What makes a good smartwatch? Having a great battery life, surely. Being useful, definitely. Being attractive, maybe being no-fuss and somewhat fun to use. It's a tough combination to hit, and that's why there aren't any perfect smartwatches yet.
Alcatel's OneTouch Watch brings a few really good ideas to the table: it's affordable (priced at $150 or €99; an equivalent of £98 and AU$186). It's water-resistant, reasonably. Its battery lasts several days. It works with both iPhones and Android phones (iOS 7 and Android 4.3 and later). And, best of all, it doesn't have a separate charger: it has USB in its band. I'd love to see other watches try these ideas out.
It could have been a killer combo, if the watch was great. It isn't. I've been wearing one for a handful of days, and it ends up feeling like...well, a budget smartwatch. I wanted to love it more. The OneTouch may not end up touching a lot of people, but its heart is in the right place.
Design
To most people, the round Alcatel OneTouch will look like one of the many circular-faced Android Wear watches to have come down the chute, including the Moto 360 and the LG G Watch R . Alcatel will offer both rubber and metal straps, but they're not replaceable. My review model had a rubberized sport band: attractive next to the metal body and glass-covered face.
The watch runs its own software but has three interchangeable watch faces: two round analog-style ones and one digital. The black-and-white design works well with the hour markers permanently placed around the outer dial, and the Alcatel phone app lets you change background wallpapers to different colors, preset patterns, or any photo you'd like.
The band is a little hard to put on: it's stiff, mostly because it also houses a flip-out USB port on the edge of the band's tip. It took me a while to figure out how to pre-adjust the metal clasp down the band, fit it on my wrist, snap it tight and get that USB tip to fold in nicely. The stiffness on my wrist wasn't awful, but it didn't feel loose and comfy. For its price, it cuts a sharp profile.
No one may know you're not wearing Android Wear, even if you do. The round LCD display has the same "flat tire" cutout on the bottom as the Moto 360, so it isn't fully round.
Smart...somewhat
The OneTouch runs its own operating system; neither Android Wear or anything else. Tap on the screen, and there's a colorful grid of apps and features. Stopwatch, weather, timer and controls like screen brightness and airplane mode. It's hard to tell what icon does what: they're not always intuitive. You can check a fitness app, start a timed workout, open a camera-control remote shutter feature (on iOS, it makes you open the Alcatel app before it works), and use a music playback remote to see what tracks you're listening to on your phone, skip/play/pause and adjust volume.
The watch hooks into your phone's notifications, even allowing you to individually turn the fire hose on and off for individual apps. Facebook, Twitter, mail, incoming calls: they're all there. On the watch, swiping up brings up the list of notifications, split up by type. It's a clever idea, but the notifications end up being glommed into scrollable lists. I rarely got pop-up messages; instead, my watch would vibrate and make me check the phone's notification window. It was a lot less easy to use casually than, say, the Pebble watch .
You'll have to touch the screen, mostly by swiping, and press the side button to navigate. The OneTouch Watch doesn't have a microphone or speaker, so you can't dictate messages, or listen to calls. Even with touch, it's harder to operate than the simple four-button Pebble watch.
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