Alcatel Go Play: another budget waterproof phone hits South Africa

The Hisense Infinity KO set a high bar for budget waterproof smartphones after its release earlier this year. But Alcatel is hoping to get a piece of that pie with the Go Play handset.

The company announced that the rugged phone is now available at Cellucity and at “selected Foschini, The Fix, Donna Claire, Markham, Total Sports or Sports Scene, Exact, Sterns, American Swiss or Hi stores”.

The device has a recommended retail price of R3499, which makes it R500 cheaper than Hisense’s own device. What’s Alcatel offering for the price though?

There’s the IP67 water resistance (up to one metre of water for 30 minutes), shock/dust proof design and a variety of bright colours.

Go under the hood and you’ll find a budget-minded Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of expandable storage. This is firmly in the low- to mid-range then.

No contest?

By comparison, Hisense’s Infinity KO offers a better (but still budget-focused) Snapdragon 415 chip, then ups the ante with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. There’s really no contest from a performance point of view then.

In the camera department, the Alcatel Go Play packs an 8MP main camera and a 5MP camera for selfies. For R500 more, the Infinity KO maintains the same 5MP selfie shooter but ups the main camera resolution to 13MP.

Alcatel is promising a “long” life from the 2500mAh pack (which should play nicely with the Snapdragon 410), but HiSense delivers a 3200mAh battery.

If you are looking for a budget phone that can withstand a dip, we’d recommend the Hisense device then.

Alcatel is sweetening the deal though, offering a free Go Watch smartwatch and an 8GB microSD card when you buy the device on a R199 contract via Vodacom, Chatz or Cellucity.