Alcatel's Pop Mega phablet comes with an extra phone

Included with the Pop Mega is a device called the Buddy, which looks like a feature phone from about 10 years ago, but it connects to the Pop Mega via Bluetooth. The Buddy can serve double duty by allowing you to have a much smaller device pressed to your head for phone calls, and also to offload a bit of battery usage here and there. The Buddy will be in the box with the Pop Mega, which will cost users $249 total. That's a much better deal than the old HTC Mini+, which was a similar device that cost $100 on its own (though the Mini+ was much prettier). 

In addition to the 6-inch Pop Mega, Alcatel will also have 4-inch and 5-inch Pop phones for Tracfone available next month. These are all starter phones for those who just want a smartphone regardless of the features. The Pop Mega's 6-inch screen is just 960 x 540, and the 4-inch Pop Star ($149) is a sad 800×480. They do include LTE though, so that's nice. No word on the name or price of the 5-inch model, but we'd assume it would be $200 to slide in between the Mega and the Star. 

But, the real question of all this is whether we should expect more phablets or cell-enabled tablets to come with companion phones. It might not be too bad to have a 7-inch tablet with a companion phone. 

source: The Verge & PhoneScoop