Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 (5.5) — Review

Hardware

Specs & Build Quality

The 5.5” Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 – we’ll be calling it the Idol 3 from here on out – is a relatively high-end mid-range smartphone when you look at the spec sheet, it fits neatly into the category known as the ‘premium mid-range’.

The Idol 3 comes with a FullHD 1920×1080 resolution 5.5” IPS LCD display with a little bit of bezel either side. The screen is under a glass facade at the front which covers almost the entire face and sits atop a body which is a mere 7.4mm thick. That front also features some front-facing speakers from JBL audio with Clari-Fi technology that should in theory pump out the sound.

The phone itself looks like an oversized Nexus 4 in some respects, but that’s only at a glance, when it gets down to it, it has a distinct design all its own. There’s a plastic cover on the rear which seals in the battery and internals which has the Alcatel OneTouch and Idol branding on them and a camera & flash poking through but it has fairly clean lines.

The phone feels solid too, it just feels great in the hand, it’s well balanced and comfortable to hold. The back is a little bit of a let down, but you tend to not even notice that after a little while

Alcatel has gone with a physical button setup which I heartily approve of: power button to the left and volume rocker on the right, it makes the phone easy to use for reading eBooks. Those buttons are built into the side which has a nice curved slope around the sides of the phone making it comfortable to hold and grip.

The phone comes with a fairly decent processor under the hood, with a 64-bit Octa-Core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor and 2GB of RAM to get things going. There’s 16GB of onboard storage, but a microSD card slot will let you expand that.

Camera wise there’s a 13MP rear shooter (Sony IMX214 sensor with f/2.0 aperture) on the rear with an LED flash and a surprisingly well specced 8MP front facing camera with an 84° viewing angle.

The phone has support for 4G as well as the usual 3G bands and all the Wi-Fi, GPS and BT connectivity you could want – so in short, it’s not a bad setup overall and when you take into account that price…well, it doesn’t get much better.

Screen

What can I say – the screen is good. It has a good colour range and seems to be fairly well tuned and true-colour. It’s a bright screen, but does struggle outside in the harsh glare of the noon sun, but it’s definitely usable.

It’s a FullHD resolution, and at 5.5” that 1920×1080 res gives you a solid 401 pixels per inch that more than gives you the ‘retina display’ quality most people have come to expect these days. There’s certainly a bit of bezel around the screen, but far less than I’ve seen in more expensive handsets and design wise the screen sits nicely between those front-facing speakers ready to play back the latest videos.

The only comment on the screen other than it’s quite good is that there doesn’t appear to be any toughened ‘Gorilla Glass’ style material on the front, but that’s neither here nor there.

Battery life

The Idol 3 has a fairly thick body when you compare it with some of the top of the line phones on the market, but I’m actually Ok with this. It gives the phone a solid feel and the added bonus of letting Alcatel OneTouch pack in a particularly weighty 2,910mAh Li-Ion battery. The battery is non-removeable, but then I didn’t actually feel the need to replace the battery at all what with what I found to be a pretty good battery life.

The phone did a pretty admirable job of getting me through a day of usage. Around the 12-14 hour mark, with anywhere from 3-5 hours of screen-on time – impressive from any phone. I did try to tax it at times to really wear the battery down towards the end of the day and I was still actually pretty impressed with what’s been done here. On standby I believe that this phone could get a mid-range user through around 2 days of use or at least close enough to.

Camera

The camera on the Idol 3 is actually a pleasant surprise in a phone priced this low. With the Nexus range, we’ve had cheap phones, but we’ve never had great cameras, or heck for the most part even something that qualifies as a ‘Good’ camera. The Idol 3, while not hitting the ‘Great’ mark actually manages to slide into the good range fairly easily.

The Idol 3 carries a fairly decent 13MP Sony sensor on the rear and it’s been put to work on this phone quite well. Alctael OneTouch have done an admirable job of getting this camera tuned to a point where for the most part you’ll be happy with the results. It has a little trouble in low-light, but that’s just one of those things.

The front facing camera is actually fairly decent as well. With an 8MP sensor on the front you can take a selfie with no issues and send it where you want. I’ve been taking a fair few selfies with some of the awesome people I’ve met of late, and I think I’m coming around to this style of photo – but there’s no chance of duck-face from me ever.

Software wise, the Idol 3 has one of the better camera apps I’ve seen with all the usual modes: HDR, Panorama, Time Lapse, Barcode Scanner and their version of Beauty Shot (I’m a lost cause). Where it gets a bit more interesting is the Manual Mode which gives you access to Shutter speed, ISO, Fixed focus and of course the White Balance. You can actually get a fairly good shot with all these features and to be honest, they’re pretty well laid out once you’ve kicked into Manual mode.

Overall though, the camera is pretty good.

Connectivity

In terms of connectivity you’re not going to be found wanting here. The Idol 3 has all the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity you could ask for, it even has wireless display via Miracast. The phone comes with 3G and 4G connectivity (ok, it’s got 2G too, but really?!?) and connects to the major 4G 1800MHz network in Australia though unfortunately not the Band 28 700MHz network.

The GPS was relatively fast to connect, coming in at just a few seconds to acquire a minimum number of satellites to get your position to within a few feet. The Wi-Fi was fast and dual-band though it doesn’t support Wireless AC, but WIreless N was sufficiently fast. Bluetooth too was pretty decent, although a few interruptions to the BT headset happened, but nothing overly concerning.

Speed testing the Idol 3 was pretty pleasant, there’s nothing surprising in the results as it’s essentially network limited. But that’s not to say it’s slow, it’s quite decently fast.

Call quality on the Idol 3 was average, there’s no surprises here.

Sound

The Idol 3 is one of only a few phones which have come out with front-facing speakers. I’ve never actually found myself in a position where I want to watch video with audio turned up full blast, but there’s a billion Android phone users out there who could be different. Android is about choice and Alcatel OneTouch decided to load up the Idol 3 with front-facing speakers.

The front-facing speakers aren’t just thrown in and left to their own devices, Alcatel OneTouch have included JBL audio with Clari-Fi technology. What does that mean? Well, in real terms it means you get some pretty darn good audio out of these things. The sound can get pretty loud and it remains crisp – put it this way, I was impressed.

In terms of where they sit on the scale in competition, they sound better than my Nexus 6 with its front-facing speakers but certainly didn’t best any of the HTC One series phones I’ve used with their BoomSound. If you like your sound loud and head/earphone free the speakers in the Idol 3 will do you right.

Audio from Bluetooth and wired was fairly good too, though this tends to depend on the quality of your earphones – mine are fairly cheap and I was still pretty happy with the sound quality.

Performance

Unlike the last Alcatel OneTouch phone I reviewed I had literally no issues with performance on the Idol 3. It’s fast, fluid and responsive and that’s even with the Alcatel software skin sitting on top of Android.

With a 64-bit octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 processor and 2GB of RAM, you’re looking at a top mid-range spec and the Idol performs to this level.

Games and Apps loaded fast and were quite responsive at all levels. 3D games played nice and with the exception of a very occasional frame drop there wasn’t an issue.

The phone could do with a RAM bump when it comes to app switching from overview (the multi-tasking panel as it’s known in Lollipop), with a little bit of lag showing up when switching apps.

Overall though, the performance for the Idol 3 is good and only a shade short of great.

And for those of you who like Benchmarks, here’s the usual Antutu and Geekbench results.

Reversible

The Idol 3 is a fairly symmetrical looking phone, and there’s a pretty good reason for that. Alcatel OneTouch have given the Idol 3 a pretty nifty little party trick: You can use it any which way you want. In the quick settings, there’s an option you can turn on/off which allows you to use the phone right side up, or upside down – the phone literally doesn’t care, you can answer calls, or do anything the phone simply switches orientation with no dramas.

Using the reversible mode is actually fairly seamless. I picked the phone up half a dozen times over the course of the review and then when I finished groped blindly for buttons that weren’t in their normal place because the phone was upside down. It’s a neat trick that’s done well.