Last year we were sent an Alcatel Idol 4S to review and we loved it. It was a decent mid-range phone that was priced at around the $600 mark. Unfortunately it never officially made it here to Australia. Today Alcatel have taken the wraps of their successor to the Idol 4S, the Idol 5S.
Alcatel have always been about getting good bang for your buck and with the mid-low end phone market becoming very crowded and competitive they need to bring something good to compete in this space. Whether they have done that remains to be seen but we now know what they intend to compete with.
The Idol 5S has a 5.2 inch 1080P 2.5D edged display bordered at the top and bottom with dual, front-facing, 3.6-watt stereo speakers. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of onboard storage. The storage can be expanded with a microSD of up to 512GB.
The rear camera is a single 12MP lens while the front selfie camera is an 8MP camera which includes a flash module. The battery is only a 2620mAh battery which may cause some issues but we will have to wait and see how efficient the hardware runs and how optimised the software is.
On the software side it will launch with Android 7.1 which is great for a phone that is priced in the US at least at low-mid range level. It’s design is very similar to the Idol 4S styling which is not entirely a bad thing.
At this stage it is only available on a preorder from Amazon US where it’s priced at $279USD for the Alcatel version of the phone (not the Amazon version with ads included for $199.99). We have reached out to Alcatel Australia for any word on Australian availability and pricing and will keep you updated when we hear anything.
Is this a phone you would buy or buy for someone you know? What price do you think they should come in at here for it to be a success?
Great, Alactel announce another Idol S phone that probably won’t be available here. I really don’t know why they bother…