14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the number of smartphones shipped each year has increased by a lot, feature phones are still among the cheapest mobile phones customers can get and that won't change anytime.
Many smartphone makers have been trying to bring on the market affordable devices aimed at seniors or visually impaired customers. Some have been popular, while others haven't, but the fact remains that the offer isn't that large when it comes to this niche.
Which is why this category of customers is still relying on feature phones. Major carrier Sprint has just announced it has added a new feature phone to its portfolio, aimed at seniors.
The Alcatel OneTouch Retro is a clamshell mobile phone, which is very affordable. The US-based operator confirmed the feature phone is now available for purchase for $0 down and 24 easy monthly payments of $4 (excluding taxes, service plan required).
The handset is also available on Sprint Prepaid for only $20 (excludes taxes), so there are at least two affordable options that customers can take advantage of.
Moving on to specs, Alcatel OneTouch Retro has a clamshell form factor, thus it features two displays. The internal display is 2.4-inch in size and supports QVGA (240 x 320 pixels) resolution and 262K colors. The external display is monochrome and is 1.4-inch in size.
Accessible web browsing experience described verbally to a user
On the inside, Alcatel's clamshell is equipped with a single-core Qualcomm 6155 processor clocked at 480MHz and 128MB of RAM.
It also packs 256MB of ROM and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB). The OneTouch Retro is powered by a 850 mAh battery, which should provide up to 4 hours of talk time.
The handset features verbally described UI for customers who are visually impaired, as well as large, tactile keypad with well-defined buttons.
It also comes with black and white screen option to make it easier to read for a variety of vision ranges. There are also multiple font sizes available and features ICE (In Case of Emergency) and 911 shortcut keys.
