Alcatel One Touch Sapphire HD 995

Alcatel is moving upmarket with its Android phones with the announcement of the Alcatel One Touch Sapphire HD 995. This phone is slated to hit the market in April. The Alcatel Sapphire HD packs a 4.3-inch WVGA (480 x 800) display, 512 MB of RAM paired with a 1.4 GHz processor on a Qualcomm MSM8255 chipset,  1 GB of user storage, a 5 MP camera with a LED flash, 720p video recording, HDMI out and HSDPA 14.4 mbps connectivity. The main issue we have is that for a newly released phone it comes with Android 2.3.5 (Gingerbread) instead of Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). We have no word on whether this phone will get an update to Android 4.0.

Priced at Php13,999, this phone competes at the mid-level with the LG Optimus Black, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V and the soon to be released Huawei Honor. This segments is getting rather crowded.  The Php13,999 Huawei Honor looks like it will dethrone the LG Optimus Black from our best smartphones list. The Sony Ericsson Xperia neo V still offers good value since it is scheduled to be updated to Android 4.0  and being the cheapest at a bit over Php12,000.  The Alcatel Sapphire HD still stands out in this crowded market by offering the largest screen in the at the price range, at 4.3-inches.