Alcatel slides in mobile phone market with E260

Alcatel has been around for some time now, but this quite possibly could be their most stylisth foray into the mobile phone market to date. The One Touch E260 is the company’s first slider phone, but despite the attractive form factor, it is seriously lacking in what are now “standard” features.

While most GSM connoisseurs will prefer a quad-band handset to allow for international use, tri-band seems to hold up most of the time. Alcatel went one worse and opted for a dual-band (900/1800 MHz) mobile phone, making it completely useless to anyone, for example, in Canada wishing to import it for use with the Rogers/Fido network (which uses the 850 and 1900 bands, both notably missing from Alcatel’s offering).

The OT E260 may look nice, but it won’t take any pictures (no camera on board), won’t play back any music (no integrated media player), and won’t even let you use MP3 ringtones (polyphonic is the best it can do).

If you still want the Alcatel One Touch E260, you’ll be able to pick one up any day now because they mentioned a Q2 release. No word on pricing, however.