MWC 2022: Hands On with Alcatel's Midrange A3, U5

Flagship phones like the LG G6 and the Sony Xperia XZ Premium got a lot of love at MWC 2022, but that doesn't mean at that place was cypher worthwhile for lovers of affordable phones. Aside from the metal-clad Moto G5 and G5 Plus, you have solid options from Alcatel in the form of the midrange A3 (higher up) and the entry-level U5.

MWC Bug Art While they won't dominate whatsoever benchmark tests, they will get y'all data connectivity, run nigh apps, and keep you lot continued with calls and text. Nosotros went hands on and overall they seem like a good midrange or entry-level options for those on a budget.

Design and Physical Features

The A3 is "affordable premium," according to Alcatel. It has a build that mixes white plastic with a strip of metal along the edge for a clicky power push and volume rocker. The dorsum has a grippy texture to information technology and the metal along the sides makes for a nice feel. You'll also observe a fingerprint sensor on the dorsum, which is a nice feature to accept and one nosotros're increasingly seeing on upkeep devices like the Moto G5. The A3's dimensions are also meaty, measuring 5.half-dozen past 2.8 by 0.3 inches (HWD). I found information technology piece of cake to utilise with one hand and lightweight due to the hybrid plastic and metallic build.

On the front, y'all get a 5-inch 720p IPS brandish. Information technology's not every bit sharp as the 1080p panel on the G5, but at 294ppi it should be crisp plenty y'all won't notice any pixels unless you're looking extremely closely. Brightness could be higher, just the screen was visible under the brilliant showroom lights; it probably won't handle direct sunlight well. Below the display y'all'll observe a set up of backlit capacitive buttons for navigation.

Alcatel U5 and

The U5 by dissimilarity is meant for the masses. While the A3 has some premium elements to give it the midrange experience, the U5 is unapologetically a polycarbonate slab. Measuring 5.5 past 2.8 past 0.4 inches, its dimensions are nigh identical to the A3 and you'll find both phones pretty easy to utilize with simply 1 mitt and equally light, but the U5 feels cheaper due to mushy buttons. The back console has the same texture equally the A3, only you lot won't become a fingerprint sensor.

The front has a 5-inch, 854-by-480 brandish, which gives it a pixel density of 196ppi. That's a scrap sparse and here you will notice the pixels, though fortunately the screen didn't seem grainy or done out. That said, it was dim and I had some difficulty seeing under the lights of the showroom flooring, so I wouldn't conceptualize being able to use information technology in direct sunlight. You'll also find a set of capacitive buttons beneath.

Hardware and Software

The A3 is powered by a quad-core MediaTek 6737 clocked at 1.1GHz. It has 1.5GB of RAM under the hood and overall it can handle most tasks without much difficulty. When launchings apps and switching between them, I did detect a little bit of sluggishness, but the apps all opened and the phone never high-strung entirely. That said, ane.5GB of RAM isn't very much these days so you will come upward against the hard limit of RAM usage, in which instance your phone will strength-close apps.

This goes double for the U5, which has the same processor and clock speed, but simply 1GB of RAM. Stuttering was a bit more pronounced when multitasking and you can't button the telephone besides hard before you striking the limit. It did seem to run nearly apps, though, which is skillful if you lot don't need much more than than that and some spider web browsing.

Alcatel U5

The phone has a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. Despite sounding decent on newspaper, photographic camera performance was hard to gauge due to the wildly variable lighting conditions. Alcatel had ane of its A5 phones with Alexa hooked up to a smart light and it was demoing vox commands, casting a part of the showroom flooring into darkness at periodic intervals. Needless to say, the camera will struggle in those circumstances, though the A3 did manage to focus fairly reliably.

For a better idea of how the A3 camera fares, we'll have to await till we get a review unit. The 5-megapixel rear camera on the U5 and the 2-megapixel front camera too struggles with the aforementioned result, but given its entry-level hardware, we don't expect the photographic camera functioning to be its strong suit.

Both phones have micro SD card slots and support expandable storage. Don't expect whatsoever connectivity protocols beyond Bluetooth 4.2 and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. The A3 has a 2,460mAh bombardment, which seems like it should provide a decent battery life since the 720p display isn't as hungry as 1080p panels on similarly sized phones. The U5 has 2050mAh prison cell, which nosotros should also last you an average day'southward use.

Both phones come running Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Alactel's UI layer running on top. We wouldn't count on either of them getting Nougat, though, which is a difficult pill to swallow for phones existence released in 2022. The Moto G5, by contrast, comes with Nougat and may get at least one big update.

Stay tuned for our full review of both devices.