Alcatel One Touch Idol (Unlocked)

You might have seen the Alcatel One Touch Idol in Iron Man 3. I haven't seen it yet, but with its sleek, thin design, I can see how the Idol looks like a natural pairing for Tony Stark's rich-boy bravado. But I can't imagine that Iron Man himself would ever use a device that's so behind the times. The Idol has no LTE, for instance. There's no HSPA+ either, which means you're stuck in the Internet slow lane. Performance is less than stellar across the board, voice dialing doesn't work, and the camera takes photos that border on impressionistic. The attractive design and $299.99 price tag may make the Idol seem tempting, but you don't need to spend more money to score a much better phone.

Design and Call Quality
Aside from the price, the best thing the Idol has going for it is its design. The phone measures 5.24 by 2.66 by 0.31 inches (HWD), which feels like the perfect size for a big-screen phone you can still comfortably hold in one hand. It is extremely thin, and at just 3.88 ounces, Alcatel claims this is the lightest phone available for its size.

The phone has a unibody construction, made entirely of high-quality plastic designed to look like brushed aluminum, with a buttonless, all-glass front panel. I reviewed the silver model, but the phone comes in a number of much louder colors like green, red, and turquoise. There's a volume rocker and SIM cards slot on the right, a headphone jack and Power button on the top, and a microSD card slot on the left. The back of the phone is completely sealed, so there's no access to the 1,800mAh battery. I prefer a removable back, so you can carry a spare battery if necessary, and the Idol was only good for 6 hours and 31 minutes of talk time on AT&T's network.

The Idol's 4.7-inch IPS LCD is a mixed bag. It gets very bright, but the 960-by-540-pixel resolution makes it considerably less sharp than many of the 720 and 1080p screens we've been seeing lately, on phones like the Oppo Find 5?and Sony Xperia ZL. Alcatel claims there's a special coating on the display that repels fingerprint oil, but it didn't seem to look noticeably different than any number of new phones we've tested.

The Idol is unlocked, so you can use it on either AT&T or T-Mobile's network, or with smaller GSM-based carriers like Simple Mobile (which uses T-Mobile's network). But no matter which carrier you choose, the Idol is running at painfully crippled network speeds. There's no LTE support, or even HSPA+. The phone maxes out at HSPA 7.2, which places you firmly in 3G territory. I tested the phone on AT&T's network and got fine reception, but the phone struggled to reach download speeds of 1Mbps. Uploads were even worse. That means unless you're connected to Wi-Fi (the phone supports 802.11 b/g/n), using the Idol can feel frustratingly slow.

At least call quality is good. Voices sound extremely crisp and clear in the phone's earpiece. Calls made with the phone sound round and full, though aggressive noise cancellation can make voices sound slightly muted. The speakerphone is not loud enough to hear outdoors. I paired the phone with a Jawbone Era?Bluetooth headset. Calls sounded fine, but I was unable to use voice dialing. I tried again without the headset, but the voice dialing app doesn't seem to work at all.

Performance, Android, and Apps
We're seeing more and more quad-core phones every day, but so far there's nothing wrong with a phone still powered by a good dual-core processor. Unfortunately, this one isn't. The Idol uses a dual-core 1GHz MediaTek MT6577 chip, which turned in some pretty low benchmark scores. It's fast enough that navigating your way around the phone feels fine, but opening apps can take a while, and 3D gaming performance is poor. You'll still be able to run most of the 800,000+ apps in the Google Play store, but they may not run optimally.

(Next page: Camera, Multimedia, and Conclusions)

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/VO9EmywthdI/0,2817,2418898,00.asp

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