not say anything about the shell, and therefore there is every reason to believe that it will be a "pure" Android without any add-ons. The solution looks quite interesting, because many users are eagerly awaiting the release of a new operating system and at the same time do not like shells, so the company has every chance of getting some part of the attention of buyers.

Screen

It is difficult to please everyone because someone likes thin frames, while someone is completely calm about the chin and hates the drop-neckline. However, there are trends, and it is simply stupid to ignore them. That is why, as mentioned above, the company opted for an elongated 6.22-inch IPS LCD screen. The screen-to-surface ratio is 81.6%, which is clearly not the best indicator on the market (the area was 96.6 cm2). Separately, it should be said about the resolution of 720 x 1520 pixels, which is, of course, not enough with a 19: 9 ratio and display size. The density of 270 ppi is also much lower than the established standards. However, the phone shows a surprisingly good and smooth picture, and also pleases the color rendering temperature, which is well adjusted in the settings for individual characteristics of a person.

The smartphone is well suited for watching movies due to the large screen, but you should not count on viewing in high quality - the 3L is simply not capable of fully processing 4k video.

Autonomy

One of the weak points of most inexpensive phones is the battery, because users will be able to fix its capabilities only after purchasing, which cannot be said about the processor or cameras.

But here the Alcatel engineers did everything right - the device is equipped with a non-removable Li-Po 4000 mAh battery, which is very good for a budget employee, given the energy-efficient processor on board. It is also worth noting that the device supports 10W fast charging.

Of the minuses (quite expected) - the use of microUSB 2.0, no matter how many type-c fans say that the old USB has already outlived its manufacturers while there is a different opinion on this matter. However, I absolutely do not want to find fault with the new product about this, because as for its class, everything is just fine with it.

Technologies, communication standards, dimensions

Technologies cost money, and therefore manufacturers like to save money in cheap smartphones or not complete the device with any sensor at all. Below you can familiarize yourself with all the characteristics of the device and evaluate its capabilities:

• Wireless technologies: Wi-Fi11 b / g / n, Bluetooth 5.0, A2DP, LE;
• Network and Internet: 2G, CDMA, 3G, 4G;
• Navigation: A-GPS;
• Sensors: Fingerprint (back), accelerometer, proximity, compass;
• Dimensions: 7 x 74.6 x 8.5 mm;
• Additionally: microUSB0, Jack 3.5, FM radio.

As expected, there is no NFC, the Wi-Fi module is a bit disappointing, but there is Jack 3.5 mm and the current Bluetooth 5.0.

Summing up

Alcatel is not the market leader and it is clear that the company does not expect significant sales. However, the chosen strategy is to gradually raise the bar for the quality of your devices, endowing them with popular chips, good hardware and at the same time, setting an affordable price tag, is already bearing fruit. By the way, the L3 is a really interesting smartphone. At a price of $ 140, it has an attractive appearance, has an excellent camera, energy-efficient filling and good autonomy. Be it a state employee Huawei or Xiaomi, a queue would have already lined up for him, however, even in such conditions, Alcatel will definitely be able to impose competition on the dominant brands.

Based on the characteristics, the smartphone is perfect for both selfie fans and all young people in general, because bright colors, a large screen and a "drop" in combination with average performance make it a truly multifunctional device, which is rarely found in the budget segment ... Yes, it was not without disappointments, but it is simply pointless to consider them seriously, given the advantages of the new product (do not forget about the pure 10th Android out of the box).

• Availability;
• Attractive design and interesting color options;
• Energy efficient processor;
• Triple camera with 48 MP main sensor;
• The ability to install an external flash card;
• Battery life;
• There is a mini jack 3.5 mm;
• Fast charging 10W;
• Android 10;
• Large screen;
• Bluetooth 5.0.

• The usable area of ​​the screen does not reach modern standards (like the pixel density, the frames are visible);
• Screen resolution;
• No NFC module;
• Outdated microUSB0;
• One version of RAM and ROM.

Conclusion: for its price, the smartphone looks very attractive, and given the popularity of past Alcatel models, we can assume that the novelty will also be a success. Great budget option for gaming, watching movies, and selfie fans.