Alcatel onetouch Idol 3 unlocked
The Alcatel onetouch Idol 3 is a great device for those of you that are looking for a non-contractual unlocked gsm phone that you can afford to buy outright. The Alcatel onetouch Idol 3 comes unlocked and at a fraction of the cost of the leading flagship smartphones at only $250 done.
Works great as an inexpensive Android backup phone to take with you to the amusement park, on vacation or out of the country. We’ll be reviewing the 5.5″ but it also comes in a 4.7″ for those that want a smaller version.
Specs
The onetouch Idol 3 runs Android 5.0.2 out of the box and comes in a neutral gun metal grey which looks good. Powered by a 64bit Qualcomm Snapdragon Octa Core CPU; One quad running at 1.5GHz and another running at 1GHz along with 2GB of DDR3 RAM and 16GB of onboard storage memory, Adreno 4.05 Qualcomm GPU for those of you that follow, a combination sim card and micro SD card tray allow you to expand to an additional 128GB. A 2910mAh battery gives you up to 13h of talktime on 3G and 600 hours of standby. Full recharge time takes 2.5 hours. The Idol 3 measures 6.01 x 2.96 x 0.29 inches (152.7 x 75.14 x 7.4 mm) and weighs 4.96 oz (141 g).
Quad GSM 850/900/1800/1900, UTMS 850/1900/2100/1700, HSPA+, LTE B2/4/5/7/12/17 with 150mbps down/ 50Mbps up WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz, WiFi Direct, WiFi Display, USB, Bluetooth v4.1 with A2DP stereo support, NFC, Micro USB 2.0, GPS, A-GPS. Accelerometer, Compass, Gesture sensors.
It thoughtfully comes with a sim card tray key and a nice pair of JBL flat cable headphones with extra cushions, quick start guide and manual, wall plug and USB charge cable.
Design
The low price doesn’t necessarily make the phone less good looking. The overall design is minimal and slim at only 0.29″ thickness. Contoured with some subtle curves, a little extended bezel area supports the front firing JBL speakers keeping the screen completely sealed. There’s a tiny arc to the bezel to give the appearance of a subtly curved screen.
The glass is nice and display is large with a super thin bezel area left/right in portrait mode. There is no removable back, only a removable sim card/micro SD card tray located on the left side under the power button.
Size and weight wise, the device feels nice in hand. It’s just heavy enough to feel solid and although it’s all plastic, the phone looks and feels finished. In comparison, a bit heavier than the LG G4 smartphone, but a bit lighter than the new LG V10. All the seams are tight and seems pretty resistant to light scuffs, bezel denting seems almost non-existent on this device. Even the packaging looks like a premium phone.
The volume rocker button is on the right top, while the power button resides on the top left. Button placement for me as a right-handed person isn’t ideal as I prefer to have quick access to my volume rocker than the power button; but the buttons are quite high up there and makes it somewhat inconvenient to push. It would have been nice to have the buttons slightly lower and easier and more easily accessible.
Sound & Display
The onetouch Idol 3 features two front firing JBL speakers that sound excellent. The certified JBL speakers utilize Clari-Fi technology by Harman to fine tune your audio experience. Watching HD movies in 3D HiFi surround sound on the phone is nice. Not only does the angle allow for louder sound, the quality is great. The phone comes with it’s own music app the OneTouch Mix from Mixvibes. The music app allows you to combine, make playlists, apply effects, mix and fade local and streaming music; your own little DJ mixing station to take with you.
The onetouch Idol 3 features a vivid 5.5″ IPS HD display that’s reversible. In addition to being able to rotate orientation, you can flip the phone upside down and the display will flip the display to you. A microphone on either end of the phone allows you to make calls in either orientation. The IPS HD display is capable of 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution at 401ppi density with multi-touch ability up to 5 finger recognition.
While the screen looks great, when you put it up side by side with the big boys, the difference is noticeable. Though the 1920 x 1080 at 401ppi is plenty fine for daily use. The glass is very good, fairly smudge and scratch resistant.
Camera
A rear firing 13MP and front firing 8MP cameras with Sony IMX214 sensor and a 5 layer lens allow for quick focus and snapshots. 1080p video quality is acceptable and makes nice home movies or casual shots since 4k video just takes up immense amounts of space. In low lighting conditions, as with many smartphones, the camera will struggle a bit and pictures can be a little grainy. Though in good lighting conditions the camera does quite well.
The 8MP front firing camera performs quite good and this phone does a good job with selfies. Daylight conditions the camera functions a bit better. Response time is good, in both shooting video and snapping photos, we experienced no lagging here. Snapping a photo while shooting a video makes the flash dim for a split second. The wide angle lens is nice, allowing you to have more of your background in your shot when taking selfies.
Overall performance
Performance wise, the Alcatel OS layer is minimal and lacks some OS layer options that some of the leading flagship phones have like on the Samsung Galaxy, LG smartphones have. The User Interface could use a little graphics help but otherwise works fine. The digitizer is responsive and quick to recognize taps.
The Octa Core CPU is great and the DDR3 RAM is an excellent addition, however overall, the device appears to lack some RAM and can run sluggish at times. At $250, there’s bound to be some short comings but in my estimation the unit would have benefited from 4GB of ram with perhaps a Hexa Core CPU vs the Octa Core and only 2GB of RAM. Still there’s probably room for improvement in the implementation that can be tinkered with through firmware no doubt.
Apps seem to run fine, fast in many cases but where we experienced our lag was switching from app to app. Opening apps, installing apps seemed to take just slightly longer than usual, not horrendously so, just slightly.
Call quality in and out was acceptable running over AT&T wireless. There wasn’t anything notably great or bad that we noticed. Though the cell radio reception was one bar off from the LG V10.
All that said, the device is all about bang for buck, comes with a nice hardware set, performs admirably and is unlocked out of the box. In our tests over the course of a few weeks the experience is very good overall. I tend to clear my background apps a bit more frequently now but the performance is acceptable. I would have no problem using the onetouch Idol 3 as a my daily driver.
It’s refreshing to see a device and company willing to give so much for so little dollars when compared. I look forward to seeing what’s coming for Alcatel in the near future.
Recommended
The Alcatel onetouch Idol 3 smartphone features excellent sound quality with it’s JBL front firing speakers and offers good overall performance of the flagship devices at a fraction of the price. The Idol 3 comes unlocked out of the box for any GSM networks and works great as a backup phone or one you might want to take out of the country with you.
Carrier support includes: AT&T, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Straight Talk, Walmart Family Mobile, Net10, Univision, Cricket, Many US GSM Regionals
onetouch Idol 3 5.5″ $250.00
alcatelonetouch.us
