Alcatel One Touch 990 review

You may have noticed the Alcatel One Touch 990's mixed-bag nature by now – outperforming our expectations in some areas and occasionally dropping a minor clanker that hints at the budget price tag attached. Well, here's the part where we get to wax lyrical about the Alcatel One Touch 990's virtues: it's a more than decent phone.

The dialler is clean, functional and well organised. There's a tab for typing in manual numbers, plus one each for your call log, contacts book and favourites. While you can't type to search your contacts list, there is a handy tab on the left-hand side of the screen for zipping through to what you need, and the phone also displays the starting letter of your current section of contacts as you go.

It never took us more than a few seconds to find what we wanted, and we've accumulated a fair number of contacts over the decade or more that we've been using mobile phones (not that we ever call half of them).

Favourites make the situation even easier, as long as you're sparing with them. Our 10 most often-called contacts lived happily in there, ready to be summoned with a finger press when required.

When a connection was established, we did find the speaker volume a little quiet and the quality slightly muzzier than some phones we've cradled next to our ear canals, but it held a connection well and was more than intelligible. It's the difference between a brand new wine glass and one that's been through the dishwasher a few times – less obviously crystalline clear, but still ably fit for purpose.

Importing contacts proved easy, too. All we had to do was supply our Google account details and they were synced in a matter of minutes. If you're not as deeply tied into Google, you can also opt to import contacts from your SIM and SD card, each of which also worked fine.

Alternatively, you can choose to sync up Facebook and corporate accounts, enabling them to flood your contacts list and more. It's every inch the experience you'd hope for.