Alcatel 3L 2020 review

Where to buy

Alcatel as a brand only sells in the budget space, and for years now, it's pumped out a near endless array of entirely solid value phones but very little that was particularly exciting or pushed the envelope in what you could get out of a cheap phone.

The Alcatel 3L changes that perception, bringing a range of genuinely exciting camera features and solid battery life. There are still some compromises here in terms of overall performance, but this is easily Alcatel's best phone in years, and one of the best phones you can buy for under $200.

Design

Design

• 6.22-inch display
• Only 720p
• Easy-to-reach fingerprint sensor

• Read more about the Alcatel 3L 2020's design

  We've seen some interesting designs from Alcatel over the years, but the Alcatel 3L 2020 largely plays it safe, with a simple plastic shell casing in a single colour choice that it calls "dark chrome". There's a gradient pattern at the back that's vaguely reminiscent of a fingerprint, but this isn't a showy phone by any measure. While that appears to be your only colour choice in Australia, Alcatel internationally also makes the 3L 2020 in a dark green or purple/blue finish. However, it's not surprising to only see one colour choice for budget phones and Alcatel's obviously playing it safe here.

  At 158.7 x 74.6 x 8.45mm and just 165 grams, the Alcatel 3L 2020 is a light phone when you first pick it up. There's a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor that sits a good distance away from its camera lenses, making it easy to find once you've enrolled your prints.

  At the front, you're faced with a 6.22 LCD with a 720 x 1520 pixel resolution. That's one way Alcatel has kept the price low because 720p displays are pretty much the bottom of the barrel right now when it comes to mobile displays. It's fair for the money, but nothing to get too excited about. At the top of the display, there's a relatively prominent "teardrop" style notch to house the front-facing camera. The right-hand side houses power and volume buttons, while the left-hand side features a dedicated Google Assistant button. It's all rather standard budget phone recipe stuff so far, and while there's little wrong with it, it's also not that enticing.

Camera

Camera

• Triple lenses gives you lots of image choice
• Slow camera app

• See sample photos and read more about the Alcatel 3L 2020's camera

  Alcatel's history with the cameras on its phones has generally been one of providing acceptable-at-best picture solutions. I can't really say I've ever been enticed by an Alcatel camera, either for technical or output quality reasons.

  The Alcatel 3L 2020 flips that assumption on its head because this is the best camera system Alcatel has put on a phone to date, especially at this price point. The flagship selling point is a primary 48MP f/1.8 sensor, flanked by 5MP f/2.2 wide and 2MP f/2.4 macro sensors.

  This is typically the point in a cheap phone review where I'd point out how you can't shoot with all three sensors because they're in thrall to the needs of portrait shooting, but that's not the story here. The Alcatel 3L 2020 can shoot wide shots and macro shots as well. You can use the primary sensor at up to 48MP, although it's rarely worth doing so; like many competitors, it uses quad pixel binning to produce default 12MP shots that are generally better than it can manage at full megapixel resolution.

  I'm a big fan of phones that encourage you to experiment with what you can capture, and it's genuinely exciting to see this kind of flexibility land at a price point under $200. That's not to say that there aren't some issues, and it's very important to realise that you're not getting a camera that competes with the best of even the mid-range set in 2020. What you do get is the current best camera phone under $200 I've ever tested, as long as you have patience.

  That patience is necessary because the Alcatel 3L 2020 might be flexible, but it's not fast. It has plenty of in-built camera functions, but switching between them can be an arduous process, especially because it remembers your camera setting even when you switch to other applications. More than once I was left wondering why the Alcatel 3L 2020 wouldn't focus properly before realising that it was still in macro mode, useless for the wide shot I wanted to take. Getting out of macro mode involves closing it, then switching to the wide lens, a process that takes some time.

  Video quality also isn't great, with some very noticeable camera shake, roll and digital artefacts in test footage.

  However, while it's not fast, you can get some genuinely nice shots out of the Alcatel 3L 2020 in normal conditions. Don't expect great low-light performance, but across the standard, wide and macro lenses, I was able to get some very pleasing shots. The front-facing 8MP camera isn't quite as exciting as the rear lenses, and while there's a portrait mode on offer, it's AI-based and prone to placing the subject a little artificially in the frame. Again, that's a common issue for many cheaper phone cameras.

  It's pretty likely we'll see more manufacturers offer up 48MP arrays on budget phones pretty soon. If Alcatel can do it on a budget device, there's not likely to be much stopping others. However, for now, if you're on a strict budget and you want the best you can get in a cheap camera phone, the Alcatel 3L 2020 is precisely what you're looking for.

  Alcatel 3L 2020 sample photos

  

  

  

  

  

  

Performance

Performance

• MediaTek Helio P22 is very slow
• Alcatel's track record with Android updates isn't great

• View test results and read more about the Alcatel 3L 2020's performance

  The Alcatel 3L 2020 can sell for under $200 because the one primary area where Alcatel is compromised is in processing power. The Alcatel 3L 2020 runs on a MediaTek Helio P22 CPU with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of onboard storage, upgradeable with MicroSD cards but not by much. The largest card it will read is 128GB, and while those are relatively affordable right now, it doesn't give you a whole lot of expansion space.

  MediaTek's processors are common in the true budget phone space because they're cheap, but they're also not particularly fast at all. We haven't run Geekbench 5's CPU test past a lot of budget phones to date, but even in limited company, the Alcatel 3L 2020 doesn't compare well:

  It's no better on the graphics front, where the Alcatel 3L 2020 is also quite a poor performer. To give fair context, it is playing in a price space where many phones simply can't even handle 3DMark's Slingshot Extreme benchmark, but it's still quite low-powered.

  This isn't just a question of it scoring poorly on benchmarks; it's also noticeable if you're doing anything but absolutely basic tasks on the phone. It's an Android 10 phone, but switching apps is clunky, and it's almost certainly a factor in why the phone's camera app is also quite slow.

  Alcatel does throw quite a few default apps onto the Alcatel 3L 2020, including several games, an ereader application and Netflix. You can uninstall them if they're not to your taste, but it'd be preferable to be given the more flexible choice of only installing the apps you really want.

  The budget phone space is also where we often don't see much in the way of software upgrades, and Alcatel's track record in this regard is generally pretty poor. The review sample I tested with was running Android 10, but it was only up to date with security patches through to March 2020; other phones are running updates as recent as May 2020, which doesn't bode well for how quickly Alcatel pushes those updates through.

Battery life

Battery life

• 4,000mAh battery performs well
• MicroUSB charging is disappointing

• View test results and read more about the Alcatel 3L 2020's battery life

  The Alcatel 3L 2020 ships with a non-removable 4,000mAh battery, which is a tad higher than you'll see on most sub-$200 phones. One of the theoretical benefits of running a very low-end processor and lower resolution screen is that you should see improved battery life as a result.

  Using our standard video rundown test, streaming a YouTube video for an hour at full brightness and moderate volume, the Alcatel 3L 2020 compared very well to other budget phones. Current conditions around the coronavirus have limited YouTube streaming quality to just 480p where other tests may have run at up to 1080p depending on screen quality, but it's still a good result. Here's how it compared:

  In more anecdotal testing, there's an easy day's life to be had out of the Alcatel 3L 2020, and I could easily see more moderate users stretching that to a few days as well.

  It's becoming less common in the lower end phone space to still see MicroUSB charging, but that's part of the Alcatel 3L 2020's recipe for staying cheap. It's a little annoying compared to USB-C, given you have to orientate the charging cable every time, and hopefully Alcatel can wean itself off MicroUSB soon.

Verdict

Verdict

How we score our reviews

• Great overall value for a budget phone

Should you buy it?

I came into testing the Alcatel 3L 2020 expecting it to be yet another Alcatel phone: reasonable value but nothing exciting.

That's not what I got. Look, it's not particularly quick, but few phones in this price bracket are. The design isn't massively eye-catching, and MicroUSB charging is annoying.

However, the camera is genuinely flexible and fun to use, and it's easily the best going in a sub-$200 handset. The battery life, which underpins anything else you're going to do with the Alcatel 3L 2020, is very good.

Pricing and availability

Price

RRP: $199.00

Where to buy

Check price at eBay

Check availability at Amazon

eBay

Specifications

Images: Alex Kidman