itel ACE 4 Shine feature phone launched at Rs 1,059

NOIDA: itel has added another sub-Rs 1,500 keypad phone to its India shelf. The ACE 4 Shine is priced at Rs 1,059 and was introduced on 24 September 2026 for buyers who want calling, FM radio and a long standby window without a touchscreen contract.

Arijeet Talapatra, CEO of itel India (Transsion Holding), said feature phones still matter for people who want simplicity. With the ACE 4 Shine, he said, the company focused on everyday essentials plus Type-C charging, Wireless FM, King Voice and multiple Indian languages, while keeping senior users in mind through a large-font dialer and a backlit Radiant Keypad.

Hardware built for basic days

The handset uses a 1.77-inch QQVGA colour display (128 × 160), a curved textured body, and colour options in Black, Magic Blue and Forest Green. Inside sit a UNISOC SC6533G chipset, 4 MB RAM and 8 MB ROM, expandable to 32 GB on microSD. Dual-SIM 2G covers the 900 and 1800 MHz bands.

Battery capacity is 1,000 mAh. itel claims up to eight days of standby and up to 8.3 hours of talk time, depending on network and use. Type-C charging is the modern wrinkle in an otherwise classic feature-phone layout, cutting the need for ageing Micro-USB cables in a family drawer.

Utilities include Wireless FM with recording, Bluetooth, a 3.5 mm jack, auto call recording, a voice recorder, LED torch, calendar, alarm and calculator. The phone book holds up to 500 contacts with photo tags, according to the launch brief.

Accessibility and language reach

King Voice reads menus and incoming calls aloud in English and Hindi. An SOS key is included for emergency dialling. The interface supports nine languages for input - English, Hindi, Gujarati, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi, Kannada, Malayalam and Bengali - while display text support is described as BIS-certified across 22 Indian regional languages.

Distribution is through itel's offline and online channels, with Carlcare-linked service cited by the company across more than 1,000 centres and a wide retail footprint. That service claim is the practical check for rural buyers: a Rs 1,059 phone only works if a dead battery or cracked casing can be handled near home.

Feature phones no longer set the national sales charts the way they did a decade ago, but they still fill a clear gap - secondary SIMs, elders who dislike touchscreens, and first-time users who need dialling more than apps. The ACE 4 Shine's public brief is narrow and checkable: Rs 1,059, Type-C, backlit keys, King Voice, and an eight-day standby claim from itel on 24 September 2026.

At Rs 1,059, the ACE 4 Shine is priced like a utility, not a status device. Families buying for parents often care more about a lit keypad at night and a loud speaker for missed-call callbacks than about app stores. Type-C is the small courtesy that keeps the phone charging from the same brick as a newer smartphone.

itel's language and King Voice stack is the other half of the sell. A phone that speaks menus in Hindi and shows BIS-backed regional scripts reduces the training burden on younger relatives. Whether eight-day standby survives mixed 2G coverage is the field test buyers will run themselves.