One of Alcatel's greatest strengths is its ability to make cheap phones that don't look, well, cheap. This design philosophy is immediately apparent in the Alcatel 3. A shiny metal shell lends the phone a premium sheen that wouldn't look out of place alongside one of Samsung or Huawei's flagship handsets. The screen, too, punches above its weight, measuring in at a hefty 5.9 inches and stretching from edge to edge to minimise bezel.
Speaking of the screen, Alcatel has taken an odd approach in designing it around a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. That's wider than both your standard 16:9 widescreen ratio and the 18:9 ratio common to recent smartphones, though it's not quite as broad as the ultra-wide 21:9 ratio employed by modern filmmakers. This peculiar decision means you may encounter horizontal or vertical black bars when watching certain videos, as well as stretched or squashed interfaces in some apps.
The Alcatel 3's premium facade starts to falter when you go beyond surface-level appearances. That screen, for instance, clocks in at a resolution of 720 x 1,560. While this is often presented as "HD", it's not full HD as it doesn't meet the 1,920 x 1080 threshold. This matters less on a phone screen than it does on a TV or PC, but it's worth keeping in mind if you plan on watching high-definition movies on the go. Depending on how sharp your eyes are, full HD content may look a little blurry on the Alcatel 3's "HD" screen.
Beyond aesthetics, the Alcatel 3 packs all the basic features you'd expect from a modern Android smartphone. There's a fingerprint sensor on the back, 32GB of onboard storage and a microSD card slot for expanding storage by as much as 128GB.
Alcatel also sells the Alcatel 3 on its support for "Face Key", a facial recognition system that can lock and unlock your phone from a simple glance. As impressive as this sounds, it's worth noting that Alcatel's implementation isn't the same as that of other smartphone manufacturers like Apple. Technologies like Apple's FaceID rely on a 3D camera to ensure accuracy and reliability when detecting faces; Face Key, on the other hand, uses a 2D camera to compare faces. This is considerably less accurate and quite insecure, moreso than a traditional PIN.
It's also worth mentioning that the Alcatel 3 runs Android 8.1 ("Oreo") out of the box. Oreo was succeeded by Android 9.0 ("Pie") in 2018, so the Alcatel 3 might feel a little dated at first. Fortunately, Alcatel is rolling out an upgrade to Android 9.0 that should arrive by the time the phone hits Aussie shores.