Why You Can Trust CNET Alcatel OneTouch Fierce 2 review: Appealing price can't save it from its faults
If price is your guide, the $130, 5-inch Alcatel OneTouch Fierce 2 gives you Android 4.4 and quad-core at a savings. Unfortunately, the phone just isn't that good.
In the US, Alcatel is carving out a name for itself as a low-cost Android provider that really slashes price tags to their limits. With the OneTouch Fierce 2, a sequel to last year's T-Mobile model , the company has packed a quad-core chipset and Android 4.4 into a 5-inch screen device. As usual, the trade-off comes down to hardware performance. Image quality suffers and data speeds fall far below the the 4G (but not LTE) average. The low-resolution screen doesn't help matters either.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
For $126 without a contract (or $5.25 per month on a 24-month plan,) the T-Mobile sequel is one of the lowest-cost Android phones you can buy with the carrier, topped (or perhaps bottomed out?) by the even more basic OneTouch Evolve 2. However, it's worth ballooning the budget to accommodate the more reliable Motorola Moto G (both the $180 model and this summer's $220 LTE version ) or Samsung Galaxy Avant ($230).
Design and build
Tall and heavy, the Fierce 2 is a familiar-looking phone with rounded corners and a glossy black face. A deep navy backing adds a touch of character, with a matte finish to ward off smudging. With a 5-inch screen that slightly recesses from the frame, the handset is attractive enough, though its 5.3-ounce weight (149 grams) is weighty in the hand. Fairly straight sides make the plastic Fierce 2 easy to grip, but not especially comfortable to hold.
A volume rocker on the right spine sits atop the power/lock button. The phone's bottom-right corner hosts both the Micro-USB charging port and an indentation for prying off the back cover, allowing access to the microSD card slot beneath. You can plug in the headset jack up on top and glance into the front-facing VGA camera (0.3-megapixel) above the display. On the back, the 5-megapixel camera and flash reside in the center.
Dimensions of 5.6 x 2.8 x 0.39-inch (141 x 71.9 x 9.9 mm) make it difficult for those with smaller mitts to operate the Fierce 2 one-handed, but those who are used to phones of this size will find that it fits pockets and purses about as well as other handsets.
When it comes to screen quality, the phone's 5-inch display is on the lower end. A 960x540 pixel-resolution yields a pixel density of 220ppi, for those who keep count. In real-world terms, it doesn't take much to see how dimly the screen glows at automatic brightness, or the gently hazy edges of icons and images. Even at full brightness, the Fierce 2's display is bright enough, though never blinding (in this case, that isn't particularly a good thing.) Viewing angles are also more narrow and readability blanches in strong sunlight.
Below the display, customary capacitive buttons take you back and home (or launch Google Now). Interestingly, the Fierce 2 hasn't adopted the new button for recent windows. Instead, a menu button acts as your shortcut to widgets and wallpaper.
OS and apps
Lovers of the stripped-down Android look and feel will appreciate Alcatel's restraint with dressing up the 4.4.2 KitKat OS. There's still some of the handset-maker's mark, like on the lock screen for instance, but extras are minimal.
One exception is the SwiftKey keyboard, which is preloaded by default, though you can always change this in the settings.
On top of Google's usual apps and services, you'll find a number of extra programs preloaded in the Fierce 2, including Adobe Reader and compass and flashlight apps. There's a note-taking app as well as Lookout security, and you'll also be able to tune into an FM radio. T-Mobile's own apps are portals to some of the carrier's services, like visual voicemail and T-Mobile TV.
Cameras and video
Autofocus and flash are two things going for the Fierce 2's 5-megapixel camera. Unfortunately, image quality isn't one of them. You do get settings like HDR and Panorama, and there's burst shot as well. While you can monkey around with timer settings, you won't be able to access more advanced features like white balance settings or effects.
Colors are a little more blued than real-world objects, but it's the camera's inability to achieve a crisp, sharp focus that makes it so underwhelming.
Video quality from the 720p HD recorder was also poor. Inside, the camera struggled to focus but never managed to nail down a defining edge. It also fought against lighting changes in the scene, oftentimes losing out and over- or underexposing the scene. Subjects being videotaped sounded quiet. The picture looked better on outdoor scenes taken in natural light, but competition from the wind and environment took its toll in the form of weak audio.
Chunky outcroppings of pixels define the landscape of the Fierce 2's 0.3-megapixel (VGA) front-facing camera. The color balance isn't bad, but its images are splotchy and uneven, with a veritable rainbow of smudgy color stippling the skin, post-impressionist-style. The natural airbrushing erases your less-desirable signs of aging, which is the nice way of saying that the image is a hazy reproduction at best.
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Performance: 4G, speeds, battery life
Performance is the Fierce 2's Achilles' heel. The phone supports HSPA+ "4G" (actually 3G that wheedled its way into a 4G designation) but not LTE. In other words, theoretical highs of 21Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink.
Even so, it was slower than average on just about every count. In many San Francisco locations, 4G data speeds limped along, both in real-world tests and with the diagnostic Speedtest.net app. Some large-file games took many minutes to download, rather than 30 seconds or 1 minute. YouTube videos and Pandora songs mostly streamed fine, but took a little longer to load and needed to stop to buffer on occasion. In a few locations, I got the expected speeds, which works out to about 11 or 12Mbps down on Speedtest.net. Otherwise, results were consistently, alarmingly low: 1 or 2Mbps down.
Surprisingly, Wi-Fi wasn't much better. In many cases, it dragged as well. It isn't unusual for phones of this class to ride the slower 2.4GHz network rather than support faster 5GHz standards, but switching to Wi-Fi didn't dramatically fix my slow data speed problem.
As always, network strength depends on a blend of factors, like where you live and what the network congestion is like in your area at that exact moment of the day.
Internal performance also lagged a bit, but was acceptable. The 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor sounds fancy, but it's easy to notice a slightly delayed response when navigating around. Results of the Quadrant diagnostic test came in at 8,527 (on par with the 2014
and Samsung Galaxy Avant). Ditto, Linpack multithread tests for all three, which came in at the low 200 mark.Alcatel OneTouch Fierce 2 performance tests
| Install CNET mobile app (5MB) | 48.3 seconds |
|---|---|
| Load up CNET mobile app | 7 seconds |
| CNET mobile site load | 13 seconds |
| CNET desktop site load | 22.6 seconds |
| Boot time to lock screen | 45 seconds |
| Camera boot time | 2.8 seconds |
| Camera, shot-to-shot time | 3.2 seconds with autofocus, same with flash |
Speaker quality was a bright spot. Volume was nicely loud and clear when streaming YouTube videos through the phone's external speakers for a small audience. Note that audio sounds both louder and clearer when laying down on its rear speaker versus being held aloft.
Storage space is much more limited on the Fierce 2 than on these competitor phones. Its 4GB limit will fill up quickly, but you can expand up to 32GB more through a microSD card. The Fierce 2 has 1GB of RAM.
Anecdotally, battery life wasn't great on the Fierce 2's 2,000mAh ticker, which is rated for up to 6 hours of talk time and 14 days of standby time. Although it did last during my working hours, battery stores waned faster than I would have liked. Stay tuned for results from our video playback test.
FCC tests measure a digital SAR of 0.78-watt per kilogram.
Call quality
Call quality was decent when I tested the Fierce 2 in San Francisco using T-Mobile's GSM network. Volume was good at a medium-high setting so long as my environment was quiet. I needed to raise the volume in louder settings. The line was mostly clear on both ends, though I heard a little bit of crackle and fuzz, and my testing partner noted background "scratchiness". He said I sounded so close, he could hear my keyboard typing. Voices sounded appropriately rounded and natural.
Podcast
Speakerphone was a different story. Volume plummeted on my side, and even at the highest setting I had to strain to hear. My calling partner said that volume dropped, and that I sounded a little distant and little flatter. My voice also came out slightly muffled, he said.
Buy it or skip it?
Unless cost is your utmost consideration, skip it. Yes, you'll need almost twice as much cash for the better-performing recommendation, but it's worth the investment for a phone that's going to last you a year or more.
Motorola's Moto G ($180) is my favorite for overall performance, like an 8-megapixel camera and really nice body design. It helps that you can also customize colors on the backing and trim. For an LTE version with slightly slimmer specs, the $220 Moto G 4G LTE can be yours directly from Motorola's website.
As an alternative that's already stocked at T-Mobile stores, the Samsung Galaxy Avant is a better all-around phone than the Fierce 2, though I don't like it quite as much as either Moto G . Its screen is smaller but a little sharper, and its camera takes better photographs. At $230, you're almost doubling the Avant's sticker price, which is a hard sell. Waiting for a seasonal or holiday promotion may be your best bet there.