Product Listing

Alcatel OneTouch Smartwatch - The budget smartwatch

By Kenny Yeo - 10 Jul 2015
Launch SRP: S$248

Alcatel OneTouch Smart Watch - A Budget Smart Watch

The accessible smart watch

How does one outplay Barcelona? The answer is you don’t. You park the bus, commit to those 50-50 challenges and hope for the best. The same applies to smart watches.

We are now in a post Apple Watch period and quite a bit of things have changed. The Apple Watch is by no means revolutionary, but, it has shown the world what one of the most respected tech companies in the world is capable of when it throws its hat into the smart watch ring.

The Alcatel OneTouch smart watch is the latest entrant to the increasingly crowded smart watch marketplace.

For the rest of the players in the smart watch game, this means upping their game especially in terms of design and build quality. Because even if the Apple Watch isn’t groundbreaking in terms of functionality and features, it is a thing of beauty - very pretty, shiny and exceedingly well-made.

One of the newest entry in the smart watch business is the Alcatel OneTouch. First seen earlier this year at CES 2015, we were immediately reminded of Motorola’s popular Moto 360 watch. So now that we’ve spent some time with it, how does it fare?

 

Design and Wearability

The case has beveled edges, which is a nice touch. Along with the unique lug design, the OneTouch watch manages to avoid looking too generic.

According to Alcatel, one of the tenets behind the OneTouch watch was to provide a premium and elegant design at an accessible price. Additionally, Alcatel also said that they wanted to offer “a series of fine finishes that meet the demands of those looking for the same look and feel as a traditional watch”. There is certainly some evidence of that, and we will get to that in a bit.

But to begin, the Alcatel OneTouch watch has a round stainless steel case, which immediately brings to mind Motorola’s Moto 360 watch. The case is 41.8mm wide and has a bezel-less design, with the display surrounded instead by a black internal bezel which has 12 and 6 o’clock marked out and separated by hour indicators. The size of the case is in keeping with other smart watches and also contemporary mechanical watches. Finally, the case back is plastic and in the middle sits the built-in heart-rate sensor.

The display is fairly sharp, but it suffers the same problem as Moto 360 - there's a black bar at the bottom.

A cost-cutting measure perhaps? The plastic caseback does not match up to the rest of the watch.

The Alcatel OneTouch is relatively small at just 41.8mm, but this means it's perfectly sized for most wrists. Unfortunately, the stiff strap makes it clumsy to wear.

The TFT display measures 1.22 inches across and has a resolution of 240 x 204 pixels, giving it a pixel density count of around 258 pixels per inch. This is a tad lower than the LG G Watch R (348 ppi) and Moto 360 (277 ppi). It is also capable of displaying up to 262,000 colors. On the whole, the display is bright and vibrant and fairly sharp. It's also not perfectly round and suffers from the same problem as the Moto 360, namely the black bar at the bottom of the display.

Inside, the Alcatel OneTouch is powered by an STMicroelectronics 429 processor that runs at 180MHz with 256kb of integrated RAM and 2MB of integrated storage. Obviously, that's not going to be enough for modern day applications, so there's a further 8MB of extended RAM and 16MB of extended flash storage - which is still really little by today's standards really. Within the watch is also a 210mAh battery that Alcatel claims is good for up to 2 to 5 days. In our experience, with fairly light to moderate usage, we got the watch to last up to 3.5 days.

The OneTouch watch does pay homage to traditional watches as the case features brushed sides and beveled edges around the display and on the lugs. The contrasting finishes adds some visual interest to the watch. What’s unconventional about the OneTouch, however, is its unusual lug design which has to be paired with Alcatel’s own straps and bracelets.

The USB connector is built into the strap, so there's no need for additional charging cables.

The Alcatel OneTouch watch is actually fairly thin, but its stiff strap lets it down and makes it uncomfortable to wear.

The OneTouch comes with a choice of rubber strap (our review unit) and bracelet. The rubber strap is pretty nifty as it includes a USB connector for charging. This makes it really easy to charge the watch - simply plug it into a USB port and you're set. On the flip side, the rubber strap is really stiff and feels sticky on the skin. Wearing comfort is further compromised by the finicky deployant clasp which is difficult to operate and quite sharp around the edges. And because of the unusual lugs and the fact that the charging mechanism is built into the strap, users do not have the choice of swapping them for more comfortable third-party straps. 

 

Features

The main menu is colorful, but can be a little hard for first-timers to figure out what is what.

The Alcatel OneTouch is not powered by Android Wear. Instead, it runs Alcatel’s own custom operating system and is compatible with both Android and iOS devices. This also explains why Alcatel was able to make do with such a basic processor and so little RAM and storage. The use of Alcatel's own OS also means customizability, by way of additional apps, is out of the window; but the good thing is that the OneTouch watch’s operating system runs briskly.

For starters, there’s the usual notifications, which works a little erratically. For the most part, our watch would only vibrate and we would have to swipe up on the display to actually see the notification. Unfortunately, with no option to reply or take any kind of action, there’s nothing you can actually do with these notifications except to read them.

The Alcatel OneTouch watch is a decent activity tracker.

The Move app acts as a database for your past days' activities and also lets you customize certain aspects of the watch, including the watch face and notifications.

There’s also an activity tracker app that does all the usual stuff of keeping count of your steps, calories burnt, distance traveled and so on. Data collected is synced to the accompanying Move app on your phone. This Move app is also used to manage certain settings of the watch and also allows you to upload photos to use as wallpapers for the watch face.

Lost? Fret not, there's a digital compass and it's a standalone app that does not require your phone to work.

Beyond this, there are many other apps. For instance, there’s an app that enables the watch to act as a remote shutter for your smartphone’s camera. There’s also another that turns the watch into a digital compass. The OneTouch watch also has an app that shows your heart rate and also a workout app. The workout app, however, is extremely basic and assumes the only exercise you are doing is running or walking. Music lovers will appreciate the music player control app that lets you control music playback. And if you forgot where you placed your phone, there's also an app that can trigger your phone to vibrate and ring so that it's easier to find.

Overall, the Alcatel OneTouch’s features and functions are decent, but nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it is also missing some other important features found on other smart watches such as navigation and calendar notifications.

 

Is the price enticing enough?

On paper, the Alcatel OneTouch watch puts forth an almost irresistible premise: an elegant, traditional looking smart watch at an accessible price. In practice, however, it feels like too much of a compromise.

While it does have some interesting design elements, the biggest problem with it is that it doesn’t wear too well. The strap is uncomfortable and the deployant clasp is difficult to operate, making it hard to get a good fit. Which is a pity because at 41.8mm wide and just 10.5mm thick, it is more compact and well-sized than its competitors.

The Alcatel OneTouch is affordable, but that doesn't mean it's good. Pay more for the LG G Watch R or Moto 360 if you can.

It isn’t stellar when it comes to actual functions and features either. It’s decent, but most of its features come across as watered down versions of those found on other devices. For example, its activity tracking app covers the basics, but leaves much to be desired when compared to dedicated activity trackers from the likes of Jawbone and Fitbit. Likewise, many functions of the watch seem half-baked. What good are notifications if the wearer cannot act upon them?

On a more positive note, Alcatel, it seems, is aware of the OneTouch watch's limitations and has priced the watch quite appropriately. It doesn't play in the same space as the Apple Watch or even the LG G Watch R and Moto 360, so the Alcatel OneTouch is one of the most accessibly priced smart watches in the market right now. At S$248, it is nearly a third less expensive than similarly styled watches from LG and Motorola and half the price of the least expensive Apple Watch. This could be tempting enough for those who yearn for a smartwatch but are on a tight budget. If you have the means however, our recommendation is to bite the bullet and get either the LG or Motorola watches. Or if you can stretch your budget some more, there's also the Apple Watch to consider.

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6.0
  • Design 6
  • Features 5.5
  • User-Friendliness 6.5
  • Performance 7
  • Value 6.5
The Good
Relatively affordable
Built-in USB connector for charging
Well-sized and thin
Easy to setup
Works with Android and iOS
Good battery life
The Bad
Most features feel half-baked
Cannot add apps, limited customizability
Black bar at bottom of display
Uncomfortable to wear
Unable to change straps
Clumsy deployant clasp
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