Why You Can Trust CNET Alcatel Authority review: Low-end Android for a midrange price
Saddled with a weak processor, slow 3G data, and Android Gingerbread, the $249.99 Alcatel Authority is a questionable purchase at best.
On the surface, the $249.99 Alcatel Authority looks like nice option on Cricket Wireless. The smartphone runs Android and connects to Google's vast ecosystem of software and services. The phone also is compatible with Cricket's Muve Music song-rental service, putting unlimited and portable tunes within the handset's reach. That said, newer options on the no-contract carrier have come along offering more for the same price. For example, the ZTE Engage has a fresher version of Android, while the LG Optimus Regard adds to this faster performance plus 4G data. All that makes the Authority add up to an unsound decision.
Alcatel Authority
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Design
The Alcatel Authority lacks the stunning beauty of today's superphones, which sport breathtakingly slim designs or all-metal construction. Like its sister phone on Cricket, the LG Optimus Regard, the Alcatel Authority has a chassis made from the more mundane gray-colored plastic. In line with its sibling, however, the handset feels solidly built and, weighing 4.8 ounces, has heft that I find reassuring. I also like the faux-silver trim running around the edges of the device that adds a touch of sophistication.
Measuring 5 inches tall by 2.8 inches wide by 0.4 inch thick, the Authority is longer yet slightly thinner than the Optimus (4.37 inches by 2.29 inches by 0.45 inch). Above the phone's screen sit a notification light, trim earpiece grille, and tiny lens for its front-facing VGA resolution camera.
Below the display are four capacitive buttons that I admit threw me for a loop at first. With stenciled-in icons for home, settings, back, and search, the keys use the old Android Gingerbread layout, which I haven't seen in quite some time.
Beyond that, you won't find many physical controls on the Authority. The left edge holds a thin volume rocker while up top sits a tiny power key near a 3.5mm headphone jack. On back of the phone is the 5-megapixel main camera with LED flash, circled by an attractive silver oblong. I think it complements the square but softly tapered lines of the handset well.
There's a long, thin speaker slot here too and the plastic battery cover sports a scale-like textured surface that grips fingertips yet repels fingerprints. A 1,530mAh removable battery lives under the cover, along with an SD Card slot that you can access without disturbing the battery.
Display and interface
With its 4.3-inch, 800x480-pixel-resolution LCD screen, smartphone newcomers perhaps will find the Alcatel Authority's display captivating. I certainly didn't. While the screen is relatively bright, its viewing angles are extremely shallow. If I tilted the handset in any direction rather than staring at the display dead-on, both brightness and color fidelity immediately deteriorated. Also, the Authority's low-resolution screen translated into blocky images and text, especially in side-by-side comparison with the 4.8-inch, 1,280x720-pixel Samsung Galaxy S3.
Pressing the power button on the top of the Authority fires up the phone's lock screen. It displays a large digital clock along with date and network status. To unlock the device, you must swipe across the screen left or right, which sends you to one of the five home screens. Cricket sprinkles a default selection of apps and widgets across them but you can customize each screen with the app shortcuts and Android widgets you choose. Placed on the bottom of every screen are quick-launch icons for the phone dialer, the vertically scrolling application tray, and the Web browser.
Software and apps
A throwback to another era, the Alcatel Authority's Android 2.3.6 Gingerbread operating system is a blast from the past. First launched in December 2010, Gingerbread is positively archaic, given the lightning-fast development of the mobile device industry. Still, as an Android phone the Authority offers access to Google's universe of services, staples such as Gmail, Google+, Google Talk, Google Latitude, Google Maps and navigation, local search, and YouTube. For more capabilities, the Google Play store stands ready to supply additional apps and software for download.
One thing I am truly grateful for is the Authority's lack of copious amounts of bloatware. There are apps for accessing your Cricket account and backing up your phone, Cricket 411 conducts local searches, and Cricket Navigator offers turn-by-turn driving instructions. Honestly though, you'd be better off using these apps' Google equivalents since they're both free and better-designed. I can say the same thing for Cricket's app store (called Storefront), which has a modest number of titles and background wallpapers, but can't even begin to compare to the depth of Google Play.
Cricket throws in two games titles: Block Breaker 3 and Uno. They are merely trial versions, however, and to rub salt in the wound, can't be uninstalled. There are basic organizer and productivity features, such as a calendar, instant messaging and e-mail support (including Microsoft Exchange), a calculator, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, an alarm clock, voice commands and a voice recorder, a weather app, Polaris Office, and a notepad. And if you need help remembering your to-do list, there's a handy task manager.
The most compelling of Cricket's onboard software is the Muve Music rental service. If you subscribe to a special Muve Music plan bundled with a Cricket Wireless subscription, you can download and store as many music tracks as will fit in your phone's memory. There are caveats though, such as that you can only listen to tracks on your handset and that Muve wireless plans cost an extra $10 per month.
Camera and media
Equipped with a 5-megapixel sensor and a no-frills camera app, the Alcatel Authority takes decent if rather uninspiring photos. Still-life images I snapped indoors were exposed correctly and exhibited accurate color but details were soft.
Image quality improved outdoors under sunlight and subjects had lifelike, not oversaturated color, but again lacked the sharp crispness you find on phones using higher-resolution sensors. Shot-to-shot time wasn't too shabby, with the Authority capturing pictures in about a second, far from the instantaneous handling you'll see in many modern smartphones.
The handset's camera also lacks many of the fancy shooting modes of more advanced phones, such as panorama, burst, or even snazzy color filters. Besides special effects for Sepia, Mono (Black and White), and Negative, the most exotic tools on board are manual ISO settings that range from 100 to 400.
Processor and data speeds
Powered, or, more precisely, underpowered, by a 1.4GHz processor and a small, 512MB allotment of RAM, the Alcatel Authority is no speed demon. In fact it's downright pokey, often handling like a lumbering 60-ton battle tank. The phone launched apps sluggishly with a perceptible delay and sometimes the screen didn't respond immediately to my finger swipes.
Benchmark tests backed up my anecdotal experience, with the Authority coughing up a very low Linpack score of 50.2 MFLOPs (single-thread). For instance, another Cricket Wireless handset, the HTC One SV (1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4, 1GB RAM) managed a much higher 147.3 MFLOPs on the same test. The Authority also turned in an anemic Quadrant score (Quadrant is a test that measures overall smartphone performance) of just 2,572.
As a 3G handset, the Alcatel Authority demonstrated slow -- but not unexpectedly so -- data speeds. Using Ookla's Speedtest app I clocked average download throughput at a low 223Kbps while uploads averaged a slightly higher 303Kbps.
Call quality
I tested the tri-band CDMA (800/1900/AWS) Alcatel Authority on Cricket's network in New York. Call quality was adequate but not exceptional. People I called could immediately tell I was using a cell phone and described my voice as sounding muffled. They could also hear crackling at the beginning and ends of words. To me, voices on calls I placed to landlines came through loud and clear and with considerable warmth.
Callers reported that they experienced audio quality with speakerphone similar to what they heard when I spoke through the mouthpiece. To my ears, though the Authority's speaker is large, calls through the speakerphone didn't have much volume even at its loudest setting.
Battery life
Alcatel rates the Authority's 1,530mAh battery as giving a talk time of up to 5 hours and a standby time of up to 420 hours (17.5 days). That's not very long, which isn't a shock considering the relatively small capacity of the phone's battery. Indeed, the handset struggled to last through a full workday and conked out after approximately 6 hours of playing an HD video continuously.
Conclusion
Just because a smartphone is sold without a contract, that's no reason to swallow a raw deal. While the $249.99 Alcatel Authority sits squarely in the midrange of the Cricket Wireless product line, its slow performance, uninspiring camera, and ancient Android operating system are underwhelming to say the least. Newer handsets at the same $249.99 price, such as the ZTE Engage and LG Optimus Regard, both run the more modern Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
Better still, the Optimus Regard boasts a faster processor resulting in peppier performance, not to mention access to 4G data if you live in Cricket's fast cellular coverage area. That's why I'm hard-pressed to recommend any other device on Cricket at this price than the Regard. Of course if the stylish and nimble $369.99 HTC One SV drops in price then I'd say scoop it up.