Haven’t considered buying an Alcatel phone before? Made of metal, glass, and Moxie, the unlocked Idol 4S will do whatever it takes to change your mind. It has a large screen and great sound quality; a 16-megapixel camera and an 8-megapixel camera with front-facing flash; a convenient key to launch apps quickly; a fingerprint scanner; and a screen layout that works no matter which way you pick up the phone. will position themselves as “upward”. With a competitive price and an impressive set of specs, the Idol 4S is competing aggressively against the excellent OnePlus 3, a CNET Editors’ Choice phone. It’s a very good mid-range phone, but Alcatel’s ambitions of making it a budget phone like last year’s Idol 3, the deal-maker of the century, fell short. The price jumps to $400 (converted to £385, AU$470), but Alcatel throws in a free screen protector and VR headset in the box. The thing is, screen protectors reduce visibility, and we’d rather save some money on a phone than be forced into a VR platform we didn’t choose. In other words, this is the “value” we don’t want.
You can buy the unlocked Idol 4S directly from the Alcatel website. It runs on the GSM network – in the US, that means you have to buy a SIM card from AT&T, T-Mobile, Cricket Wireless or MetroPCS.
Using Idol 4S
Build and Design: Anyone picking up the Idol 4S for the first time will have the same reaction: “Oh! This is awesome.” The glass and metal body reminds us of the feel of the iPhone 4/4S. But lost a lot of weight.
Boom Key: You can program it to open an app, such as the camera, as a shortcut. We like this in theory, but in practice we keep accidentally taking unintentional photos. Either it takes some skill, or we just do it.
Boom Key has another trick up its sleeve. When you’re on a call, press the button to enable noise-canceling mode, which improves voice quality. And get this: it works. But why isn’t this feature always on? Aside from a slight vibration, there’s no other indication on the screen that noise-canceling mode is enabled. This resulted in us pressing the Boom key repeatedly, unsure if we wanted to turn the mode on or off.
Camera: Overall, photos look bright, colorful, and have excellent contrast. In good light, autofocus is fast and accurate. We noticed that the phone experienced lag both in HDR mode and when processing photos in low-light conditions. Low-light photos sometimes look soft, like someone smeared Vaseline on the lens.
Impressively, the Alcatel Idol 4S can shoot 4K video at 30 frames per second (fps). For a phone, the video looks good. Personally, we’d probably still just shoot 1080p video because of the smaller file sizes.
The 8-megapixel front-facing camera’s flash is useful, but sometimes harsh. Generally speaking, we like this as an option. There are also increasingly popular beauty modes that enhance (paint) skin imperfections. Unlike other beauty modes we’ve seen, this one has a slider that lets you dial in exactly as much or as little beauty application as you want. Here are some photos we took with the Idol 4S. Fingerprint scanner: The fingerprint reader, located under the camera lens on the back, is small and sometimes inaccurate.
It helps register multiple fingers so you can drag them along the back until one of them is occupied. There’s NFC functionality, so you can also use Android Pay for mobile payments.Reversible layout design: Technically, any phone has an “up” and “down” orientation. If you turn the Idol 4S upside down, an optional reversible OS mode flips the screen, allowing you to use the phone instantly. We noticed, though, that if you have the fingerprint reader turned on, the “up” direction is important – as you can only unlock the phone from a single direction.JBL Headphones and Built-in JBL Speakers: For a phone, the audio is especially loud and rich with the built-in speakers. This is a great extra feature if you play videos and music for other people. The sound quality of the headphones is also good. These aren’t the best in-ear headphones you can buy for your phone, but they’re definitely better than most free headphones that come in phone packages.Screen and Alcatel Smartphone Battery: The 5.5-inch 2,560×1,440-pixel screen is sharp and bright; perfect for watching videos and photos. But theAlcatel Idol 4S Smartphone Battery life is okay. In our looped video test, the Idol 4S lasted 10 hours and 32 minutes.Bonus Features: The screen protector is an ultra-thin piece of tempered glass; however, it collects finger smudges better than an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The soft plastic Incipio case that came with our review unit makes the fingerprint reader easier to hit. Alcatel’s own-brand VR headset comes with a few experiences to get you started; though we certainly don’t recommend buying this phone just for VR.With the Idol 4S, it feels like Alcatel is trying to give you everything it thinks you want. But when you compare it with other phones like the OnePlus 3, the Idol 4S cannot beat that device in terms of performance and overall experience. It’s hard to pinpoint why, but the OnePlus 3 performs better as a phone. For many people, this is more important than any number of included accessories.
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