REVIEW ALCATEL ONETOUCH IDOL 3

WHAT IS THE ALCATEL ONETOUCH IDOL 3?

The Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 is the company's flagship Android phone. It's unlikely to be spoken of in the same sentence as the Samsung Galaxy S6 or the HTC One M9 for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Alcatel doesn't have the marketing pull to compete with the Apples and Samsungs of this world. Secondly, it's significantly cheaper than those top-end phones.

Alcatel has taken the unusual step to offer the Idol 3 in two sizes. We've lived with both the 4.7in (£150) and the 5.5in model (£260), but it's the bigger of the two that we'll focus on in this review. While both models share the same design philosophy, spending a little more will buy you better specs.

So can the Idol 3 compete with the very best? Well it certainly makes a great attempt, and here follow the reasons you should consider this reasonably priced Android handset.

ALCATEL ONETOUCH IDOL 3 – DESIGN 

While there's no sign of the high-grade glass or aluminium finishes you get with top-end smartphones, Alcatel has certainly done a great job at this price point of making a predominantly plastic phone look elegant.

The combination of the silver plastic edging, two-toned trim and the matte-grey back with a slightly brushed finish all contribute to making the Idol 3 eye-catching. The curved corners add a touch of sleekness to an already slim frame and the plastic feels nice to the touch. Samsung take note: this is how you make a good-looking plastic phone.

Up-front, the screen bezel is slim down the sides, while above and below the screen sit the front-facing JBL speakers. Ports and connections are well spread around the trim, with the micro 3G/4G SIM placed just below the standby button. Puling out the SIM card tray also reveals support for a micro SD card, enabling you to expand storage beyond the 16GB or 32GB depending on the model you go for. Sadly, the rear of the phone – which houses the camera and LED flash – isn't removable, so there's no getting to the 2,910mAh battery.

The Idol 3 benefits from dual microphones, as is standard on most phones nowadays, but Alcatel has gone one better here. By combining a switching screen orientation feature, you can now make or take calls no matter which way up you're holding the phone – and get the same call quality. We'll get to that in more detail later

PROS

• Attractive plastic design
• Some unique Android tweaks
• Impressive sounding speakers
• Sharp Full HD screen

CONS

• Laggy when multitasking
• 13-megapixel shooting not as reliable as 10-megapixel shooting

KEY FEATURES

• 5.5-inch Full HD 1080 IPS LCD screen
• Snapdragon 615 quad-core CPU with Adreno 405 GPU
• 13-megapixel main camera with LED flash
• JBL-powered front-facing speakers
• Android 5.0 Lollipop 
• 8-megapixel front-facing camera
• 32GB storage with 2GB RAM
• Manufacturer: Alcatel
• Review Price: £260.00

ALCATEL ONETOUCH IDOL 3 – SCREEN

There's a trend for some phone manufacturers to offer higher-resolution 2K screens, but most will be satisfied with what Full HD 1080p has to offer at this size. For starters, it will have less impact on the battery life.

One of the biggest advantages of opting for the 5.5in Idol3 OVER

 the 4.7in handset is that you get a Full HD screen – and it's a great one too.

It's a fully laminated IPS LCD screen, packing in a 400ppi pixel density and a maximum brightness of more than 600 nits. That translates to a sharp, exceptionally bright screen with strong viewing angles. Alacatel has partnered with Technicolor to introduce what it's calling "Color Enhance technology". This essentially takes advantage of the Idol 3's adaptive screen to improve contrast and colour rendering for more vivid colours.

While we wouldn't say it's as punchy or as impressionable as Samsung's AMOLED screens, this is still a fantastic display for the price.

ALCATEL ONETOUCH IDOL 3 – CAMERA

The ability to take better pictures has been a prime concern for Alcatel with its new flagship, so it's made improvements to the hardware and the software to ensure it's an all-round performer. The rear camera benefits from a 13-megapixel Sony IMX214 sensor with an LED flash and a 2.0 aperture lens to aid low-light shooting. Up-front is a sizeable 8-megapixel camera, which is pretty impressive – on paper, at least.

The first issue is that neither cameras are set up to shoot at maximum resolution; you'll need to venture into the settings to address that. This means shooting in a 4:3 ratio, which is more fiddly than shooting in 16:9 at 10 megapixels. We'd also argue that the lower resolution is actually more reliable and consistent in terms of image quality.

The camera app is clearly inspired by Android's stock app, with an emphasis on simplicity. A settings dropdown menu features time-lapse, panorama and HDR modes. There's also a manual mode that lets you tweak settings such as exposure and shutter control. A new fast Face Focus mode aims to snap to focus on faces in only 0.26 seconds.

Image quality in automatic shooting mode is solid, without being groundbreaking. In good light, the autofocus performs well and there's good detail and colour accuracy. Up close, however, it's a little more difficult to maintain the same detail and poise as you can from a distance. Overall, images lacked punchiness, but we were generally pleased with the results.

13-megapixel image sample produces sharp, nicely coloured images

Video can be shot at a maximum of 1080p HD, and doesn't excel beyond what we've seen with similar setups. There's very little in the way of added features to improve video, and while footage is reasonably sharp, it isn't as vibrant as we'd hoped for. Sound recording isn't of the best quality either. On the whole, we expected more from the Idol 3 in this department.

My opinion
Phone gorgeous and cheap. Fantastic features , i like it
i give him 8/10 ^^