In time for the year-end festive season, you might have realized that plenty of manufacturers have decided to release new smartphones into our market as of late. One of them is TCL Mobile who has just launched the new Alcatel One Touch Flash in Malaysia yesterday.
Built with a 5.5-inch 720p IPS display, TCL Mobile boldly claim it as one of the world’s best selfie smartphone due to its 5-megapixels front-facing camera. While we can’t vouch for the claim at the moment, there are definitely more to the phablet than just a substantially sized front camera.
In addition to its display which is supplemented by MediaTek’s MiraVision image enhancer technology, the One Touch Flash is also equipped with a 1.4GHz MediaTek MT6592M processor which contains eight ARM Cortex-A7 CPU cores that can be activated simultaneously. The processor also features an ARM Mali-450 MP4 GPU that is responsible for all graphics-related tasks on One Touch Flash.
With a thickness of 8.1mm, the 150 grams phablet also comes with 1GB of RAM, 8GB internal storage, and the support for microSD card with capacity of up to 32GB. In addition to that, the device also features dual SIM dual standby capability but its 3G download and upload speed are limited to 21Mbps and 5.76Mbp respectively. Not to forget, the phablet also carries a 3200mAh battery that provide it with up to 19 hours of talk time and 465 hours of standby time.
Camera-wise, the One Touch Flash also offers a 13-megapixels auto focus camera on its back alongside an LED flash and of course, the 5-megapixels front facing camera that we mentioned earlier. The software for both cameras are rather straight forward and pretty simple to use as if it is made to cater users that doesn’t require deep tweaking before snapping their photos.
Here are some image samples from the demo unit that we tested during its launch yesterday although do note that they might not represent the final product and the fact that the launch venue was dimly lit:
The phablet also features another technology from MediaTek called HotKnot which allows file transfer to be done from one device to another wirelessly through the device’s own display. Since MediaTek didn’t share much info about this particular technology, we don’t have any knowledge about its actual capabilities but we reckoned that its transfer speed seemed to be slightly faster than Bluetooth connection during our hands-on time with One Touch Flash.
At the same time, the One Touch Flash also feature another function called Smart Wake which allow users to open selected apps quickly by drawing one of the several predetermined gestures right on the screen. It also allows users to lock or unlock the phone by double tapping on the screen.
From our brief time with the device, the One Touch Flash feels and looks like a solid product. There is no obvious discrepancy in terms of quality or performance although we do wish that the three navigational buttons on the device are equipped with backlight to make them more visible in the dark. Additionally, we also wish that the phone would allow users to choose the size of the still image that they want to shoot with One Touch Flash’s front camera and it is baffling decision indeed since that this particular option is available for rear camera.
Priced at RM 699, the new Alcatel One Touch Flash is scheduled for release in Peninsular Malaysia on 12 December which will be then followed by East Malaysia on 15 December. TCT Mobile Malaysia will be providing quite a number of items to accompany the device, so do check out our previous report to learn more about them as well.
