Alcatel has an army of mobiles waiting to invade the pay as you go sections of phone shops this spring. Some may appear under the network's own names, and some may keep their Alcatel logos, but they're all going to be awesomely affordable.
For the truly skint, the cheapest of the bunch are the Alcatel OT-665, a basic flip-phone without 3G, and its candybar cousin, the Alcatel OT-506.
The Alcatel OT-803 (pictured above in photo 1) has a 2.4-inch touchscreen and a Qwerty keyboard, and comes in some blindingly bright colours. It's a 2G phone that supports Wi-Fi and has with a basic, Android-wannabe user interface.
The Alcatel OT-807 pumps things up with with a 2.8-inch touchscreen, but still lacks 3G or a smart-phone OS. Its twin, the Alcatel OT-806, tweaks the keyboard shape slightly and comes in silver instead of white.
Alcatel's range of Android phones starts with the OT-890, a tiny plastic smart phone with a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen. It also forgoes 3G, but it does have Wi-Fi and A-GPS.
All Alcatel's phones without 3G have a handy dedicated Wi-Fi button on the side, to make it easy to flip wireless on and off to save battery life and get connected quickly.
The OT-908 throws in 3G and HSDPA for faster downloads over the mobile network. It's also got a 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen and a more solid-feeling plastic case.
The king of Alcatel's Android castle is the OT-990. As well as having Android 2.2 Froyo on board, it sports a 5-megapixel camera with an LED photo light and a 3.5-inch touchscreen. We were also impressed with its pleasantly soft, matte case.
All Alcatel's Android phones come with 20 apps pre-installed to help first-time smart-phone users get straight into the fun without having to plough through the Android Market.
The whole gang of phones also work as webcams with your computer. Alcatel tells us that if you plug them in using a USB cable, your PC will recognise them as webcams and you can use them for things like Skype video calling.
Alcatel phones usually linger on the insanely affordable shelf, so expect all these phones to be as cheap as pick'n'mix. They're all arriving in shops in the spring.
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