- Analysis by KJ David
Released as part of the prepaid lineups of US-based carriers TracFone and Straight Talk, the Alcatel ZIP LTE, in terms of technical pros and cons, is an archetypal 2017 entry-level Android phone. By the way, don't forget to discover the best phones from TracFone here. One of the ZIP's biggest setbacks is its ancient-sounding 2-megapixel-only front camera 
-- even mundane 5-megapixel selfie cams were already frowned upon as of this specs-driven Phonerated analysis. It won't be turning any heads with its rear camera either, sporting a modest 5-megapixel f/2.0-aperture main camera that's at least aided by a standard LED flash.
Jumping over to the processing department, despite running on a basic quad-core processor clocked at 1.1GHz , this 4G-enabled (Check out some of the latest 4G phones here) prepaid Android matches the forenamed con with a 2GB RAM 
, which is obviously a selling point, at least compared to the lower RAM counts of a lot of other entry-level alternatives. We also found the above-average (as of this technical review) 16-hour talk time promised by its 2400mAh battery rather appreciable, although the same cannot be said of its 10-day standby time , which was nearly 30 percent lower than the average value as we were writing this.
Related: The Best Straight Talk Phones
Display-wise, even though the ZIP LTE's 5-inch HD (1820 x 720) IPS display is far from something worth calling home about, we marked it as a pro, considering that a lot of tantamount smartphones in the low-end category suffer from lower-resolution WVGA-480p or qHD-540p definitions. Also, an HD screen resolution is always a welcome facet, coming from a cheap prepaid phone whose initial price was only 50 dollars .
Adding to its low-profile mix of pros and cons is a 16GB internal memory , which we found appreciable, since introductory smartphones with similar processing components and cameras usually don't go for anything beyond 8GB of native storage. Having said that, we are not as enthused with its up-to-32GB-only top-up memory allowance -- a good number of 2017-released low-end smartphones support 64GB or even 128GB memory cards.
Only offered in Black (smartphones of its caliber often are) and running on the Android 7.1.1 Nougat platform from the get-go, Alcatel's ZIP LTE is bound for first-time smartphone users or those looking for a cheap, 4G-ready Android phone.
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