Hands on with the Bell Ahlo 1 smartphone

Early this morning, Bell released a smartphone under a new brand, Ahlo. If you buy the handset from Bell or Virgin Plus on a two-year contract, it costs only $1 per month, or $24 over the typical two-year period. Outside of the deal, it costs $270.

I went to the Eaton Centre in Toronto to see if I could find the phone at any carrier stores. To my surprise, the single Bell store I visited had a dummy unit, but I next went to a Virgin Plus in the mall, and they had a working device. Before I get into my full experience with the Ahlo 1, it’s worth remembering that this is a low-cost device designed for customers who walk into Bell stores and ask for the cheapest phone available.

It’s not a flagship, that’s for sure

The first thing that struck me was how the clock at the top left of the home screen is terribly aligned and looks squished into the corner. The phone has a solid heft, but I wouldn’t call it heavy. It’s sporting a 5,000 mAh battery, so it should last a long time to compensate.

While the Ahlo website describes the screen as “a realm of vibrant hues and razor-sharp details,” in person, it’s serviceable, but compared to even modern mid-range phones, it looks a little washed out. It’s more than usable, but it’s not overly immersive, and the ghosting when you move things around on the screen is really bad.

Combining that with how laggy this device is doesn’t make for a great experience. It’s par for the course in this price range, but seeing the phone stand out with a solid chipset would have been cool. Bell has yet to share what processor is running the phone, but based on my experience with it, I’d expect it’s something older from MediaTek. (A retailer’s site claims the phone is running a Samsung Exynos 1330 Octa-core processor, but Bell itself hasn’t confirmed this.)

In person, the back of the phone does have some subtle silver flecks in it.

On the plus side, a sales rep told me that inside the SIM tray, there’s a microSD card slot, making adding lots of storage easy. It also still has a headphone jack, which is likely a welcome feature for people shopping in this price range, since I assume this phone may end up in the hands of many kids or elderly parents. The buttons also felt nice and click-y, and the power button has a fingerprint reader. However, I couldn’t try it, so I’m not sure how well it works.

The last thing I tried briefly was the camera, and that’s the most telling part of this device. As soon as you open the camera app, you’ll notice a ‘Beauty’ slider along the bottom of the display, which lets you know that this is likely just some off-the-shelf phone from a supplier in Asia. The Ahlo website claims that this phone was “designed” in Canada, but since it’s using some stock Asian camera app, I don’t really believe that. The Bell sales rep also told me that the phone was built in Canada, and I find that even harder to believe.

The camera’s performance was what you’d expect from a device in this price range. I tested it in a dimly lit carrier store, so my results are pretty worst-case scenario, but it was fairly slow and quite washed out. The interface was a little confusing, with weird icons instead of clearly labelled buttons. For instance, the macro camera mode is a flower, which is pretty universal for macro, but the ultrawide is a weird circular icon with a pie slice cut out of it. Once you hit it once, you’ll figure it out, but for a phone that was supposedly designed with “the perfect balance of good features and good design,” it misses the mark in the camera interface.

Overall, this phone is fine for its price. People in this price range are often left with few good options, but you might be better off waiting for a sale or buying a used phone from a more reputable brand. Keep in mind that while Bell and Virgin are advertising this phone as $1 per month, the plans you need to get are a bit more expensive than if you got a used phone and a cheap plan.

A look at the “About” screen on the Ahlo phone.

The cost of the Ahlo phone

At Virgin, the cheapest bring-your-own device (BYOD) plan is $39, but with the Ahlo phone, you need a plan that’s at least $45 per month, plus that $1 charge for the phone. So, really, I’d say you’re paying $7 per month for the phone and $168 over two years, which is a great price for this phone.

Bell has a simple talk and text plan for $25, keeping your monthly cost a little below $30. If you want data, the cheapest plan available online is $65, which is $20 more than the cheapest BYOD plan, making the phone actually closer to $21 per month and around $504 over two years.

This is to say that if you want a phone with just talk and text, get it from Bell, and if you want mobile data, go with Virgin Plus.