Unless you were to get a phone for free you would be hard pressed to find a brand new phone for less than the £1.99 that Argos are charging for the Alcetel 10.16 on the UK EE network. (Ok so you do have to add £10 call credit making the total price £11.99 but for that you get 250 minutes of calls 50mb of data and unlimited SMS text messages.
So for the cost of less than a pint of beer what do you get in a phone? Well its is a basic mobile phone for text and calls so you won’t find a camera or internet access on it nor is there any facility to extend it’s functionality with add on apps. That’s not to say it doesn’t come with a few extras other than phones and texts. It has a bright LED torch, calculator, convertor for length and weight, a calendar, contacts, alarm, FM radio and 2 games. Most of these tools are useful out of the box but the FM radio does require you use a set of headphones (not supplied) The games are only trial versions and after 3 free plays you need to pay to use them and I wouldn’t bother as they are not great. The calendar app is just that, its a list of dates for the month with no option to add any reminders or notes to them which limits its usefulness. The phones internal memory allows you to store 300 contacts and 50 text messages so you will need to keep up on your housekeeping to delete unwanted texts as the 50 spaces includes sent as well as received so if you sent a lot of SMS you will find the phone full quite quickly.
The phone is quite loud when ringing and has a choice of a few built in midi ringtones for calls, texts and alarms. And there is a built in silent mode profile which can be accessed by holding down the hash key from the home screen but as the phone has no vibrate function you might not realise it is ringing unless you are looking directly at it when in silent mode or a noisy environment.
Although not mentioned in the advert at Argos the phone does come with a mini USB charger, which bearing in mind Argos charge £7.99 for a replacement charger its worth getting the phone just for the charger.
I have been using the phone for the last few weeks and did notice that it could struggle to find the network when the signal was low when other phones on EE would connect ok. I also had a few times when it wouldn’t sent an SMS text even though it was showing 3 or 4 bars of signal strength.
I did try connecting the phone up to a PC by the USB cable but the Windows 7 PC did not have the correct drivers for it and I could find no information when searching on the internet as to what functionality connecting it to a PC offers.
So after a month of using would i recommend buying this phone? Well if you are in the market for a very cheap pay-and-go mobile for just making calls and sending text and the fact that it will go for days on a full charge the Alcatel 10.16 could fit the bill. I would perhaps be wary of the phone should you live in an area of poor reception on EE as this phone won’t help the situation. But at £1.99 its almost worth getting just to throw in the glove compartment of your car for emergencies or to give to your kids as a first phone.