Alcatel One Touch Idol Review

The Alcatel One Touch Idol is one of the newest Android offering of Alcatel. It isn’t the best Android smartphone from Alcatel but the phone surely looks good and it doesn’t feel cheap. This Android Smartphone also made a cameo at the blockbuster summer film, Iron Man 3. I’m just not sure whether they used the Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra or this one. Both phones pack the same design but the Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra has a much thinner body and you can notice the bulge in the camera in the Ultra. Interested with the Iron Man 3 Phone? Check it out after the break.

The phone is purely made up of plastic. I had no problems with the material that they’ve used but my only problem with its body is that the back cover isn’t removable and you can’t remove the battery. But I praise Alcatel for having a smartphone with a such thin design. The one that I got is a silver one and I really like the brushed metal design at the back. It feels premium and it makes the phone look really sexy. Speaking of sexy, the Alcatel One Touch Idol features a sexy and thin design and it feels really good in the hand.

I really like the thin bezel of the phone. It’s not the thinnest smartphone to date but it is VERY thin and it made the phone more comfortable to hold. And just like what other people said, thin is sexy and yeah, that applies to the Alcatel One Touch Idol. Another thing, the phone is freaking light too.

The display isn’t HD on a 4.7-inch screen but it doesn’t look that bad and you’ll only notice that when you’re browsing the Internet or when you’re playing games. But of course, the colors are much better on the HD screen rather than the qHD display of Alcatel One Touch Idol. The Alcatel One Touch Idol has all the things that you need on a smartphone except NFC, which is barely used by most people. Don’t expect very fast HSPA+ speeds since this one is only capable of HSDPA speeds of up to 7.2 mbps. There’s the Micro-USB of course for charging and accessory needs.

The phone will require a Micro-Sim. Inserting the MicroSD card and the Micro-Sim is the tricky part. The phone doesn’t use a tray for its MicroSD and Micro-Sim instead you’ll need to have a paper clip to push it inside. To remove it, you’ll have to push it again from the inside.  The battery last more than I expected. The battery is just rated at 1800mAh but it last up to a day and ¼ of average use of Mobile data, Wi-Fi and texts before it runs out of juice. Maybe the display helped prolonged the battery life of the smartphone since this one doesn’t have an AMOLED and HD display.

The phone has 8 Megapixel camera and it can shoot really fast. There’s a 2 Megapixel front camera too. The lack of camera button is not really a turn off but I really miss having one on a smartphone. That’s one thing that I like about Windows Phones, all of them has a camera button. Anyway, I noticed that some images that I took using the smartphone were darker but it was sharp. But sometimes the shots are really that good. Well, I felt that the camera of the phone is somehow bipolar (LOL!). But overall, I think that the camera of the phone was good. Here, take a look at the shots that I took using the Alcatel One Touch Idol. Nothing to worry about because I didn’t take any selfie shots on the phone:

While here’s a .3gp HD video that I took using the Alcatel One Touch Idol. The details in the video don’t have a very fine details but the video quality of the phone is somehow acceptable. Check it out below:

The phone is powered by Android 4.1 Jelly Bean that’s why the phone is much faster. The processor inside the phone is a 1 GHz Dual Core MediaTek MTK6577 processor.  It isn’t the fastest nor the slowest but the phone was responsive thanks to that. I’ve tried different smartphones with that processor and I really didn’t had too much problems with it.

The phone didn’t have too much deep customizations. The icons and the lock screen was customized by Alcatel and I didn’t notice any other issues with those customizations because I feel that the things that I mostly use weren’t changed.  Since this is a phone that appeared in Iron Man 3, there are a lot of Iron Man 3 wallpapers but I didn’t used those. Instead, I downloaded one from DeviantArt. I was expecting an Iron Man 3 game pre-installed but there was none. Maybe it is because that the phone was released before the game. But at least, there are 2 Gameloft games that are preinstalled on the phone.

I really like the Squarecircle glass icons on the background of every icon in the app drawer. This is really an eyecandy. Sometimes, I get annoyed when there are lags and hangs. It is very rare that I experience that but I really get annoyed when that happens. Heavy games will work on the device but it will not have a plausible frame rates. Speaking of performance, the Alcatel One Touch Idol got a score of 6294 on Antutu. The score that I expected on a Dual-core MediaTek powered phone. I also notice that the phone also heats up that fast.  One time, the phone experience overheat. I turned on the WiFi and I played Subway Surfer on a very very very hot day. I think that’s reasonable but I didn’t expect that the phone will heat up that fast.

It isn’t the best smartphone in the market and in its price range but it is the sexiest phone that I’ve tried in its price range. The phone might be made up of plastic but the phone is very sexy, thin and light. The phone also looks very nice and the brushed metal design added some points to its looks. The image quality of the camera is also at average. This phone would be a decent Instagram machine thanks to the both front and rear camera that can capture pleasant images. Like what I’ve said earlier, the smartphone isn’t the fastest but it is acceptable for those who are into casual games and just want a decent performance on a phone. I think the main selling point that you would like about here is the thin design design and the Iron Man 3 branding. The Alcatel One Touch Idol is now available for P11,990 at different stores. Check em’ out.