Alcatel FZ One

Where to buy

Parenting has only gotten tougher as technology has advanced. With the rise of smartphones, the volume of inappropriate content kids can access is staggering, and it's all too easy for young minds to fall prey to the psychological hooks of modern entertainment and end up spending hours glued to their mobile screens.

While denying your kid a smartphone is always an option, it's not a practical one in this day and age. The modern world expects children and adults alike to be always connected, and to ignore that is to place your offspring at a significant disadvantage.

This is where Family Zone comes in. This Australian company provides a suite of parental control and monitoring tools for use across a variety of modern devices, allowing parents to limit what content their kids can access and how much time they spend interfacing with the digital world.

To show off these tools, Family Zone sells its own budget-priced smartphone called the Alcatel FZ One. With a 13MP camera, a fingerprint sensor and facial recognition, the FZ One combines the core features of a modern smartphone with a 12-month Family Zone subscription, providing parents with peace of mind while ensuring their kids have the tools to succeed in our digital world.

Design

• A slim and sleek design courtesy of Alcatel.
• Large, 18:9 display for watching videos and playing games.
• Fingerprint sensor provides extra protection against voyeurs and thieves.

• Read our full overview of the FZ One's design

  Despite its name, the Alcatel FZ One is actually manufactured by TCL, the Chinese electronics company that currently owns the Alcatel mobile brand. TCL has shown that it is more than capable of building decent smartphones at a budget price, with the Alcatel 1C delivering tremendous value for those happy with a barebones device.

  It's no surprise, then, that the FZ One is a slick-looking handset that doesn't suffer from the cheap aesthetic that some budget smartphones do. Instead, it sports a slim, glossy design that wouldn't look out of place alongside far more expensive handsets. With smartphones often treated as status symbols, this ensures the FZ One can hold its own in the schoolyard.

  That visual quality extends to the FZ One's screen. At 5.5 inches, the display boasts a wide 18:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 1440x720, making it well-suited to watching videos and playing games on the go.

  When purchasing a smartphone for your child, ensuring it has all the features they'll need is critical. The FZ One has plenty to offer here. 16GB of storage out-of-the-box provides a decent amount of space for apps, games and music, and you can easily bolster it by purchasing a microSD card. Just be aware that the FZ One only supports cards of 128GB or less.

  Speaking of music, the FZ One will happily double as your child's audio device de jour. Not only does it include a 3.5mm audio jack for connecting standard wired headphones, it supports Bluetooth 4.2 for hooking up wireless headsets and speakers.

  If you're concerned about ne'er-do-wells breaking into your child's phone, you'll be glad to know that the FZ One packs a fingerprint sensor on its rear side below the camera. Coupled with the security features of the FZ One's Android 8.0 operating system, this can help prevent both silly childhood pranks and serious attempts to steal your child's personal data.

Camera

• Solid front and rear cameras for the price.
• Facial recognition provides an additional layer of security.

• Read our full overview of the FZ One's camera

  Sharing photos and videos on social media is a big part of modern adolescence. The FZ One is built with this in mind, pairing a 13MP rear-facing camera with a f/2.0 aperture and a 5MP selfie camera with an f/2.4 aperture on the front. These numbers are typical for a smartphone in the FZ One's price range, and they should serve the average Aussie child perfectly well for day-to-day photography.

  A wide array of camera modes grants the FZ One even more versatility. Burst shot, panorama and night modes give you more choice when taking photos, and the addition of facial recognition on the front-facing camera helps augment the FZ One's focus on privacy and security.

Performance

• Read our full overview of the FZ One's performance

  In the world of budget smartphones, performance is typically the area where the biggest concessions are made. This is very much the case with the FZ One, which features a low-cost MediaTek MT6739 processor and just 2GB of RAM. It's a combination adequate for basic tasks like browsing social media and checking emails, but as evidenced in our review of the similarly-specced Telstra Essential Plus, it struggles with more demanding activities like 3D gaming.

  So long as you (and your child) go in knowing and accepting these limitations, the FZ One is entirely capable of meeting your smartphone needs. Just bear in mind that it's not going to feel anywhere near as slick, snappy or powerful as the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy handset.

Battery life

• Read our full overview of the FZ One's battery life

  Part of the reason most parents buy their kids a smartphone is to ensure that they can always keep in contact with them, no matter where they might be. This relies on that smartphone surviving a full day of use, however, something that a lot of modern handsets struggle with.

  To avoid falling into that camp, the FZ One packs a 3,000mAh battery rated for 17 hours of 3G talk time. Of course, that figure is based on laboratory tests and doesn't necessarily reflect real-world usage, but it strongly supports the notion that the FZ One can last a full day of all but the heaviest usage.

Family Zone features

• Enables automatic control of your child's screen time, app access and more.
• Controls can be monitored and changed from anywhere via the Family Zone app.

• Read our full overview of Family Zone features

  The FZ One comes with a 12-month subscription to Family Zone, getting you access to a raft of parental control features designed to help you monitor and moderate your child's behaviour on their smartphone. These features can be accessed anywhere and at any time via the Family Zone mobile app or the Family Zone website.

  Family Zone offers an extensive range of parental controls that you can activate on your child's FZ One (or any other compatible device, for that matter). These include:

  Managing screen time

  Define what apps and activities your child can access at different times of the day. You can also set the FZ One to automatically go into sleep mode for specific hours.

  Safe searching

  Filter out adult content from web searches.

  App and website restrictions

  Prevent access to specific apps and websites including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube.

  Block in-app purchases

  Stop any attempt to purchase additional content from inside an app.

  Disable hardware features

  Block access to various hardware components of the FZ One including the camera, the modem or the screen-capture tool.

Pricing and availability

• Price: RRP $199
• Where to buy: FamilyZone | Woolworths Mobile

Alcatel FZ One specs

Compare Alcatel FZ One plans

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