The One Touch Tribe, Alcatel’s first full-QWERTY affordable handset, was reviewed here last month. We found it to be fairly light on features but nevertheless liked it, and saw a definite market for it. Now Alcatel has followed it up with the Alcatel OT-708 Touch, its first touch-screen phone.

Style and handling on the Alcatel OT-708 Touch

The OY-708 Touch is a compact, pebble-shaped little handset and is rather nice looking, despite its plastic shell. The only hard keys to be found are the power button and volume keys on the side of the phone – all the other controls sit on a thumb pad below the screen, with each “key” symbolised by a neon light. Depending on which screen you are using, these lights appear in a diamond formation or an arrow. There’s no sign which key does what, and while it’s something you will learn quickly enough with practice, it’s frustrating at first.

Touch-screen on the Alcatel OT-708 Touch

Theoretically, touch-screens are a brilliant idea, and when they first started to appear on mobile phones we were impressed. But as more started to appear, it became evident that their impressiveness was dependant on their working properly. Too many touch-screens are slow and unresponsive, so it’s a surprise that Alcatel, a small manufacturer with limited resources, has decided to take on the technology.

The screen on the Alcatel OT-708 Touch is resistive rather than capacitive (it works using pressure rather than gentle swipes), so Alcatel has provided a stylus that sits in the bottom of the phone. It’s a good job, too – the 2.4-inch screen is quite small and some of the icons too fiddly to select with your finger.

Opening applications is fast, though, and navigation fairly straightforward. A pull-out widget bar – rather like those on Samsung TouchWiz phones – sits on the left of the home screen. It contains four widgets that can be launched from the tool bar of dragged onto the home screen. Fire up an application from the widget bar, you’ll be taken straight to it; drag it on to the home screen and it will sit in the background while you go about your business.

Camera and music on the Alcatel OT-708 Touch

There is no dedicated camera key, so taking a picture requires some mucking about. You have to look in one of the three menu screens then choose between camera and video. But the camera is only there as a token – at 1.3 megapixels it’s only really any good for quick snaps to send on MMS. Problem is, once you found the function, the moment is likely to have passed.

In terms of music, this is fine for the occasional tune, but the audio is tinny and there’s only 5MB of internal memory to store your tracks on. You can, however, buy yourself a memory card of up to 4GB if you want more.

Slow GPRS speeds mean internet is sluggish. You can browse the web if you want, but it’s doubtful you’ll want to spend much time on the internet.

The verdict on the Alcatel OT-708 Touch

The Alcatel OT-708 Touch is okay, but that’s as far as it goes. The touch screen works pretty well, but doesn’t really enhance the experience, and everything else about the phone is low-end. The fact that there are plenty of budget touch-screen phones with better features at a similar price means the odds are stacked against the OT-708 Touch.