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Would you buy a $70 smartphone if it ran Marshmallow?

We're a bit dubious about Alcatel's newest $70 offering, but it might be the right pick for users on a budget who still want a modern version of Android.
By
August 29, 2016
Alcatel-Fierce-4

Alcatel isn’t exactly the most premium brand on the smartphone market, but as of late they’ve begun gaining some traction among budget users. Their latest offering, which will soon be available through T-Mobile, comes rocking Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box and only costs $69. Would you buy the Alcatel Fierce 4?

The Alcatel Fierce 4 is a 5.5-inch offering that actually has HD screen resolution and a display that’s probably substantially more vibrant than what you would be expecting for the price point. It sports 2 gigs of RAM and 16GB of internal storage that is expandable via an SD card. The rear-mounted camera is 8MP, but don’t expect to become the next Ansel Adams with this software.

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Although we haven’t gotten our hands on one to try out for ourselves yet, we’re dubious that a device going for $69 will be able to run Marshmallow with enough grace to make it worth the price. Sure, it’s not a very large investment, especially with $900 titans like the Galaxy Note 7 wandering around, but modern mobile operating systems are fairly demanding resource-wise, meaning lower specced phones tend to struggle just to stay operational.

However, unlike other budget devices, this one appears to be designed to run Marshmallow right off the bat, so maybe user experience will be better than we’re expecting.

The device is now available to MetroPCS customers and will arrive on T-Mobile by 2017.

What are your thoughts, though? Would you fork over $70 for Alcatel’s budget venture into Marshmallow with the Fierce 4? Let us know in the comments below!

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