Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S to be sold with a VR headset in the box

Last year's Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 (4.7) and OneTouch Idol 3 (5.5) will soon get a successor each - these should be called Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4, and Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S. The latter in particular seems to be a very interesting product: according to Venture Beat, the Idol 4S will be sold in a box (plastic-made) that includes a Google Cardboard-compliant Virtual Reality headset. As you can see in the first image embedded below, it looks like most of that box is the VR headset itself.

Allegedly, the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S will cost less than $400 (unlocked), allowing users to get both a seemingly decent smartphone, and a VR headset at an accessible price. More and more smartphone manufacturers (including Samsung and HTC) are betting big on virtual reality, so Alcatel might be onto something here.   

As previously reported, the OneTouch Idol 4S will offer pretty nice features for its price point, including a 5.5-inch Quad HD AMOLED display, 3 GB of RAM, an octa-core Snapdragon 652 processor, and a 16 MP rear camera. The handset should run Android 6.0 Marshmallow when it goes on sale in May, at about the same time with the OneTouch Idol 4.

VentureBeat further mentions that Alcatel OneTouch is also planning to launch various new Pop smartphones (in addition to the Pixi 4 line-up announced earlier this year). For example, we'll soon see a OneTouch Pop 4 and a OneTouch Pop 4S, both offering decent features at low prices: the Pop 4S could cost less than $200 (coming with a 5.5-inch 1080p display, 2 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of expandable storage space), while the Pop 4 should cost less than $100 (featuring a 720p screen of 5 inches or 5.5-inches, 1 GB of RAM, and 8 GB of expandable internal memory).
 
New Alcatel tablets are also expected to be released soon. The most interesting one is a Windows 10-based model that may be called Alcatel OneTouch Plus 10. This tablet will feature LTE connectivity and a detachable keyboard, and could be positioned as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft's Surface slates.

All these new Alcatel devices will probably be announced later this month at MWC 2016. We'll be there to let you know all about them.


source: Venture Beat