Alcatel OT-808 – Phone with Notebook Look

Alcatel releases another entry-level handset with the Alcatel OT-808 that has a notebook look and feel which should throw anyone off. In another words, we can say that, OT-808 is a clamshell, a style not used as often now as it once was. But this is a clamshell with a difference: a small, slender square shape that resembles a handbag powder compact. This has its benefits and disadvantages. While the square shape allows more room for a strong QWERTY keyboard, it's not comfortable to use. Due to its compactness, there are no designated numeric keys; instead, pressing the shift key turns the left-hand side of the keyboard into keys 0-9, but this is only a minor irritation.

The phone supports a 61mm (2.4-inch) screen and blue-backlit keyboard. Built-in widgets include a calculator, an organizer, a currency converter and a voice recorder. It's an MP3 player and FM radio too. There's a 2-megapixel still and video camera which doubles as a webcam, streaming audio and video to the Internet. It supports microSD up to 8GB and plays H.263 and MPEG-4 video.

Other specs of the OT-808 include social networking integration, e-mail, instant messaging and the Opera Mini Browser, which is about the only real game going in the dumb phone mobile browsing space. Otherwise, you’re looking at the usual features including Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, an integrated FM radio and dual-band GSM connectivity.

A thin strip of an OLED display on the outside of the phone keeps you alerted to missed calls and new text messages. The internal display is an adequate 2.4 inches and is vibrant and colorful. That screen makes internet pages clear, with quite a large amount of content displayed. The superb Opera Mini browser is preloaded, so you will get web pages especially optimized for mobile that load quicker and show you more of the page. Unfortunately, though, you have to rely on slow EDGE access speeds.