With its suggested retail price of 119 euros, the Alcatel 1S is one of the cheapest new smartphones today. But is it also a good buy or is it better to put down a few bucks more? You can read it in this extensive Alcatel 1S 2021 review.
Alcatel 1S 2021
Recommended retail price € 119,-
Colors black and blue
OS Android 11
Screen 6.52″ LCD (1600 x 720, 60Hz)
Processor 1.8GHz octa-core (MediaTek Helio P22)
RAM 3GB
Storage 32 GB (expandable)
Battery 4,000 mAh
Camera 13, 2 and 2 megapixels (rear), 5 megapixels (front)
Connectivity 4G (LTE), Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi b/g/n, GPS
Format 16.5 x 7.6 x 0.88 cm
Weight 190 grams
Other Headphone port, fingerprint scanner
Website www.alcatelmobile.com 7.5 Score 75 
- Pros
- price
- User experience
- Battery life
- Negatives
- No 5 GHz WiFi
- Moderate update policy
- Lots of pre-installed apps
The Alcatel 1S 2021 was announced in January and has been on sale since the beginning of May for only 119 euros. (web) stores have already sold it on sale for 109 euros. In short: the Alcatel 1S is one of the cheapest smartphones of the moment. In this Alcatel 1S 2021 review you can read whether the price-quality ratio is also in order.
Design
It’s no surprise that the 2021 Alcatel 1S is made of plastic. Fortunately, the smartphone feels sturdy enough and it is not remarkably heavy at 190 grams. That will be partly due to the 4000 mAh battery – not very big for this type of device. The 1S 2021 has a speaker that can be quite loud but sounds quite shrill. You can connect earbuds to the 3.5mm headphone port. A fingerprint scanner is placed on the back of the phone to unlock the screen. The scanner is noticeably slower than an expensive smartphone, but it works well enough. I find it difficult to find by touch because the scanner is barely recessed into the housing. So my finger doesn’t automatically fall on it. At the top of the screen is a v-shaped cutout with the selfie camera.
Screen
The screen of the Alcatel 1S 2021 is of average size at 6.52 and in my opinion a pleasant size. Big enough to comfortably type with two hands, but not so big that you have to use the smartphone with two hands. The screen looks sharp enough due to the HD resolution. The colors look nice and the maximum brightness is good enough to read the screen in a brightly lit room. Outside on a sunny day, you have to keep your hand above the screen, otherwise you won’t see much.
Hardware
The Alcatel 1S 2021 runs on a simple MediaTek processor with 3 GB of RAM. A usual combination for a budget smartphone. In practice, the 2021 1S is fast enough for popular apps such as WhatsApp and Instagram, although you sometimes have to be patient. This phone is less suitable for games.
The device has 32 GB of storage memory, of which only 16 GB is available for your apps, photos and other media. The rest of the memory is already in use by the Android operating system and pre-installed apps – more on that in a moment. You can easily and cheaply increase the storage memory with a micro-SD card of up to 512 GB.
It is nice that the Alcatel 1S can handle 4G internet, Bluetooth 5.0 and two SIM cards (dual SIM). A significant cutback is that the smartphone is not suitable for WiFi on the fast 5 GHz frequency. Internet at the highest speed is therefore not possible at home, although this pain point applies to many budget smartphones.
Battery life and charging
Another savings is the choice of a micro USB port to charge the battery and connect to a computer. Too bad, because a USB-C port is more user-friendly because the cable fits in two ways and the charging can be faster. Almost all comparably priced smartphones now use USB-C, so the Alcatel 1S gets a minus behind its name at this point.
Alcatel supplies the smartphone with a 10 Watt charger, which takes almost 2.5 hours to charge the battery. So quite long, but as far as I’m concerned not a disaster. The battery lasts a long day without worry. If you use the device less in one day, it only needs to be charged after two days.
Cameras
The triple camera on the back looks impressive, but does not amount to much. Considering the price of the smartphone, that is not surprising. With the 13-megapixel main camera you can take nice photos and share them via WhatsApp, for example. The pictures are less suitable for processing in a photo book. In the dark, the camera is completely limited in terms of possibilities. The 2 megapixel macro camera lets you shoot photos from very close by, for example of a flower. Nice, but the resolution is so low that you can’t do much with it and the colors are not realistic. Finally, the 2 megapixel depth sensor. It blurs the background on demand when you photograph a person or object and does this well enough. More expensive smartphones are – as expected – more accurate in this area. They bring your entire head into focus, where the Alcatel 1S 2021 regularly blurs an ear or part of the haircut.
Software and updates
The Alcatel 1S runs out of the box on Android 11, the most recent version. Android 12 will be released later this year, but Alcatel has already indicated that it will not make this update available for the Alcatel 1S. That is a shame because with this device you do not benefit from improvements and innovations in the Android operating system. Slightly more expensive smartphones from brands such as Samsung, Nokia and Motorola do receive Android 12. Alcatel also does not have the best policy when it comes to security updates. The 1S will receive one security update every three months until May 2023 – so for two years. Samsung also updates its budget phones every three months, but does this for four years. And Nokia promises three years of updates, one per month. Such smartphones cost a few tens more, but are therefore faster and/or longer protected against vulnerabilities in the Android software. Although I understand that Alcatel also uses a simple update policy to arrive at the competitive selling price of the 1S, it is good to realize what you are compromising on.
It is also worth noting that Alcatel installs quite a few extra apps on the 1S 2021. That is annoying because they take up part of the storage memory and the memory is not that large. Therefore, if you are not using the apps, I would uninstall them. You can do this in the settings under Apps. In particular, apps like Booking.com and the handful of games together take up hundreds of MBs of space. Alcatel installs the apps and games because it receives compensation from the respective companies.
Conclusion: Buy Alcatel 1S 2021?
The Alcatel 1S 2021 is a dirt cheap smartphone that does what it promises. Nothing more and nothing less. The device works properly and seems to last a few years. Keep in mind the mediocre update policy and the lack of features such as faster Wi-Fi. If you can spare a few bucks more, I recommend a slightly more expensive smartphone like the Poco M3, Nokia G10 or Xiaomi Redmi 9T. They have a nicer screen, are faster and receive more frequent and longer updates. Such a device is noticeably better. But if you want the cheapest possible smartphone, the Alcatel 1S 2021 is a great choice.
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