Alcatel One Touch Idol mini Hands-on

What would a mobile phone portfolio be today without a "mini" version, and Alcatel hops on the bandwagon with the Idol mini - a 4.3" handset with 480x854 pixels of resolution. The screen seems to be of average quality, neither too bright, nor with very wide viewing angles, clocking contrast and brightness shift when tilted, but nothing significant.

Design

We found the Idol mini to feel cheapest of all the One Touch line offerings, which is explicable, since it is indeed the most budged one, but mainly because of the choice of plastic, rather than the construction itself. It is, however, the most comfortable to handle of them all, with easy one-handed operation, non-slippery chassis and tapered corners. The phone is thicker than the rest of the gang, which, granted, is a pretty anorexic bunch, so the Idol mini is still under 8mm, which makes it one of the slimmest low-end Androids around.

Performance

It will have a dual SIM version as well, which will double the amount of internal storage available to you from 4 GB for the single SIM to 8 GB, though the single SIM Idol mini has a microSD slot for expansion. A 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 1 GB of RAM ensure some basic operational functionality, with hints of lag and increased loading times. A 5 MP rear camera with merely HD video recording and 1700 mAh juicer round up the tiny offering, which comes in the various cool metallic colors you can see in our pics below.

We've no doubts Alcatel will let this one out of the gate with a rock bottom pricing, so we can't wait for our review unit to check whether it will be as good a value for the money as it seems to be from our initial impressions.