Alcatel, once one of the leaders in the mobile device market, has substantially ālost groundā in the era of smartphones. Today, this brand is significantly inferior even to some newly-minted Chinese companies that produce copies of devices manufactured by eminent developers.
Alcatelās harder. The company initially worked on its models, using the tactics of increasing the number of devices. We all remember the versions of One Touch introduced in 2014. Then the company considered it right to prepare a huge number of different modifications, which, however, did not have great success.
In the case of Alcatel Idol 3, the developer has slightly changed his strategy. As we see, under this name only 2 models entered the market. What are these smartphones, and what should the user expect from them, read on.
Device positioning
In fact, looking at the technical characteristics of the devices, you can think about Apple for the reason that the size of the displays in both cases ideally matches. Alcatel also released two phones with screens that are 4.7 and 5.5 inches in size. Apparently, the strategy of āappleā in this regard was copied for a reason - perhaps the company defined this as the best ratio of displays and wanted to create competition in these segments.
As for the phones themselves, they are presented in a budget class - their cost does not reach 300 dollars. Given the characteristics of smartphones, we can conclude that the developers tried to find the ideal value for money.
Interesting is the pricing policy that Alcatel follows. Idol 3, which is the subject of today's review, is offered at different prices, depending on the country where the sales take place. In the USA, for example, it will cost $ 250, while for Russia, the āstartā is at around $ 320. Apparently, in this way, the developer wants to promote the device in a more attractive field more successfully due to the competitive price.
Be that as it may, but from trying to unravel the thoughts of people promoting the product, we turn to its immediate characteristics, in order to independently understand what it is.
Appearance
Regarding the design of the device, I would like to note that it cannot boast of anything special. This is a simple ābrickā, in which the shapes are very blurry and the edges are softened. The black model came to our attention, although at the time of the deviceās debut, the developer promised to provide the option of choosing color combinations for Alcatel Idol 3 buyers.
In the specified apparatus, the entire front side is covered with dark glass, which protrudes somewhat above the surface. Due to its uniform coloration, it is difficult to say where the screen ends and the surrounding frame begins. By the way, many phone developers often use this method.
The pseudo-metal case is designed so that the user loses the sense of symmetry. The speakers and microphones on the front of the device are paired, which allows you to talk on the phone at least āupside downā. There are no physical keys on the front of the device - all navigation is carried out by system buttons.
The back cover is decorated with a camera located in the upper left part of the smartphone, under which there is a flash. In the center is the inscription Idol, and you can also see the logo of the manufacturer.
On the side faces there are also keys to control the sound and turn off the smartphone.
Generally speaking, due to the materials of the case with a matte texture, as well as due to the smoothed angular edges, the phone lies in the hand quite conveniently.
Screen
The screen size of Alcatel Idol 3, as already stated, comes in two sizes - 5.5 and 4.7 inches. The resolutions are different and are 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 pixels, respectively. The image density due to such a screen matrix is āāquite high. Speaking from a practical point of view, for this class of devices the screen is quite high-quality and is capable of perfectly reproducing multimedia.
I would also positively note the work of color rendering on a smartphone. If we compare the two models of Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 with each other, then the version with a large screen is able to transmit image saturation better - the picture itself is brighter, and it is much more pleasant to work with it in the sun.
Nothing is said about protecting the display. We only know that there is no air gap under the glass, which makes the phone thinner. At the same time, we are not talking about some more stable coverage.
Autonomy
Batteries installed on different versions of the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 device also differ in their capacity. So, the battery capacity of the 4.7-inch gadget is 2000 mAh, while the 5.5-inch device is equipped with a 2900 mAh battery, which is quite logical. The large screen consumes power faster, therefore, to ensure a longer operation of the smartphone, you need to take care of the increased capacity of the nutrients. That's what the developers did.
The manufacturer also went for some additional measures that can positively affect the operating time of the smartphone to one degree or another. For example, this: selection of a charger that can resume a battery in 2.5 hours (on average); the creation of a special economy mode with which (after the charge drops to 30%) Alcatel Idol 3 5.5 begins to independently deactivate unclaimed services running in the background.
Performance
Depending on the screen size of the device, the manufacturer installed two fairly powerful processors: Snapdragon 410 (at 4.7-inch) and Snapdragon 610 (at 5.5-inch). The first operates on the basis of 4 cores, while the second is an 8-core solution. The clock frequency of the elements of the first reaches 1.2 GHz, the second - 1.7 GHz.
As practice shows, a device with a smaller screen works more slowly, and sometimes it can "slow down" when the load on the hardware is excessive. In the case of a 5.5-inch gadget, such problems do not arise. The phone responds quite quickly to user commands, and the processor works with a large margin of power.
RAM version 4.7 is 1.5 GB, and the option with a 5.5-inch screen is 2 GB. This volume is enough to provide the desired speed of the device.
Camera
Of course, each of the above versions of Alcatel Idol 3 (LTE) has two cameras. There is both a main and a frontal one. In the case of the ābabyā, their resolution is 13 and 5 megapixels, respectively, while the larger device has an additional 8 megapixel matrix. The quality of the pictures taken by the main camera on the devices is identical, but the selfie on the 5.5-inch smartphone is better.
Software settings, which are in the version of Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 5.5 and at the same time absent on the 4.7 modification, allow you to create better photos using the same equipment. There are also various optional features, such as color stabilization, auto focus, white balance.
Even the professionals who wrote the Alcatel Idol 3 review were surprised at the high quality of the pictures taken with this phone. You should not expect those from models of top manufacturers at the same price, as, indeed, from competing Chinese smartphones.
Communication
Both devices with which the Alcatel Idol 3 smartphone is presented are simply overwhelmed with communication capabilities. If you do not take into account the typical set consisting of a GSM receiver, Wi-Fi module, GPS and Bluetooth, then you can also recall the NFC chip, which is not available at all on all models.
As the reviews show, there are no problems with the operation of the communication component on the smartphone. This can serve as confirmation of the high quality of the assembly and the proper level of optimization of the device by the manufacturer.
Program basis
It is hardly worth reminding that both Alcatel Idol 3 (the review of which we are doing) operate on the basis of the Android operating system. Since at the time of the presentation, the current version was the Lollipop (5.0) modification, it is precisely this version that is presented on this device.
As for the interface working on the device, it has undergone not so significant changes. The developers have slightly changed the design of the system, added a number of their innovations. For example, the OneTouch Steam module is one of them, where news, weather, and some events that may be of interest to the user are displayed.
In fact, as the reviews show, this system is somewhat useless, since the owner of the device is not allowed to make changes to the set of media from which updates should come. Therefore, working with this module is not so simple.
But in general we are faced with the classic Android 5.0, which, if you start the device now, will be updated to a more current version - 6.0.
Retina Recognition
The manufacturer, having decided to surprise the buyer of his device with something, decided to go for the introduction of an innovative, unusual system of user recognition using the retina. To do this, as in the case of the fingerprint on Apple and Samsung, it is necessary to provide the smartphone with the opportunity to take a āsampleā of the picture, that is, scan your face, after which it will receive information that you are the owner. The system is called Eye-D and, according to those who have already worked with it in practice, it does not work as efficiently as we would like. There are several problems with it. Firstly, the phone takes too long to recognize your appearance, the scanning process takes quite a long time (itās easier to enter a password or draw a graphic key). Secondly, the system is still not perfect and often crashes.
However, be that as it may, the Alcatel brand is already trying to be innovative in this area, which in itself deserves praise.
Reviews
The recommendations of people who have experience with Alcatel Idol 3 6045Y are mostly positive. Users note that the device really turned out to be budgetary and quite functional, nimble and at the same time possessing a fairly high response speed. The assembly, the availability of support for two SIM cards and a memory card are also significant advantages of the model. However, there were some shortcomings, which we should also describe in this category of our review.
One of the most commonly mentioned is the poor quality of the microphone and speaker during a call. The device transmits sound, unfortunately, poorly - mixed with various noises, creaks and rattle of unknown origin. In addition, the speaker volume leaves much to be desired, even at the maximum level.
Another problem is the speed of the sensor. People complain that sometimes it does not transmit a signal to a smartphone quickly enough, because of which delays in signal processing may occur. If there are no problems on the part of the processor, then the command processing module itself is apparently the cause of the ābrakesā.
Also, some buyers complain about a large set of software āgarbageā from the developer. It turned out that about 140 programs were preinstalled on the device, a significant part of which can be removed only using root administration. Obviously, itās beneficial for the developer to install such an impressive package of applications, but this makes users uncomfortable.
There are a lot of other problems, some of them can be easily eliminated, another - it may turn out to be a factory marriage, we will not dwell on this.
conclusions
The smartphone turned out to be affordable, but really multifunctional and āchargedā from a technical point of view. If you are looking for an inexpensive but versatile device with a ton of useful features and a stylish design, this is the one for you. In addition, there are a large number of accessories on the market for Alcatel Idol 3. A cover, a protective film on the screen, additional batteries - all this can be purchased at will and thus individualize the device.