Smartphone Alcatel Idol 3: description, features and reviews. Overview of the smartphone Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3

The company Alcatel, being once one of the leaders in the market of mobile devices, essentially "surrendered its position" in the era of the emergence of smartphones. Today, this brand is much inferior even to some newly appeared Chinese companies that produce copies of devices produced by famous developers.

With Alcatel everything is more complicated. The company initially worked on its models, using the tactic of increasing the number of devices. We all remember the versions of One Touch presented in 2014. Then the company considered it right to prepare a huge number of different modifications, which, however, did not have a loud success.

In the case of Alcatel Idol 3, the developer has somewhat changed his strategy. As we can see, only 2 models came to the market under this name. What kind of smartphones are they, and what should they be expected of the user from, read on.

Positioning devices

In fact, looking at the technical characteristics of the devices, you can think about Apple because the size of the displays in both cases is ideally the same. Alcatel also released two phones with screens measuring 4.7 and 5.5 inches. Apparently, the strategy of "apple" in this plan was copied for a reason - maybe the company defined this as the best ratio of displays and wished to create competition in these segments.

As for the phones themselves, they are represented in the budget class - their cost does not reach $ 300. Given the characteristics of smartphones, we can conclude that the developers were trying to find the ideal ratio of price and quality.

Interesting is the pricing policy that Alcatel follows. Idol 3, which is the object of today's review, is offered at different prices, depending on the country where the sales occur. In the US, for example, it will cost $ 250, while for Russia the "start" is at around $ 320. Apparently, in this way the developer wants to promote the device on a more attractive field more successfully due to the competitive price.

Whatever it was, but from trying to unravel the thoughts of people promoting the product, let's move on to its immediate description in order to independently understand what it is.

Appearance

Regarding the design of the device, I would like to note that he can not boast of anything special. This is a simple "brick", in which the forms are heavily lubricated and the facets are softened. We got a black model on the review, although at the time of the debut of the device the developer promised to provide a choice of color combinations for Alcatel Idol 3 customers.

In this apparatus, the entire front side is covered with a dark glass, which protrudes somewhat above the surface. Due to the same coloring it is difficult to say where the screen ends and the surrounding frame begins. This way, by the way, quite often used by many phone developers.

The pseudo-metallic housing is constructed in such a way 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 even "upside down." There are no physical keys on the front of the device - all navigation is done by system buttons.

The rear cover is decorated with a camera located in the upper left part of the smartphone, under which there is a flash. The center is labeled Idol, and you can also see the manufacturer's logo.

The side faces also have keys for controlling the sound and turning off the smartphone.

If to speak in general, due to the materials of the case with a matte texture, and also due to the smoothed corner edges, the phone lies in the hand quite comfortably.

Screen

The screen size of the Alcatel Idol 3, as already stated, is two sizes - 5.5 and 4.7 inches. Permissions on them are different and are 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 pixels respectively. The density of the image due to such a matrix of the screen is quite high. If to speak from a practical point of view, then for this class of devices the screen is quite high quality and is able to perfectly reproduce multimedia.

I would also like to note the color transmission on the smartphone. If you compare two models of Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 with each other, the version with a large screen is able to transfer the saturation of the image better - the picture itself is getting brighter, and in the sun with it it is much more pleasant to work.

Nothing is said about the protection of the display. We only know that under the glass there is no air layer, which makes the phone thinner. At the same time, we are not talking about some more stable coating here.

Autonomy

The batteries installed on different versions of the Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 also differ in their capacity. So, the battery capacity of the 4.7-inch gadget is 2000 mAh, whereas the 5.5-inch device is equipped with a battery of 2900 mAh, which is quite logical. The large screen consumes the charge faster, so to ensure a longer work of the smartphone, you need to take care of the increased capacity of nutrients. So did the developers.

Also, the manufacturer went to some additional measures that could positively influence the time of the smartphone to some extent. For example, it is: the selection of a charger capable of renewing the battery in 2.5 hours (on average); The creation of a special economical mode by which (after the charge has dropped to 30%) Alcatel Idol 3 5.5 begins to independently deactivate unclaimed services operating in the background.

Performance

Depending on the screen size of the device, the manufacturer installed two fairly strong processors: Snapdragon 410 (4.7-inch) and Snapdragon 610 (5.5-inch). The first operates on the basis of 4 cores, while the second is an 8-core solution. The clock speed of the first element reaches 1.2 GHz, the second one - 1.7 GHz.

As practice shows, the device with a smaller screen works slower, and sometimes it can "slow down" when the hardware is overloaded. In the case of the 5.5-inch gadget, there are no such problems. The phone is very responsive to user commands, and the processor works with a large margin of power.

RAM version 4.7 is 1.5 GB, and the version with a 5.5-inch screen - 2 GB. This volume is quite enough to ensure the desired speed of the device.

Camera

Of course, each of the above versions of the Alcatel Idol 3 (LTE) has two cameras. There is both basic and frontal. In the case of the "baby" their resolution is 13 and 5 megapixels respectively, while the larger device has an 8-megapixel matrix as an additional device. The quality of the images taken by the main camera on the devices is identical, but the SELFI on the 5.5-inch smartphone are better.

Program settings, which are in the version of Alcatel One Touch Idol 3 5.5 and at the same time not available on the 4.7 version, allow you to create better photos using the same equipment. There are also various optional features, such as color stabilization, automatic focus, white balance.

Even the professionals who made the Alcatel-designed Idol 3 review were surprised at the high quality of the images taken with this phone. Expect those of the top models for the same price is not necessary, as, indeed, from competing Chinese smartphones.

Connectivity

Both devices, which are presented smartphone Alcatel Idol 3, just overflowing with communication capabilities. If you do not take into account a typical set consisting of a GSM receiver, Wi-Fi-module, GPS and Bluetooth, you can also recall the NFC chip, which is not available on all models.

As the reviews show, there is no problem with the work of the communication component on the smartphone. This can serve as a confirmation of the high quality of the assembly and the proper level of optimization of the device by the manufacturer.

The software framework

It is hardly worth recalling that both Alcatel Idol 3 (the review of which we do) operate on the basis of the Android operating system. Since at the time of presentation the current version was the modification of Lollipop (5,0), it is exactly this version that is represented on this unit.

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, this includes the OneTouch Steam module, which displays news, weather, some events that may be of interest to the user.

In fact, as feedback shows, 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 easy.

And in general we have the classic Android 5.0, which, if you start the device now, will be updated to a more current version - 6.0.

Recognition of the retina

The manufacturer, determined to surprise the buyer of his device with something, decided to go for the introduction of an innovative, unusual system for recognizing the user with the help of the retina. To do this, as with the fingerprint on Apple and Samsung, it is necessary to give the smartphone the opportunity to take a "sample" of the picture, that is, scan your face, after which it will receive information that you are the owner. The system was called Eye-D and, according to those who already had time to work with it in practice, it does not work as efficiently as we would like. There are several problems with it. Firstly, the phone takes a long time to recognize your appearance, the scanning process itself takes quite a long time (it's easier to enter a password or draw a graphic key). Secondly, the system is still not perfect and often fails.

However, however, the brand Alcatel is already trying to be innovative in this area, which in itself deserves praise.

Reviews

The recommendations of people with experience of interaction with Alcatel Idol 3 6045Y, are mostly positive. Users note that the device really turned out to be budgetary and quite functional, smart and at the same time possessing a rather high response speed. The assembly, the support of two SIM cards and a memory card are also weighty advantages of the model. At the same time, there were some shortcomings, which we also need to describe in this category of our review.

One of the most often mentioned is the low quality of the microphone and the speaker during a call. The sound of the device, unfortunately, transmits badly - mixed with various noises, creaks and scraping of unknown origin. In addition, the loudness of the speaker remains the best, even at the maximum level.

Another problem is the speed of the sensor. People complain that sometimes it does not transmit a signal to the smartphone fast enough, which can lead to delays in signal processing. If there are no problems on the processor side, then the command processing module itself, apparently, is the cause of the "brakes".

Also, some buyers complain about a large set of software "garbage" from the developer. It turned out that the device preinstalled about 140 programs, a significant part of which can be removed only through root-administration. Obviously, it's beneficial for the developer to install such an impressive package of applications, but it's discomfort for users.

There are many other problems, some of them are easily eliminated, the other can be a factory marriage, we will not dwell on this.

conclusions

The smartphone turned out to be affordable, but really multifunctional and "charged" from a technical point of view. If you are looking for an inexpensive but versatile device with lots of useful features and stylish design, this is what will suit you. In addition, the market has a large number of accessories for Alcatel Idol 3. Cover, protective film on the screen, additional batteries - all this can be purchased at will and thus individualize the device.