Alcatel’s Idol a premium rival at an affordable rate

Alcatel has hit the market with an Android smartphone that will tempt users at a third of the price of premium handsets.

Alcatel’s Idol a premium rival

Alcatel has hit the market with an Android smartphone that will tempt users at a third of the price of premium handsets.

Yet its flagship, the OneTouch Idol 3, comes with lots of premium-specced features, such as a fast 8-core processor.

When you add a bright 5.5-inch full high definition LCD display, with the same 401 pixel-per-inch resolution as the iPhone 6 Plus, 13 and 8 megapixel snappers back and front, 4G connectivity, Near Field Communication for contactless payments, a micro SD card slot and a JBL-inspired dual speaker sound, you’d be talking $600-$800 for a phone that also runs the latest Android 5 Lollipop, mildly tweaked by Alcatel.

But the good folks at Alcatel say this 5.5-inch Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 model will sell for no more than $350 outright when it hits the local market mid year.

There’s a slightly smaller Idol 3 with a 4.7-inch display for about $300 — of course it’s pure coincidence these two screen sizes match those of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, isn’t it? The shape of the app icons too is Apple-esque.

I chose to review the larger phone because it has better specs overall — a 1080p HD display rather than 720p, an Octo-core rather than quad-core processor, better cameras and a higher ­capacity 2910 milliampere hour battery.

So who is Alcatel OneTouch anyway?

Alcatel OneTouch these days has no connection with ­Alcatel-Lucent France, rather it’s an offshoot of TCL of China, and has been active in the prepaid market in Asia, here, and the South Pacific.

It’s previously supplied phones branded Boost and Virgin Mobile.

But this TCL offshoot is now targeting the middle and higher-middle range markets with ­Android phones that are as good or better than premium models a couple of years ago.

It is yet another of the big China firms ramping up activity in Australia. The competition to this phone includes Chinese-made rivals such as the stylish OnePlus One and Huawei’s ­Ascend Mate7.

Alcatel also has a decent looking smartwatch on the way.

Some features found in high-end models are missing: there’s no Quad HD display, the phone doesn’t shoot 4K video, and there’s no fingerprint recognition although it supports iris (eye) recognition with a feature called Eye-D.

Iris recognition worked consistently but it is much slower than fingerprint verification on an iPhone or recent Samsung ­Galaxy.

And — you need to remember to take off your glasses.

This phone has a much publicised gimmick.

It has speakers and microphones at both ends, which means you can take calls with ease whether the phone is the right way up or upside down.

I must say, I’m not losing sleep over this.

Some of the hyped features are OK but not outstanding. Outdoor photos I snapped in auto mode with the Idol 3 showed fine resolution but the colours were a little washed and fine detail was lost between areas of different contrast. For example, clouds detail and the blueness of the sky were lacking in some outdoor shots. In low light I’d lose detail around the subject, detail that I’d get with a rival phone.

The Lollipop camera app is easy to navigate and options include HDR, time-lapse, a Face Beauty mode and in-built scanner. The front-facing camera limits these options to auto mode and, for selfies, Face Beauty — which, gratifyingly, filled in some of my wrinkles.

Well done Alcatel.

Battery life was reasonable. The battery lasted 5¾ hours when playing video at 75 per cent brightness.

But graphics performance measured by GFXBench returned a poor score of 777 frames which is about that of Sony’s original Xperia 7, released in early 2013.

The dual speakers at either end of the phone deliver a respectable volume.

In the end, the Idol 3 is no ­premium phone and doesn’t ­purport to be. And it has a few warts. But it has features that will deliver a good Android experience to many at a cheap price. For them it might fit their needs.

Alcatel says it will tweak the Idol 3’s performance before launch.

Rating: 7/10
Price: Around $350