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You can use a Bluetooth stereo headset for listening to music if you prefer, and can use the USB cable to access the phone's memory directly from your PC in Mass Storage mode.

Battery life was a saving grace of this mobile. Non-stop music was delivered for nine and a half hours from a full battery charge. With few power hungry features to drain the battery, it lasted well and you should be able to get away with a couple of days between charges if you aren't a big music fan.

If you thought the screen resolution of this mobile was low, then the camera's will astound you. It shoots at resolutions up to 640 x 480 and no more. It does have a few fun features like a three-shot burst mode and frames. There is a self-timer, a few colour filters and some variations on embossing with colour themes. And there are shooting modes for different lighting conditions. But whatever you choose among these, image quality may be a bit of a let down.

The camera performed poorly both indoors and out. The coloured dish shot under normal household lighting conditions is fuzzy and rather bland. The outdoor shots are way over-exposed and detail is poor. Any attempts at photographing anything in motion were unsuccessful with regular blurring in the photos.

As for other features, there is no web browser on board, though you can fiddle with WAP sites should the mood take you. There is an organiser, five alarms, calculator, converter, and voice memo. A couple of Java games bulk things out, too. Contacts are arranged in ‘directories' of which the phone can manage up to five, containing 100 entries each.

Verdict

In the end I expected more from this mobile because it was allied with a fashion brand. Granted the battery life was respectable and Alcatel does do some good things with its entry-level mobiles, but not this time I'm afraid.

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