Alcatel wants to be Android, but different – and another crack at the Windows market Alcatel, a brand of Hong Kong-based TCL Communication, has announced the A5 LED at Mobile World Congress, which it claims is "the world’s first interactive LED-covered smartphone." Before you quip "and there's a reason for that", have some sympathy for the plight of Android vendors struggling to differentiate their brands. …
"have some sympathy for the plight of Android vendors struggling to differentiate their brands"
How about committing to providing updates (and quickly) and not stopping providing updates after a paltry few months, but keep updates / security fixes going for several years (not everyone changes phone every 2 years!).
.. and not installing a shed load of (without rooting) uninstallable junk.
.. I don't want branding / your "curated" apps, I want a vanilla phone with bare minimum installed & I'll customize it myself thanks!
As someone who wants a phone with SD card (glares angrily at Google as their phones have no SD card but updates are OKish) and removeable battery, you would get my cash if those and the points above were met.
i couldnt agree more.
removable battery , sd slot, 5.5" ish screen, waterproof, very good camera, vanilla android, keep it updated.
thats it. basically its a waterproof note 4 with a better camera (particularly in low light). ive been due an upgrade for a while but i cant find anything to fit the bill (suggestions appreciated)
stop putting fucking leds on the back and just learn the lessons of shit that doesnt work and fix it. this applies to tv manufacturers as well. stop making it shiny. make it boring, but make it work.
The typical phone buyer could care less about getting the latest version of Android (they don't even know what that would be) nor do they care about updates. Maybe they will when we eventually see a major malware problem that gets into the public consciousness the way Windows malware like I.Love.You and Code Red did, but that hasn't happened yet.
They generally don't care about a removable battery either. Probably waterproof is the only thing I saw listed that the majority of people care about, i.e. those who have killed a previous phone with water.
It is hilarious to read all the people on tech sites complaining about wanting vanilla Android, latest version, quick updates and so on, or ruling out a phone because it is on last year's leading edge SoC instead of this year's. Do you guys not realize that techies are a niche market? OEMs want to make a phone that will appeal to the broad base, not a niche. If they threw in every feature some niche contingent wants, then it'll cost a lot to make and you'll say "but but but...the one plus has almost the same feature set for half the price".
How about committing to providing updates (and quickly) and not stopping providing updates after a paltry few months
Sounds fine in principle but the trouble with Android is it's all or nothing. Budget handset makers often choose the minimum they can get away with for what they are delivered with and they often don't fare well with an update which is expecting more capable hardware.
It's a tough one; live with the risk of security holes or accept a slower and less responsive phone.
If they don't differentiate then they have to compete solely on price, and there's no profit to be made then. Of course, aside from Samsung none of them are making any profit now, but they keep hoping if they can hit the right goofy feature like modularity or LED lights on the back that they'll be the next Samsung. The problem is that Samsung got there by outspending everyone else (including Apple) by billions of dollars per year in advertising. Companies like HTC and Alcatel can't afford that sort of investment, so they are hoping to create "organic" buzz / word of mouth, I guess.
I have a Samsung galaxy and and so far it mostly does what I need. After 12 months I'm still getting up dates. Has removable batter and sd card. Only draw back is now they are pushing preview of apps I might want to install. If they got rid of that and allowed me to remove the bloat ware it would be perfect.
Crap, I could build one of those with a tight-pitch LED panel and a light-difusing plastic shell with a bit of microcontroller goodness to run it and a li-po to keep it from bothering the host device. But, yeah, looks like a silly batter waster. Here's me trying to purchase one at the mobile shop:
"Excuse me, lad. I'm an 'energetic young consumer' and wish to purchase the wacky LED phone."
"BEAT IT, POPS!! This is only for cool kids®, not oldsters℠!"
:(
And now for something completely the same:
"BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!1!"
'Windows 10 Mobile is not quite dead then'
"I'm feeling better! I feel happy! I'm... *thud*" -- Win10mobile
"There you are! See you next week."
IMHO they were really nice. Simple interface, great voice quality, no bother at all. They were emergency burners for DR/BCP, and we never had a problem when we handed them out.
The orange-coloured display made them really nice at night too.
I think they were almost a part of Lucent back then though...
Alcatel merged with Lucent around ten years ago to form Alcatel-Lucent, but that got bought by Nokia around a year ago.
The "Alcatel" mobile phones were originally a joint venture with TCL, before Alcatel handed the entire thing over, so it's really just TCL using the name under license now.
Technically, they (TCL) are using the Alcatel brand under license as well. The original company- or rather Alcatel-Lucent as it became- is still going, but the Alcatel mobile phones unit started out as a joint venture with TCL, presumably before Alcatel realised there was more money in their main infrastructure business than zero-margin Android phones and offloaded the whole thing to TCL.
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