Hello all. This time, I am about to review a budget phone. When I say “budget” phone, most of you might have a price range of RM200 – RM300 popping up in your mind. If that is the case, I would then call the Alcatel OT-208 a super duper budget phone.

Yes, the price is less than RM100. Now, if you are wondering on why am I doing a review for this phone in the 1st place, I have a reason for that

Some of us carry more than 1 phone at a time. We need a phone for our personal use and another phone, probably for our business use. If you are from a corporate world, then you might have a company line but not all company gives a phone as well.

Although we prefer to have some high tech phone to access our email and do some ‘smart phone’ tasks, we don’t need 2 smarties in our pocket. So we opt for a budget phone for our secondary line which can be used to make calls and comes with SMS function.

Even if you are not using 2 lines, there are times (once in a blue moon) where your main phone gives you some problem and you have to either send it to the service centre or dump it into the nearest rubbish bin. That is when a budget phone comes handy as a backup.

Ok, now let’s take a look at the some photos before I say more about this Alcatel OT-208.

It comes with a charger, handsfree (1 side earpiece), instruction manual and warranty card.

The phone is made of plastic but it is well built. You will definitely have no complaints with the build quality. The keypad is made of rubber.

The Alcatel OT-208 comes with a mini-USB port. It is used for charging and to connect your handsfree.

The microphone. Please ensure that you don’t block that hole while on a call.

lanyard hole.

The battery cover.

Erm, is that a camera?

Nop, it is actually a torch light.

How did I end up buying this phone? I needed a phone for my 2nd line but I just wanted to get something which is mainly used for making calls and to send/receive SMSes. I made a survey and then finally decided to get a Nokia. The problem with the recent makes of Nokia budget phones is, they don’t have a earpiece. Yes, they have a loudspeaker which is used as the earpiece as well and when you are talking on the phone, people next to you can clearly hear your conversation. Owh, that is dangerous.

Since I didn’t have much option (hey, I don’t know that such Alcatel budget phone exist at that time), I decided to get the Nokia 1280 (which was the cheapest in the market) and went to the shop. It was priced at RM99 and comes with phone, battery and charger. While I was still thinking whether want to buy the Nokia 1280, the phone seller offered me this Alcatel OT-208.

Guess how much was the price? I bought it for just RM88 and it comes with a handsfree as well. The best part is, this Alcatel phone has its earpiece and I do not need to worry that people will hear my conversation. . Not only that, the Alcatel OT-208 comes with a color screen which the Nokia 1280 doesn’t have. That is a good deal, isn’t it?

After buying this phone, I still had a doubt on the quality because it didn’t make sense that Nokia 1280 which is lacking in many aspects, is more expensive compared to this Alcatel OT-208. Anyway, I’ve fully tested the phone and I’m very happy with the quality. The voice quality is good. I can hear the other party well and the other party has no problem hearing my voice too. The ringtone is loud and clear. You will hardly miss any calls. All ringtones are polyphonic (no MP3 ringtone). Phone’s vibration can also be felt very well. Other functions are as below.

Features of this phone :

1) Radio – the radio is heard loud and clear. No issues there. You can also listen to the radio via the loudspeaker but the headset must be plugged in. The phone supports stereo but unfortunately, the default handsfree is single-sided and you can’t enjoy the stereo effect with that handsfree.

2) Torch light – it is not very bright but definitely usable. You can’t brighten up the whole room but can easily move around with with the help of the torch light. The torch can be activated by just pressing the number 5 key.

3) Mini USB port – there is good and bad about this. The good thing is, you can actually charge your phone via your PC or laptop (using your own cable). Unfortunately, you have to use the same mini USB port to plug in your handsfree. This phone comes with FM radio and it will be nice if I can use my own music headset. Alcatel should have added a 3.5mm audio jack. The other thing is, I can’t listen to the radio while the phone is charging.

4) Rubberized keypad – I have a feel that it will eventually get worn off. So far looks good but I hope that the numbers on the keypad will not be erased.

The keypad’s backlight is blue which some of you may not like. It can be a little tiring for our eyes to stare at the bright blue light in the dark but I am OK with that. It is still usable.

5) Battery life – this will be an important aspect for those who buy a budget phone. One thing that is great about a budget phone is, the talk time and stand-by time for this type of phones are much longer compared to a smart phone. A budget phone can easily last 6 to 7 times longer compared to a smart phone.

The Alcatel OT-208 comes with a 500mAh rechargeable battery.

Some of you might be disappointed with the “500mAh” thing because other phones e.g. from Nokia comes with 800mAh to 1200mAh battery, even for the budget phones. Let me tell you something. I was suppose to review this phone 1 week ago but I was not able to do so because I can’t determine how long can the battery last. The battery was going on and on and on, for so many days. When I purchased this phone, there was 2 bars (maximum 3 bars) left. It took 6 days for the battery indicator to get to zero bar (and the phone was still running). Since I do not want to delay my review, I just decided to charge my phone to full and observe the battery life again.

Below is my usage after the recent full charge :

- calls made/received are about 1 hour

- smses sent about 15 and received about 30

- radio about 5 minutes

- torch light about 10 minutes

- playing around with the menu and testing some games – 30 minutes

It has already been 9 days since I charged my phone and there is still one bar left. I am sure that the phone can easily go up to another 2-3 days. Well,if you are comparing e.g. Nokia 1280 with this phone, the Nokia phone definitely comes with a better battery life (from the specification sheet) but anything more than 5 days is already good enough for me. So as for the battery life, the Alcatel OT-208 is doing great.

Additional functions of the phone :

There are some other built-in functions of this phone that I don’t see in high end phones. It is worth to mention those functions because you will be really surprised to see a RM88 budget phone being able to do this much.

1) Fake call – you can set your phone to ring as if you are receiving a call but actually it is a fake one. You can set your phone to ring after 5 seconds, 10 seconds or 60 seconds after the fake call function is activated. When you receive the fake call, your phone will ring as usual and the name of the caller (you can set any fake name like Justin Bieber or Bill Gates) will appear on the screen. This will be very useful to avoid someone or to get out from a discussion that is wasting your time.  To activate the function, you just need to press and hold the call button.

2) Call control – when you activate this function, your phone will ask for a password each time you make a call. Once the password has been entered, you will then need to input either the duration of your call or how much do you want to spend for that call (this can be set by going to menu > call register). If you are having a tight budget or do not want others to use up your credit, then this feature will be very useful.

3) Blacklist – is there any prank caller who is bugging your life? Is any unknown person calling you in the middle of night to disturb your sleep? You will then need this feature. There are up to 10 numbers that you can add and once this feature has been activated, your phone will automatically cancel the calls from the blacklisted numbers. The best part is, the caller will immediately hear an engage tone and he or she will not even feel that the call has been purposely cancelled. Unfortunately, the Blacklist function doesn’t filter SMSes.

Rodger’s conclusion

This is a great budget phone I would say. I never felt that I’ve wasted my money because for RM88, the phone can do more than what I expect. Even if you are just planning to get a backup phone, I will highly recommend this phone to you. I am impressed with the Alcatel OT-208. Well, if you are expecting for some high end features like internet, email and so on, then this phone is not for you.