LAS VEGAS—Alcatel OneTouch really has some tricks up its sleeve. Here at CES, the company showed the only phone I've ever seen to run three OSes on the same hardware, a new 10-inch tablet, and a really nifty phablet remote control. At least two of them will likely come to the U.S.
Let's start with the Pixi 3 phones. Alcatel makes inexpensive little phones, and this line certainly fits into that realm. The phones have a Nokia feel to them, with wraparound plastic covers in eight colors, and they're one of Alcatel's operator-customizable lines, coming in screen sizes from 3.5 to 5 inches, with or without LTE, and either Qualcomm or Mediatek processors depending on whether or not they have LTE. The idea is that these phones fill holes in mobile carriers' lineups, so they can be any size or level of power necessary to do so.
It was interesting to see how Alcatel has skinned Firefox OS and Android similarly, too. For instance, it uses the same music, camera, gallery and contacts icons across its Android and Firefox implementations. Windows Phone, of course, has to stay Windows Phone.
The Pixis could come to the U.S. if a carrier wants them. So could the Pop 10, Alcatel's latest tablet. This is a slim, soft-touch white plastic 9.6-inch Android Lollipop tablet with built-in LTE.
The model I tried at CES didn't have fully functioning software, but it did snap into a magnetized keyboard dock with aplomb. At 7.9mm, it feels thin for a budget 10-inch tablet, and Alcatel says it has a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor, a 1280-by-800 LCD, 8GB of storage, 5- and 2-megapixel cameras, and LTE in AT&T and T-Mobile flavors.
The tablet doesn't have a release date or price yet. But seeing it reminded me that I've seen very few new, U.S.-bound Android tablets at CES so far. I can see carriers giving this tablet away for very little money.
The Alcatel gadget that most interested me, though, was the cool little Buddy 2 remote, which is a secondary Bluetooth controller for an Android phone, most likely for a phablet. It has a color LCD and an electroluminescent keypad below it. It can work (paired with a phone's Android app) as a Bluetooth handset, a music controller, an office app remote control, or a remote display and shutter button for a camera.
Here's the neatest thing: as you change apps, the keypad changes too! It can be a number pad when you're making calls, or forward and back buttons to control music. It reminds me of the cult hit Samsung Alias 2 texting phone from 2009, but it's even more elegant.
Alcatel already has a Buddy, a more fixed-function bar-shaped handset that comes with its Pop Mega phablet for Straight Talk. It's unclear whether the company intends to sell the Buddy 2 as a standalone product or whether it's going to come with an upcoming phablet, but it's a useful little device.