Review: The Alcatel 3V Marries High-End Camera & Screen to Low-End Costs

Posted on July 18, 2018 by Mordechai Luchins

The 3v is meant to be Alcatel’s hot new budget phone. When they say budget, they mean $150. That’s quite an insane price point. To really test the 3v, I put it in the hands of the most demanding tester I could think of: my 17 year-old daughter. A heavy photographer used to the dual-lens Honor 8x, how would she react to the first dual-lens budget phone. Would it meet her expectations?

First Glance
The daughter initially noted that the phone is sleek and smooth, and quite light. Almost too light. She felt like it was going to go flying out of her hands. She was excited to see the dual lenses, but less excited to find that the phone only had 16 GB of storage (you can add a MicroSD card). There’s a MicroUSB port for charging, which the daughter found to be very slow. No rapid charge at this price. She also noted that the charge socket in our review unit was lose. She had to lay it in certain positions to get it to charge. This may have just been our unit, as I have seen no other reports of this.

The speakers are surprisingly decent, smoother than expected and she could hear music from more than a room away. She was very impressed with the headphone experience too. The V3 uses a traditional headphone jack…