The Alcatel OneTouch Flash Model No. 6042D is a low budget Octa Core powered smartphone running KitKat with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. The handset with a 5.5 inch HD screen is clocked at 1.4GHz and gets power from a 3200 mAh built-in battery. It is competing with Redmi Note.

Box pack
Inside the white box pack you will find the handset, screen guard, travel charger, data cable and good quality earphone. SAR value as mentioned on the box : 0.564 W/Kg head and 0.83 W/Kg body.

Design, display and OS
The handset is big, light weight and comfortable to hold. Body is made of plastic and the rear side comes with metallic texture finishing. Overall the handset looks very premium. Battery is built in and the non-removable back panel covers up almost 90% of the handset. Weight with battery is 146 grams and dimensions are 76.44 x 152.22 x 8.21 (mm).

Audio jack is placed on the top side and micro USB port is at the bottom. There are dual mics for noise cancellation. Power button, volume rockers and SIM slot 2 is placed on the right side. On the left side you will find SIM slot 1 and micro SD card slot. All the slots are with a covering that can be easily remove by pushing the dotted end (check video). You will need 2 micro SIM’s. Though the handset back is flat, the camera lens is a little out.

Alcatel OneTouch Flash 6042D box pack

OneTouch Flash 6042D sports a 5.5 inch IPS screen supporting 1280 x 720 pixels resolution. It is with full lamination and comes with a factory fitted screen guard. Touch is smooth and responsive. Colour reproduction is very good and so are the viewing angles.

There is LED notification and the following sensors :- Light, Accelerometer, Proximity, Gyro and Magnetic.

The Flash runs Android 4.4.2 with customized UI.

Alcatel OneTouch Flash 6042D review and unboxing

Memory and Storage
Alcatel OneTouch Flash comes packed with 1GB RAM and 8GB storage. You can also use the micro SD card to add additional storage space of up to 32GB. Of the 1GB RAM you will get about 438MB free and of the 8GB storage you will get about 4.9GB free for apps / user space on the first boot.

Apps can be installed / moved to external storage and OTG is also supported.

Alcatel OneTouch Flash review

Performance
This dual SIM handset houses the 1.4GHz MediaTek MT6592 octa core chipset coupled with Mali 450 MP GPU. The performance is smooth and lag-free.

Benchmark

App Result
Quadrant 11671
Antutu 26208
Vellamo Metal (738) Multi core (1291) Browser (1901)
Nenamark 2 58.2fps
Multi Touch 5 point

Gaming
Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5 games got installed on the external storage. Both the games were playable (check video review).

Camera and Entertainment
There is a 13MP AF camera on the rear and a 5MP on the front. Camera interface is a different and there is no option to set the megapixels instead you can select from Large, Medium and Small picture size. Rear camera can shoot videos in 1080p resolution at 30fps.

The camera quality (still and video recording) is above average. The LED flash however is not that effective. Check the sample images and videos at the end of this review.

This handset can play FHD videos.

Alcatel OneTouch Flash 6042D 13MP camera

Others
Sound is very loud and clear. In-call speaker sound is also very good. No issues found with 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. Got the GPS lock within 5 seconds.

Native video calling is supported. There is audio share option wherein you can connect the handset with Wi-Fi speakers and share the audio. You can also use Multi Screen Interface option to stream contents on Wi-Fi enabled TV. Alcatel Flash supports HotKnot – you can share data by simply touching supported devices – screen to screen. Gestures are supported along with smart wake option – you can double tab the screen when it is off to unlock it and you can also draw characters to launch linked applications.

Battery
There is 3200 mAh built in battery, performance is very impressive, check the battery performance results.

Alcatel OneTouch Flash 6042D back panel

Task Time Battery drop (%) (max temp)
Running Benchmark apps 28 minutes 4% (33)
FHD video playback with Wi-Fi on + full brightness 21 minutes 5% (34)
MC5 + Asphalt 8 GamePlay 26 minutes 6% (35)
Full wall Charge 3 hours 27 minutes 20% to 100%

You can expect 7 to 11 hours of moderate to high continuous usage, this really good. Moreover the handset doesn’t heat up much.

Verdict
Alcatel OneTouch Flash no doubt is a very good buy for a price tag of Rs. 9,999. It is competing with the Xiaomi Redmi Note. It is a difficult choice to make between the Redmi Note and the OneTouch flash as there are something better on Note and something better on Flash, hence all depends on what you are looking for.

To sum up…

Redmi Note is more powerful it is using 1.7GHz octa core processor with 2GB RAM but running Android 4.2. The Note also comes with removable battery. Battery backup on the note is about 4 to 8 hours of continuous usage and you cannot install apps on the external storage, native video calling is not supported.

Now the OneTouch flash when compared with Redmi Note, is 1.4GHz octa core powered with 1GB RAM however running Android KitKat. You can install apps on the external storage, native video calling is supported. Battery comes built in but gives about 7 to 11 hours of continuous usage.

Colour reproduction and camera quality is almost the same. Redmi Note screen is with corning gorilla glass 3 protection whereas the Flash is without any protection you will need to use a screen guard. Look wise, Flash is better.

You can either go for the Redmi Note or the OneTouch flash, based as per your requirements.

Alcatel OneTouch Flash is available for Rs. 9,999.

[Rating : 4.5 out of 5 ( rating box below does not allow decimals)]

OneTouch Flash Image Gallery

Sample Images shot using this handset

Front Camera Sample

By Rajeev Rana

Founder and Chief Editor - gogi.in