Alcatel POP C1 – A near throw-away Android smartphone

If you’re tired of having to pay £500, £600 or even £700 for a smartphone, there are options way down at the other end of the scale. This, the Alcatel POP C1, is available on play.com rakuten.co.uk for less than £30 at the moment. Likewise, you can head to the EE website or Argos and get it at the same price – just £19.99 with a £10 top-up, £29.99 total.

Alcatel POP C1   A near throw away Android smartphone

No, it won’t have much street cred. If you’re ..err… “hanging with your crew” then be prepared for some friendly jibes from your mates as you whip out your Android 4.2 device with a 2 megapixel camera and 3.5″ 320×480 screen.

Other specs, well they don’t get much better. You’re looking at 512MB memory, 4GB on board storage and a microSD slot for another 32GB. It won’t do 4G but you do have WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth.

On the flip side, for someone who really needs a mobile phone and doesn’t want to spend the earth, this is actually very good. EE do plans which include the £1 “Data Pack”, where you get 100MB of data, 10 minutes of calls and 10 texts every week. If you need more then the £10-per-month “Everything Pack” gets you 500MB of data, 150 minutes of calls and unlimited texts, which is ideal for your nan and you can probably buy this phone as a gift pretty easily to keep in touch.