RSS FeedAlcatel is back!
Remember this mobile phone brand? Their most memorable unit was given a moniker “The Safeguard Phone” or “The Soap Bar Phone” since it’s shape reminded the owner of a soap bar. One strong selling point of the Alcatel brand is the price. Now they have come back with better-designed phones, still at the most competitive prices.
At the age of the colored, multi-media, multi-tasking mobile phones, a lot of brands are competing for a piece of the mobile phone market. Alcatel has once again innovated a series of phones that are not too shabby, feature-rich and competitively priced. Their newest model has even forayed to the touch-screen mobile phone competition. The price, as you guessed is a quarter of the other touch-screen brands. Alcatel’s design for their mobile phones now are not bad either, they have even revamped their logo to match the new style of their phones. The lowest model looks even better than the highest model of the other brands, and where can you get a mobile phone at under 5USD.
To reposition itself and reintroduce the Alcatel brand, they partnered with Playboy, yes playboy the mens men brand to release the first ever playboy phone. I just hope they don’t put Hef as the phones default wallpaper.
The actual model name for the Acatel Playboy phone is the Alcatel V770. The phone comes in standard piano black and white models, but the special edition playboy series V770’s come in a plethora of styles and colors. They even plastered the Logo bunny all over the phone. I like the gold version which looks really blinged out, but there is the chrome/silver and pink version as well. Some more other models come in custom colors. All Special Edition Alcatel Playboy phone comes preloaded with the Playboy Playmates images, wallpapers, screen savers and videos.
Alcatel V770
One retailer gave Gee Please a unit for review and testing. I got the white model with the silver trims. It looks expensive. The finish is sleek and glossy. Size is thin and wide, and the first time I held it, I dropped it and dented the corner. Amazingly, the dent is so small for a 3ft. drop. It also didn’t even dazed the phone. The display is quite vivid and bright, it is quite large and the color is crisp and everything is detailed even to the navigation icons.
Navigation is a breeze; it uses the standard icon grid system. The v770 is posed as a music phone, so it comes with a nice-looking ear phone which is not ugly-sounding either. However, the cans use a mini-usb to attach to the phone, I hope Alcatel opted for the standard 3.5mm jack. It also has a microSD slot for more music and videos. For a basic phone it is really great.
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
My qualms with the Alcatel v770 however is that the camera is not too great. No front camera for video calls and no dedicated controls for music playing aside from the keypad. It does not have a standard 3-column keypad layout as users are accustomed to with the other phones. Rather it has four which is hard to text on. The 4-Column keypad is not even qwerty. Another annoying thing is that your messages can’t be saved on the external card, rather on the built-in memory which limits your number of saved messages. Once the message memory is full, you cannot receive further messages until you clear out it’s message memory.
Stronger points of the Playboy phone is it’s display which is vibrant even under direct sunlight. Sound for Alerts and Music is quite loud which won’t allow you to even miss a text message or a phone call with it’s loudness. Navigation is quick and responsive. The phone signal is also quite strong wherever I am as compared to my other mobile phones. The built in mobile web browser is quite fast and renders mobile sites very well. Like accessing Yahoo Mobile is so quick and accessing your mail is like accessing it on the standard Yahoo Mail on your Computer. Not to mention the battery life that juices up for five to seven days on standby on actual test. Overall for quality versus price, you won’t lose on the Alcatel v770 or the limited edition Playboy versions. Don’t expect to be like Hugh Hefner though, he is “The Man”, you only have “The Phone”.
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
Nokia Clone Wars
Much like Jango Fett being cloned in the Star Wars saga, it wouldn’t take long from the copy masters from China to copy our favorite gadgets and things. They have cloned Nike shoes, which looks like “real” nike’s. They have cloned bags from prada to dolce, hopefully they haven’t cloned Yao Ming yet.
This is a testament to their craftsmanship, attention to details, intricacy, concentration and discipline. They also need their economy to work, so a bunch of cloning (used loosely, means copying too) shops and factories has sprouted all over China. Before they made crappy copies, and now you can’t even distinguish the Authentic from the clone.
Their next project is due to the ever increasing need for the Techie crowd to always be on top of the Gadget list. So they started to clone electronic gadgets as well. From all types of iPods, iPhones and all types of mobile phones. I recently purchased a Nokia 5310 clone just to give a quality review to the Chinese manufacturing and cloning prowess.
Jango Fett in a Million
First off, Side by side the original 5310 (I borrowed an original from a friend) it looks exactly the same. The paint job, the plastic’s color, the plastics design and even intricate details like the rain-drop style design on the battery cover is to the point, exact. Dimensions are also the same, I didn’t notice a difference in their weight nor the display quality. There is one problem on my clones software version, it was on the cheeky side with custom cutesy icons and I can’t use an mp3 as an alert tone, although it plays mp3’s. I changed my unit with the more standard version of the clone which has the exact software as the original. It even has a memory card slot and it comes packed with a 256Mb microSD. The only thing I noticed that was off is the Nokia logo itself. On the clone version, it was Nckia, with the letter “C” more like an “O” but with a little stripe in the supposed open end of the letter “C”.
I was Cloned!
A tell-tale sign for these cloned gadgets is more commonly on the feature set, like most early April release of the cloned Nokia phones has the same default tones and most can’t use mp3’s as message alerts. The batteries are also different on their models. On iPod clones, the screen is a bit murky and the tactile response of the touch-screen is a bit off. So better check your gadgets before you buy them, you might be paying a higher price for a cloned product which is priced two to four times less than the original price of the authentic.
Using the cloned phone for a couple of days, it feels and functions like the original, no hiccups and been solid for a week now. Dropped it twice already and it’s still functioning with not a single glitch. Been playing it’s mp3 a lot on the bus since it’s built-in speaker are much louder compared to it’s authentic counterpart.
Cheap but Great: Nokia 2630
You know this site is all about great affordable stuff right?. So you want a new mobile phone you can throw away when you get your PMS tantrums (if you are a girl) or you favorite football team loses and you put all your savings to your bookie (if you are a stupid moron)?
If you got 100 USD left in your pocket, then this would be the absolute phone for you. The All New Nokia 2630. I busted my Xpress Music phone 2 months after I bought it, I got it serviced but the week in between was hard thinking I couldn’t Txt (sms) all I want. Although i have my business phone with me, my personal phone is the busier one. So I got up and hunted for a phone. Price wasn’t my main concern at first.
Nokia 2630
So I went to a local Nokia Dealer and asked for their selections, they pointed me to the N-Series phones and the SuperNova lineup. I was sold on them and I was trying out some of them which I found amazing. Then I thought, why splurge on something I don’t essentially need? My other mobile will get replaced anyway.
Still the N-Series phones were quite tempting. That is when I sort of do my “take a leak” routine as a reason to think ten times before purchasing anything. I found this a good way to minimize impulse buying.
When I got out of the Mens room, I saw this pretty girl looking at lanyards in one section of the shop. Well I guess I have time to strike up a conversation, so I actually looked at lanyards my self and said “My phone is so heavy for these things, I think it’s nice for ID cards though”. The pretty girl which I got the name later as Jenny looked up and said, “Well you can always get a lighter phone”. What a nice idea I thought, so I talked to her some more and asked what phone she is using. That’s when she pulled out a bright white version of the Nokia 2630. So i said what a nice phone she has, she said thanks and quipped that it was affordable too. She then attached Read more…
A Reason to get a Nokia
Nokia Feeling the Heat
Theres up to a 10% Price Cut on Nokia phones, now that’s a good reason to get the nokia mobile you have been salivating about. This is a move by nokia to put pressure on their competition.
This may also be caused by nokia feeling the pressure from increasing Samsung and LG market share. Mostly music and media phones were slashed-price but other units are discounted as well.
Now only if you could get your Nokia phone on a BestBuy vending machine… Oh wait, you can now do that on your way to the airport… See BestBuy Vending machine article in Gizmodo…
GP Gold Achievers
GIZMODO- JooJoo Tablet Gets New Interface With Updated Home Screen, Navigation and Keyboards [Jooojoo] March 11, 2010
- Intel's 6-Core Gulftown Gets Tested, Blows Us Away [CPUs] March 11, 2010
- Apple iBooks' Many Ebook Categories Include "Erotica" [Unconfirmed] March 11, 2010
- I Would Be Happy With Just Half an Infinity Bath [Bath] March 11, 2010
- Heavy Rain: A Peek Into the Future of Movies and Games [Entertain Me] March 11, 2010
- Emergency Vehicle Gadget Overload Will Kill/Save Us All [Trends] March 11, 2010
- The Barnes & Noble eReader iPad App Is On the Way (But Will Apple Maim It?) [Apple] March 11, 2010
- Chatroulette Map Shows You Where These Creeps Live [Chatroulette] March 11, 2010
- Pink Floyd Wins Legal Battle to Only Sell Full Albums Online [Downloads] March 11, 2010
- Where Next for the Manned Space Program? [Space] March 11, 2010
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