The Desert Diva There are thousands of smartphones on the market, from expensive top of the range feature-filled models costing 3000aed or more to cheap unbranded ones which you can pick up for next to nothing. I have had cheap ones and expensive ones and all have a shortened lifespan at the hands of the Desert Diva!
What I have never seen before is a device which is shock, dust and water resistant, so I was most interested to hear about Alcatel’s recently launched Go Play smartphone. It promises to be the perfect smartphone for a butter-fingered, desert-going, social-media-addict like me.
I had expected a heavy, thick, rubber encased phone so was very surprised to find it is a similar size to my current Samsung A5. The Go Play is a few millimetres larger in all dimensions, but with my existing phone I have to use a robust shockproof cover which makes it heavier and larger than the Go Play so my handbag is going to be a little bit lighter!
The Go Play is available in a variety of colours; my test phone is in Dark Gray but it also available in 7 other colour schemes such as Black/Red, Orange/White and Yellow/Blue.
I was really pleased to see that the mains USB adapter is a three pronged plug – I really hate the two prong version as they often slip out of electric adapters, so this is much better. Also, most surprisingly, a screen protector is included in the package – well done Alcatel for anticipating your customers’ needs – this should be standard with all smartphones! It comes with waterproof headphones too which will be useful if ever I find myself walking the dog in a downpour!
The Go Play is powered by Android v5.0 Lollipop and comes with many apps pre-loaded.
For a mid-range phone it is full of useful and interesting features such as the ability to record video underwater with its 8mp rear camera and 5mp front camera; the app Viewme allows you to record what you are watching on screen and even allows you to capture your own reactions before sharing on social media.
The Go Play has a pretty impressive 2500mAh Li-Ion battery which claims to have 500 hours of standby time with 8.5 hours of talktime. Playing music on the full volume speaker will give you up to forty hours of tunes, enough to keep the most dedicated rocker tapping their feet til the next morning….and the morning after that!
The memory should be adequate for my everyday use – 8GB built in (1GB RAM) with the option of adding a microSD card up to 32GB.
Read more about the Go Play on Alcatel’s website here. Full specifications listed by gsmarena.com are available here.
You can buy this phone at all good mobile phone retailers and the retail price is approximately 800AED.
BUT if you are an offroad driver you may not even need to purchase one! I am delighted to announce that Alcatel are Platinum Sponsors of the Dark Skies Challenge 2016 and have given us another 9 Go Play Smartphones up for grabs as competition prizes! Many thanks to the Alcatel team in Dubai for their support and generosity!
I am really looking forward to using the Alcatel Go Play and promise to test it most rigorously in the desert!
