Alcatel V3 Ultra review: Kindle disguised as smartphone, decent performance

Business Standard

23-06-2025

Alcatel, originally a French brand now licensed by China's TCL Technology, has re-entered the Indian market with its V-series smartphones. The company, which began selling cordless phones in India in 1996, was later acquired by Nokia in 2016, and reportedly sold its final product in 2018 before exiting the Indian market has returned after a seven-year break with three new devices: Alcatel V3 Classic, Pro, and Ultra.
The Alcatel V3 Ultra is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 processor and introduces the NXTPAPER IPS display at a starting price of Rs 19,999. The unique selling proposition (USP) of this smartphone is its display, which can be tuned to show colours or go black-and-white inked screen, similar to the Amazon Kindle. Is it a smartphone worth purchasing when there are plenty of other options available in midrange segment? Let's find out.
Design and Build
The Alcatel V3 Ultra features a generic smartphone design with a thin 7.99 mm frame and weighing 196 grams. The smartphone stands tall as a decent-sized smartphone that fits in your pocket perfectly. The plastic back panel of the smartphone flaunts a huge circular camera island positioned at the top left corner, which draws quite some attention.
The Alcatel V3 Ultra comes in three colour options, and all three feature a mix of glossy and matte bits that add a unique touch and make it resistant to fingerprints or smudges. The unit that we received for review was Ocean Grey, which sports a distinguishing yet appealing pattern, giving it a premium feel. The Alcatel branding rests vertically on the bottom left corner.
The side frame comes with a matte finish, sporting a power button, volume buttons, and a slider button on the right side. The left side of the frame is spotless except for a SIM ejector tray. The bottom of the frame flaunts a 3.5mm jack, a speaker grille, and a USB-C port for charging and data transfer. A 3.5mm jack, rather than doing away with it, especially at this price range, is something that I appreciate. The phone does seem a bit thick, but due to the equal weight distribution, it doesn't feel heavy or uncomfortable to hold.
The smartphone comes bundled with a stylus that tucks into a slot on the back of the bundled phone case. Unlike Samsung's S-Pen, it doesn't use Bluetooth or require charging. The stylus can be used for note-taking or doodling.
Display and Audio
The highlight of the Alcatel V3 Ultra is its four-in-one display, which comprises a normal display, colour paper mode, ink paper mode, and a max ink mode. The 6.8-inch anti-glare display comes with 2460 × 1080 resolution, 2.5D curved edges, and a punch-hole camera at the top. The anti-glare display rids you of the concerns regarding having a tough time seeing the display due to light reflecting off it. Due to the lack of AMOLED display, the colour reproduction won't be impressive.
Alcatel has patented the NXTPAPER display in India, which means you won't find such a display on any other smartphone in India. This paper-like display can be customised and switched between with the ease of just sliding the slider button situated on the left frame, under the power button. When I used these display modes, I was quite impressed by them. The first thing to notice here is the transition between these modes. It's a pretty clean and smooth transition in which it feels like somehow magically your display has lost its colours and become a book. I have used Kindle, and it obviously remains undefeated in terms of book-like display, but that's a device made only for reading, which is why it excels. The Alcatel V3 Ultra, on the other hand, is a smartphone with this feature, which makes it a much better option.
On top of all these modes, other features like eye care assistant night light mode further ensure that the smartphone is suitable to use even in low-light conditions. The peak brightness of 650 nits struggled a bit to give a comfortable viewing experience in well-lit conditions. The 120Hz refresh rate helps in getting a fast and responsive display, unless you start gaming.
In terms of audio quality, the Alcatel V3 Ultra performs well. The presence of dual speakers–one on the bottom frame and the other hidden right above the pin-hole camera on the display–gives satisfactory output. When volume is maxed, the smartphone does slightly compromise on the audio clarity, but since it is not tuned by Dolby Atmos so we can't expect much. The lack of Dolby Atmos is a bit strange though, as many other smartphones priced even lower than this support Dolby Atmos.
Performance and Software
The Alcatel V3 Ultra is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 6300 system-on-chip (SoC), which didn't seem like a good offering, especially in the Rs 20,000 segment. In this price range, an upgrade–MediaTek Dimensity 7300 chipset would have been nice. At this price point, phones like the CMF Phone 2 Pro, Poco X7 5G offer better chipsets and overall performance. Nonetheless, the processor is paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The RAM makes the device fast, however, the low storage poses an issue. If you are someone who likes to capture memories or download lots of stuff, then either you'll have to get an SD card or some cloud storage subscriptions.
In terms of performance, I didn't notice many issues with the Alcatel V3 Ultra. Multitasking was smooth between applications like Google Chrome, YouTube, Photos, File Manager, and Spotify. Heating issues were noticed when the usage became heavy or while charging the device. One of the downsides that was pretty evident was that this smartphone is not great at gaming. Frame drops were quite noticeable in even basic games like Temple Run. When it comes to handling high-performing games like Asphalt and BGMI, the frame drops became even more evident than before. It might be safe to say that the Alcatel V3 Ultra hasn't been built for gaming purposes, which is understandable.
Coming to the software, the Alcatel V3 Ultra is shipped with Android 14 out of the box. Google unveiled Android 16 just last month, and the stable build of that is likely to be rolled out by the end of this year. In a time when the majority of companies offer Android 15, and some like Pixel come with a developer beta of Android 16, Alcatel decided to sell the V3 series with Android 14 only. I am unable to understand what led to this decision, but it comes with the promise of up to three years of software updates and four years of security updates. When translated, it means that the Alcatel V3 Ultra will only be permitted to have Android 17, which will most probably be released in less than a year from now.
Camera
The V3 Ultra features a 108MP main camera, along with an 8MP ultra-wide and a 2MP macro lens. I tested it in a variety of lighting conditions—outdoors in daylight and indoors—and while the photos generally looked natural, the finer details just weren't there. The matte screen doesn't help either. It makes it harder to spot sharpness or clarity while reviewing shots on the phone. Skin tones often came out softened and felt processed.
In ideal lighting, and when you manually tap to focus, it can produce some decent-looking shots with reasonably accurate colours. But the autofocus can be unreliable—it misses focus more often than it should, leading to blurry results. Macro shots are especially hit-or-miss. It struggles to focus up close and doesn't add much value. The front 32MP camera isn't great either. Even with good lighting, selfies turn out heavily processed and softened.
Overall, the V3 Ultra might not be a reliable option for photography. It can be good for casual photos, but it's not a phone you'd pick for the camera alone.
Battery and Charging
The Alcatel V3 Ultra is shipped with a 5010mAh battery with support for up to 33W charging. When used normally to moderately, the Alcatel V3 Ultra lasted me a day. If you aren't planning on indulging in some extensive gaming sessions or multitasking sessions, then it can easily last up to 12 hours. Under light usage, the smartphone might even offer a 24-hour battery backup.
If you decide to switch display modes to one of the ink modes, then the battery backup will improve significantly. With light usage and max ink mode, the Alcatel V3 Ultra will likely last for more than two to three days.
When it comes to charging, the Alcatel V3 Ultra can complete an entire charge cycle in around 80 minutes. A strange thing here was that the initial 20 per cent of the battery took more time to get charged as compared to the range from 20 per cent to 70 per cent.
Verdict
Overall, the Alcatel V3 Ultra is a smartphone that one should get if they are a fan of reading. If someone's an avid reader and they are looking for a smartphone in the budget segment that can also handle some multimedia experience, then this will be the right option for them. If someone's looking for a good battery life, then too Alcatel V3 Ultra can be a good option, however, only if they are willing to compromise on the colours of the display.
However, if someone is looking for good performance or a decent gaming experience, then this is not the right pick. There are other smartphones in the market in this budget segment that will offer a better gaming experience or come with higher processors.