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Orange hopes to drive smartphone sales with three Facebook phones, two seem kinda dumb
Orange is unhappy. The company cites that of its new phone sales, nearly half are feature phones. While the statistic isn't exactly a shocker, the French telecom believes it can do better. In an effort to drive the adoption of smartphones, Orange has chosen to jump on the Facebook bandwagon with three new options that offer immediate access to the iconic social network. Perhaps the carrier's efforts are a bit misguided, however, because of this trio, only one handset is actually a smartphone. (As such, it's the only one we care about.) Known as the Alcatel One Touch 908F, it's a re-configured 908 with the same 2.8-inch display, 600MHz Qualcomm CPU and Froyo -- yeah, you read that correctly. Could it be that the two feature phones are so unpalatable that they'll also drive smartphone adoption? Whatever the case may be, each device is squarely aimed (and priced) at teens and emerging markets. For example, the 908F will debut south of €100 off-contract, accompanied by plans that start at €9 per month. Before year's end, Poland and Romania will be among the first victims to receive the bunch, followed by countries such as Armenia, Botswana, Cameroon and France. Speaking of misguided, perhaps Orange should have asked AT&T how the Status is selling.
Alcatel Onetouch lineup hands-on
Alcatel's on hand at MWC this year with a good pile of sets so we took a few minutes to checkout the Android offerings and a lower-end feature phone. The Onetouch 908 (dark gray set in gallery below) brings Android 2.2 to the world in a very inexpensive package with quad-band GSM, 3G in the Euro range, a 2 megapixel camera and we were told could move to Android 2.3. Also on hand was the Onetouch 890 loaded with Android 2.1, a 2 megapixel camera, and lowly quad-band EDGE -- positioned for a very entry level market, of course. Alcatel also demoed the flagship Onetouch 990 (pictured above) device, featuring Android 2.2, a 5 megapixel shooter with autofocus, WiFi, 3.5-inch capacitive touchscreen, and everything else you'd expect in a vanilla Android set. Unfortunately, the device we used had some severe issues with load times, starting apps, and generally moving about through the UI. It felt a bit like something was hanging on to everything we tried to do and slowing the whole device down. Last set we peeked at was the Onetouch (beginning to notice the theme here?) 903, a small dual-band QWERTY feature phone with a 2 megapixel cam, Alcatel's own UI, and -- while likely targeted at the pay as you go market -- had a really great look and feel and a top notch keyboard. These sets should be shipping between March and May of this year. %Gallery-116564%
