Alcatel One Touch Idol Review

Introduction:

Annouced in early 2013, the Alcatel One Touch Idol is a mid-range Android smartphone aiming to meet the demand for affordable, large-screened smartphones. It stands out with its 4.7-inch IPS LCD panel, but that isn't all that potential buyers may be attracted by. Alcatel has managed to trim down the smartphone's thickness to just 7.9-millimeters, and the result is one slim, sexy phone. Under the hood, however, things don't quite look so good as the Idol packs just a humble dual-core processor running at 1GHz. Still, at $300 unsubsidized, it should be a worthy pick, right? Well, don't be so sure about that. Let us walk you through all you need to know about the Alcatel One Touch Idol.

Box contents:

• Wall charger
• microUSB cable
• Wired stereo headset with microphone
• Quick start guide

Alcatel One Touch Idol Unboxing:



Design:

So we took the Alcatel One Touch Idol out of its retail packaging only to be surprised by how light it was. As a matter of fact, it ranks among the lightest smartphones with a screen of this size (4.7 inches), tipping the scales at only 110 grams. The handset is not only super light, but it is also very thin, with a thickness of 7.9 millimeters, as long as we don’t take into account the hump where the protruding camera sensor resides. Despite the large size of its screen, the smartphone is narrow enough to be usable with a single hand, although the experience may vary depending on the size of the user's hands.


Overall, the Alcatel One Touch Idol is a sleek, elegant device that looks quite appealing for its class. Its non-removable back plate has been treated with a brushed metal finish, which looks nice and resists fingerprints well. The phone does have a cheap feel, however, and our fingers can easily tell that the phone's entire shell is made of colored plastic.

Note that we’'re reviewing the pink variant of the Alcatel One Touch Idol, but in case that’s not your favorite color, the handset is also available in silver, black, red, green, and blue.



Three capacitive Android buttons reside underneath the smartphone’'s screen. Since they are well spaced out and far enough from the display'’s bottom edge, accidental presses are extremely rare. The volume rocker is on the right side of the Alcatel One Touch Idol and it protrudes well enough to be operated comfortably. Also on the sides are placed the slots for the SIM cards (assuming you have the dual-SIM model of the device). These, however, are tricky to have their protective covers removed with bare fingers, so a tool, such as a paper clip or something similar, would be required in order to pop a Micro SIM card in. The power key is on top and that’s a solution we are no’t very happy with. Not that the placement of the power button is terrible, but we find its position too far from our index finger, which is why we can’'t reach it easily.


Display:

The Alcatel One Touch Idol stands out with its large display, measuring 4.7 inches in diagonal. It is worth noting that screens of this size are rarely seen on brand-name smartphones priced so low. The resolution of the panel, however, is average at best – 540 by 960 pixels, which translates into a pixel density of about 236ppi. This is by no means a deal breaker, of course, but as a result, pixelation is quite noticeable.

Alcatel has used a layer of scratch-resistant DragonTrail glass for its One Touch Idol, covered with oleophobic coating to prevent fingerprints from sticking to it. We're happy to see that the screen has wide viewing angles and quite accurate color representation. It is also usable outdoors, as long as the sun is not shining straight at it. The brightness of the backlight, however, is clearly uneven on our review unit. In other words, some areas of the screen look brighter than others. At this time we aren't sure whether this issue is common among Alcatel One Touch Idol smartphones or not.



Interface:

The Alcatel One Touch Idol ships with Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean, so it won't be running the latest Android version out of the box. Nevertheless, having no lock screen widgets isn't that big of a deal. The user interface has been slightly modified, but as a whole, it does feel stock-ish and there aren't changes that we don't like. Alcatel has replaced the lock screen, the icons, and has also tweaked the notification bar, but that's pretty much all that has been changed.

The lock screen added by Alcatel has shortcuts to the camera, messaging, and phone apps for convenience, although it would have been more convenient if users had the freedom to pick these manually. The notification bar comes with toggle switches allowing one to quickly change many of the phone's settings. There's a data counter widget as well, keeping track of both SIM cards' data consumption.

Using the on-screen keyboard on the Alcatel One Touch Idol we can type effortlessly both quick text messages and lengthy emails. Its keys are large enough and well spaced out. Alternatively, there's SwiftKey 3 pre-loaded for those who aren't entirely happy with the stock keyboard.



Software:

In terms of software, not a whole lot has been thrown in, but the Backup application seems quite handy. In a nutshell, it uploads the user's data to a Dropbox or Box.net account so that it can be restored at a later time in case that is needed. Backup data can be stored offline as well right on the phone's internal storage. Photos, apps, contacts and system settings can all be included in the backup file.

The Media Share app is another handy addition. Using DLNA tech, it allows the smartphone to be used as a media server, streaming content to other devices. Browsing for media files shared over the network is also an option.

The My Tracks app can be fun to play with. Basically, it uses the GPS radio on the smartphone to track your location constantly, thus creating a map of the path you've traveled throughout the day.


Dual SIM features:

There are two versions of the Alcatel One Touch Idol, and the one we are using for this review has a couple of SIM card slots. Yes, it is a dual SIM, dual stand-by device, allowing the services of two carriers to be used at the same time. For example, one of the cards can be assigned to handle voice calls and text messages, while the other keeps the phone connected to the internet over 3G. The phone can't keep both SIM cards active simultaneously, however, meaning that if one of them is used for a phone call, the other one will be deactivated until the call is ended.

Processor and Memory:

Alcatel has chosen to put a humble MediaTek system-on-chip inside the One Touch Idol, which has surely helped with keeping its production costs down. The silicon in question is the MT6577, with a dual-core CPU clocked at 1GHz. There is one gig of RAM in there as well, which is a fair amount.

Overall, the smartphone’'s real-life performance is acceptable, but it is still a relatively weak device, as you can see from its poor benchmark results. We often noticed choppiness while browsing through menus and home screens, but thankfully, serious lags are uncommon. Avoiding live wallpapers is one way of keeping the phone's performance on par. As for its gaming capabilities, casual games run fine on the Alcatel One Touch Idol, but advanced titles with 3D graphics and fancy visual effects may be choppy at times.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	GLBenchmark 2.5 (Egypt HD)	Vellamo (HTML5 / Metal)
Alcatel One Touch Idol	2893	6303	405 / 3.6 fps	1360 / 416
Google Nexus 4	4757	16749	4917	1375 / 600
LG Optimus L7 II	2823	6674
Samsung Galaxy S III	5335	15152

The dual SIM version of the Alcatel One Touch Idol has 16GB of storage, out of which 13GB are available for storing apps, music, photos, and other stuff. That should be enough storage for casual users, but those who like to take lots of photos may run out of space relatively quickly. Unfortunately, there is no microSD card slot present on the device as that is only available on the handset's single SIM variant.

Internet and connectivity:

The stock web browser on the Alcatel One Touch Idol actually runs better than we though it would. Even heavy web pages are rendered quickly, although they might need some time to load completely. Navigation features, such as pinch to zoom and tap to zoom also work perfectly fine, and we can quickly switch between opened pages. We also tried the Chrome internet browser, but it wasn't as great in terms of performance and responsiveness.


There is no 4G connectivity on the Alcatel One Touch Idol. Instead, there's just a humble 3G radio capable of achieving peak download speeds of 7.2Mbps. Naturally, the smartphone comes with Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth. The FM radio has not been omitted either.

Camera:

The camera app on the Alcatel One Touch Idol has an interface offering lots of settings to tinker with. The user is free to set the white balance and the shooting scene, or just let the camera decide for itself what settings should be used. In reality, however, changing these manually rarely has a positive impact on image quality.


With an 8 megapixel camera and LED flash, the Alcatel One Touch Idol should theoretically be able to take presentable photos, but in reality, its pictures are of mediocre quality. Even the smartphone's outdoor shots are grainy and lack fine detail. There's an option for taking HDR photographs, but it doesn't yield pleasant results. Indoor photos don't look good either even when taken with a strong light source nearby.


Videos suffer from a lack of detail as well even when captured at the maximum resolution of 1280 by 720 pixels. Playing with the built-in live video effects, however, can be quite fun.

Alcatel One Touch Idol Sample Video:



Alcatel One Touch Idol Indoor Sample Video:



Multimedia:

The music player loaded onto the Alcatel One Touch Idol has a simple, easy to use interface. It can group music by album, artist or song name, just like pretty much all other mobile music players can. Album art and lyrics can be displayed as well, assuming the necessary files are present. The now-mandatory lock screen controls and the home screen widget are also present. An equalizer, however, isn't available. There is a single loudspeaker on the smartphone's back and while it has a decent volume output, it crackles slightly when the loudness is set to the maximum.

Lots of video file formats can be played using the Idol's stock video player app. Even DivX video is supported at up to 720p resolution. 1080p videos, however, are extremely choppy so don't even bother loading them onto the phone's storage. With a screen so large, the Alcatel One Touch Idol is quite suitable for watching TV shows on the go, even though the experience won't be in HD due to the screen's low resolution.



Call quality:

We were genuinely pleased with the Alcatel One Touch Idol's call quality. It has a loud earpiece that produces clear, natural voice tones. On the other side of the line, our voice is loud and easily distinguishable, although slightly digitized, presumably due to the presence of a secondary microphone for noise cancellation. Overall, if you'll be doing a lot of talking on the Idol, then you won't be disappointed by the results.

Battery life:

There is a non-removable battery inside the Alcatel One Touch Idol with a capacity of 1800mAh. That's an average battery size by today's standards, so unless you are a very light user, your Idol will likely need to be recharged on a regular basis. According to its manufacturer, the smartphone can deliver 3.2 hours of 3G talk time on a single charge, which is at least half of what most modern smartphones are capable of. If used strictly for music playback, the Idol will last through 45 hours of continuous use.

Conclusion:

Even though the Alcatel One Touch Idol made a cameo in the Iron Man 3 movie, it isn't really a smartphone fit for a superhero. Rather, it is a mid-range phone suitable for those who need a reasonably-priced dual-SIM handset. The Idol stands out with being really light and really thin, all the while packing a screen of generous proportions. Its camera, however, is not as good as it seems on paper, so those party shots won't be looking fabulous once you take a look at them on a larger screen. The pretty weak processor is another thing you'll have to live with should you choose to spend $300 on one of these.

In case you don't insist on having a dual-SIM smartphone, however, then you might want to think twice before getting the Alcatel One Touch Idol. In some markets where it is available, the Google Nexus 4 costs about the same, but has a lot more to offer, including a better screen and a much faster processor, not to mention that it runs the most recent version of Android. And assuming your budget can handle it, the LG Optimus L7 II would also be a great alternative to the One Touch Idol as it comes with a better screen and a faster processor.