It’s available in three colours – lilac, cherry red and the brightest of lime green shades. Each has a glossy inside surface while the casing has a half glossy, half rubbery-matt finish and is a darker shade. The cute duck emblem is on the top half of the back of the phone, and splendid it looks, too.

The smooth, flat keys almost blend into one another and the direction and OK keys at its centre are particularly hard to separate so working your way through the menu isn’t always easy. Alcatel’s operating system has never been the most intuitive, and things don’t get any easier as you drill down into the animated icons, let alone the slim and uninformative instruction manual.

There’s a camera in the lid of the phone, but it’s only VGA. There is also a music player. There are two Java games on board, HeliMinator, where you shoot down helicopters and Rocket Adventure, which is a platform game as baffling as it is thankfully brief.

Full story: 3g.co.uk