Take these broken wings,
And learn to fly again, learn to live so free. - Broken Wings, by Mr Mister.
There are many candidates for the title of 'The Worst Smartphone Ever' but the Alcatel Pixi. 3 (3.5) has to be the winner. I can confidently claim this from experience because mine was all but offloaded for free, it was that bad.
It was one of those Black Friday 2017 offers that was too good to ignore: Buy a prepay SIM card with 5GB of data along with more airtime and texts than I could use in a month for £15 and get the phone thrown in as well. I knew what it was I was getting, and had low expectations of the device, but I discovered even those were set unrealistically high.
Sometimes my morbid curiosity gets the better of me: I travel to nearby towns which I know will be spirit crushing disappointments to remind myself why I don't visit them... At heart I am a voyeuristic rubbernecker; an unrepentant scab picker, knowing I shouldn't but unable to stop myself... It was in this spirit that I approached the Pixi 3 (3.5)
At first sight the phone appears to be compact and easy to hold. It's dimensions, 112 x 62 X 12 mm, are almost identical to the original 2007 iPhone, as is the 3.5 inch TFT screen size. Its specification - 4GB internal memory, 512GB RAM dual core processor - are also very close to the iconic Apple device, so what could possibly go wrong? I was soon to find out.
Let's begin with the least of it's problems, the name Pixi. Is it a deliberate misspelling of pixie? If so I get annoyed by such examples of intentional corporate illiteracy. Or is it supposed to be evocative of a pixel? Either way it sounds like a luridly pink toy an eight year old girl would own. Perhaps in a few years' time, devices such as this will fall out of Christmas crackers, but if that proves to be the case I'd expect to hear a chorus of disappointed childrens' sighs when they do.
One a confusingly differentiated range of smartphones, the Pixi 3 (3.5) is the lowest specced of them all; seemingly compiled from whatever dusty sweepings could be had from anonymous Shenzhen factory floors or obscure Asian parts bins. Upon turning it on I discovered the first of many unpleasant surprises; Alcatel have installed their own ghastly theme on top of the Pixi's Android 4.4.2 operating system. While my other phone running the exact same version of Android uses the traditional Holo colour scheme, by contrast the Pixi utilises white or pale pastel fonts against equally washed out coloured backgrounds for the most part, along with some very crudely drawn icons. This must be difficult to see for people with normal vision, let alone people such as I who have significant visual impairments. And to add insult to injury, the icon sizes are ridiculously small. Normally I would install an app such as Apex Launcher to take control of the user interface in order to rectify those issues, but unfortunately the Pixi's feeble internal storage and RAM are quickly commandeered by both the onboard apps and any you may have managed to download, rendering such an option impractical. Yes, it is possible - in fact absolutely necessary - to install a microSD card and move some of the apps onto it, but that is only a partial workaround to the hamstrung hardware. So, precluded from choosing the screen's appearance and using the apps of your choice, you have to act as if you are packing for a holiday: You must be absolutely ruthless in deciding what you'll be taking along, and then arbitrarily reduce that pile of stuff by half, and half again, until you can eventually cram it all in your suitcase.
But even this ultraminimalist approach may not be enough. Half of the device's 4GB native storage is earmarked for the operating system, leaving you coping with a scant 1.87GB to work with. Some of the preinstalled bloatware can be deleted, but that leaves many 'baked in' apps taking up precious space which you'd prefer to have occupied by those of your choosing. For example, what if you don't like writing using the unremovable Google Drive? Well too bad! As an experiment I attempted to download the mobile version of Microsoft Word from the embedded Google Play store (an exasperating experience in itself using this device's tiny keyboard and awful WiFi radio.) The Pixi just about managed to gulp it all down like an already full glutton stuffing themselves with a groaning plate of Christmas dinner, but when I tried to open a new document the phone flashed up a pleading message warning it's electronic stomach was at bursting point before freezing, then abruptly shutting down. Only deleting the app restored the phone to some form of functionality. With space at such a premium there can be no excuses for cluttering so much of it with utter junkware.
