Woolworth launches Alcatel OT-S520

This summer Woolworth retail stores have a nice surprise for those users who love the stylish Alcatel cell phones. The new OT-S520 is a classic candy bar handset available in black/red or black/silver for as low as £14.99 ($30 USD) on Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go tariff. Alcatel OT-S520 come with 1.8 inch 65K color screen with 128 x 160 pixels resolution, two MB shared memory, and a 640×480 pixels VGA camera that can be hooked up to computer as a regular webcam. This handset provides you with up to ten hours talking time, and about 400 hours in standby, powered by a standard Li-Ion 750 mAh battery.   Although this handset is recommended as backup for your basic cell phone, there is no reason you cannot adopt it as your main communications gadget. Alcatel has proved great performance even with the most basic models available for sale, such as the Alcatel OT-E201, often referred as one of the most cheaper and useful mobile devices of all the times.

Alcatel OT-S520 was announced past February 2008, and it was expected to be released in May until the definite date favored Woolworth with the exclusivity. This handset measures 103 x 44.9 x 10.9 mm and weighs only 69 g with battery. Despite it supports GPRS Class 10 and comes with 4+1/3+2 slots (32-48 kbps), it lacks of Bluetooth, WLAN, EDGE, HSCSD, or 3G technologies.

When it comes to connectivity, there is not any infrared port to connect with, but the OT-S520 has USB port, which is a feature not available in other models of this series. Although this cell phone doesn’t support ringtones customization, it can reproduce MP3 and 64-channel polyphonic ringtones. Despite it has no memory card slot, this handset can store up to 800 phonebook entries and saves 20 dialers, 20 missed and 20 received calls.

Depending on your own needs, Alcatel OT-S520 can satisfy the average user that does not need Wi-Fi access or productivity tools beyond its standard calculator, organizer and currency converter. Nonetheless, it comes with a WAP 2.0/xHTML browser to surf the web via GPRS.

Other features of the news OT-S520 include built-in hands-free, vibration mode, clock, alarm, T9 predictive text, SMS and MMS messaging, two games, embedded images and animations, speakerphone and GSM (850/1900 MHz) dual band.

If you are not so convinced about this cell phone, visit your closer Woolworth store, where you will find it in shelves promoting this model as “My First Handset,” but if you have tried truly basic model regardless the brand label, you know this is not exactly what we used to know as a “basic” model since its features are above the average starters’ cell phones. Some other Alcatel OT-S models with similar design have improved memory capacity, additional memory and even recording functions, but the OT-S520 include features that no other of them has so we can easily say it is a well-balanced mix between a basic and a featured cell phone, which main advantage is its pricing.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 3:19 am and is filed under Gadget Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Woolworth launches Alcatel OT-S520”

1. Jenna Says:
   September 9th, 2008 at 11:53 am

   I have searched all over for something cheap, reliable, does most things an average mobile does, that has a camera & Mp3 (the Alcatel OT-S520 is the one)!!

   Features

   65k Colour screen
   128 x 160 pixels
   Camera type : VGA
   Internal phone memory : 2mb
   Internal photo/video capacity : 1mb

   Talk time : up to10hrs
   Standby time : up to 400hrs
   Games
   64 Tone Polyphonic & MP3 ringtones
   WAP browser
   HTML MP web browser

   Speaker phone
   Compatibility : PC
   Operating platform : MTK
   USB
   Frequency band : dual
   Weight : 69g
   Size : H103.5mm x W44.9mm x D10.9mm

   What could be more compact and reliable or £14.99 as sale price at Woolworths now?! Even if it broke, it would not be a massive price to lose…