ALCATEL ONETOUCH IDOL X+ Review

7:16 PM alcatel onetouch , idol x+ , review , smartphone review 1 Comments

     If you still remember, ALCATEL ONETOUCH launched their new flagship, the IDOL X+ last March. Fortunate to say, today I have the IDOL X+ with me courtesy of ALCATEL albeit a bit late since it's already May. Without further ado, let's get started with a late review of the IDOL X+ along with it's featured accessory, the BOOMBand.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

TECH SPECS

• 5” Full HD IPS display
• Octa Core 2 GHz, 2GB RAM
• 13.1 Mpxl Full HD main camera
• 2 Mpxl 1080p front camera
• Hi-Fi sound with JBL™ earphones
• HD video
• 7.9mm thin
• 2500mAh battery

REVIEW

     Starting with the packaging, the IDOL X+ comes in a simple white box with a simple logo etched on the top of it. Today I have the Spin Black variant of the phone, there's also a Spin White variant available on the Malaysian market if you are not a big fan of the black. Taking the IDOL X+ out of the box, the phone strikes a shocking resemblance to a iPhone with it's pitch black front and the metal accents on the sides. Getting back on topic, on the front, we are greeted with a 5" 1080p IPS display. One might be mistaken on the first glance that the phone has no bezels, sorry to rain on your parade but the phone actually has bezels; with the side bezels measuring about 4.2mm, while the upper and lower bezels each measure in about 15mm. There is some clarification I would like make here, as ALCATEL ONETOUCH has marketed the side bezels to be 2.4mm; there is a slight bulge that they seem to consider as a part of the side instead of the front but from the front you still can see said bulge, so I feel justified measuring this in too. Keeping all this in mind, the phone's bezel is still considered as one of the thinner ones in the market.


     In addition, the phone features capacitive buttons, which still infuriates me as it's already 2014 and Google's design guidelines advice against it; oh and to add to that, the capacitive buttons also feature the menu button instead of the recent apps button to add a cherry on top of my gripe. On the other end of the phone, we find the standard earpiece, and the front camera which has a specification of 2MP.


     Shifting our focus to the sides of the phone, we find the first SIM tray on the left side of the phone; meanwhile on the right side of the phone, we find the volume buttons and the second SIM tray. What I like about the SIM trays is that they are easy to open and there is no need for a SIM ejector tool as it is possible to unlock the flaps by just using my fingernails. Oh and if you haven't figure it out yet, this phone is a dual-sim phone.



     Moving to the top of the phone, we find a 3.5mm audio port on the left and a power button on the right. On the other end of the phone, we find the Micro-USB port alongside with it, the JBL-branded stereo speakers. Audio quality wise, the speakers perform extraordinary-ly well when playing files at a moderate volume. However, when maxing out the volume, there seems to be a little distortion which can be dismissed unless you have very sharp ears. Do keep in mind though that the maximum volume on this phone is quite louder than other phones in the market, so there's that. All this still doesn't fix the problems that's been plaguing bottom facing speakers since forever, that the fact you will need to create a cup shape with your hands if you wish to hold the phone in a landscape position to consume media or play games in order to not block the audio playing from the bottom of the phone.



     Now let's check out the back of the phone. The reason why the phone's variant is called "Spin Black" is because the back features a special design, with tons of circles covering it, which sorts of makes out what I would like to say a ripple-like effect. Other than that, the back features a glossy finish, which is a shame for a number of reasons. Reason one, the back is easily smudged by the hand's natural grease and reason two, the back seems to be very easily scratched. I say this because being the second reviewer to use this review sample, it seems that the previous reviewer has caused a number of micro-scratches on the phone along with a much more obvious scratch within the standard review period of two weeks. This minor complaint can easily be solved by using a case, but for the purists like me out there, it's something to keep in mind.



     Since we are looking at the back, let's talk about the camera. On the back of this phone is a 13 MP camera with what seems to be a pretty warm flash. Using the camera app that comes with the phone, there is certainly some shutter lag but it's minimal. Image quality wise, I will let you judge yourselves with some image samples down below. Low light performance is sub-par with noticeable amount of noise even though the image tends to be on the darker side compared to my G Pro2. I also hope ALCATEL will put in more effort with their camera app as the settings seem to pale in comparison to other manufacturers. A major complaint of mine would be that there is no quick way to check out the photo I just took as there is no gallery shortcut present in the app.









2MP Front camera photos


     Under the hood of the IDOL X+ is the MediaTek MT6592 chipset, a Cortex-A7 Octa-core clocked at 2Ghz alongside the Mali-450MP4 GPU, and 2GB of RAM. To top it off, the phone runs Android v4.2.2 Jelly bean with ALCATEL's own skin. I don't need to mention how outdated the phone already is and while ALCATEL said that a OS update is inbound, but that was 2 months ago and there is nothing in sight here. My experience using the phone can be summed up in one word: Inconsistent. At times, navigating through different pages of the launcher is a very smooth and seamless experience, but other times it would lag behind when I try to scroll through the widget page or pull down the status bar.




     I think the main culprit behind the lag I experience here is the skin that ALCATEL has applied on the OS which includes the very weird decision to make some dialog boxes or UI elements to be semi-transparent that causes some things to be barely readable or in the second screenshot, not readable at all. I have more screenshots of the general ecosystem up on Google+.





     Other than that, the phone comes by default with a lot of apps pre-installed. I was tempted to use the word, "bloat"; but there are apps in this bunch that are widely used by most people like Whatsapp or Viber. Still, Durian app store? Clean Master? You get the idea. Note that from the screenshots above, all of them are pre-installed apps.



     If you are wondering about media consumption, the built-in video player supports .mkv files natively so you don't have to worry about the subtitles. The anime playing in the pictures is Buddy Complex; a short and sweet mecha anime. One thing I noticed about watching movies/shows on the phone is that some motions look unnaturally fast. It seems like videos play at 30fps instead of the normal 24fps but I can't test that out; the point is video file formats seem to play faster on the phone.

     Battery performance wise, the IDOL X+ has a 2,500mAh battery that takes about 2 and a half hours to charge to full capacity. Battery usage wise, leaving the phone on standby with minimum usage can easily last me up to 2 days. Draining the battery will get you more than 4 hours of screen-on time. I am pretty surprised of how long the battery can last; on my typical school day, I unplug around 6AM at full capacity and in the evening I will be left with around 50% battery.



     The IDOL X+ comes with the BOOMBand in the retail packaging. Initially, ALCATEL said it was only for a limited period of time but after more than 1 month since release, the IDOL X+ still comes with a BOOMBand in the packaging but there is no word on whether it will stay like this permanently. The BOOMBand is made of 2 components: the light blue coloured band and the actual hardware is contained within something that looks like a Bluetooth earpiece. To charge the BOOMBand, there is another special rubber case to allow that. Setting up the BOOMBand with the IDOL X+ is pretty easy via Bluetooth. On the contrary, wearing the BOOMBand is not; it is hard to latch on and not to mention the furthest hole for the band to latch on is not a tight enough fit.



     With that said, after pairing the BOOMBand with the phone, users are able to track how many steps they take in a day or their sleep activity by just switching it into "Sleep Mode" via tapping the band or switching it via the BOOMBand Life app. There's also a neat little graph inside the app so users can keep track of their activity over a period of time and compare their day to day lifestyle.


     Another accessory that comes with the IDOL X+ is the JBL-branded earphones. While I won't say they sound amazeballs, they do sound better than typical earphones that come with their retail packaging.

     Storage wise, only the 16GB variant of the IDOL X+ is available in Malaysia. It would had been okay if this particular variant had a MicroSD slot like the variant advertised on ALCATEL's international website. So let's put things into perspective, after storing the entire season of Buddy Complex in 720p which consists of only 13 episodes, I am only left with 2GB of free space. To be frank, 16GB is really not enough due to the fact being that only about 9GB is made available to users. Hopefully in the future, ALCATEL decides to also bring in the 32GB variant of their next flagship (sources tell me it's in July) to give consumers a choice of bigger storage. NOTE: After checking my media kit from March's event, apparently the 32GB variant's status was "TBA" but again, I won't keep my hopes up.

CONCLUSION

     After using the phone for more than one week, the IDOL X+ to me is a mixed bag. Reading my review, you might think that the phone is a pretty sub-par phone, but that is judging it without knowing the price. The IDOL X+ retails at MYR 1,299.00 and unlike OPPO, there isn't any jurisdiction on price-controlling. After putting things in perspective, the IDOL X+ seems like a pretty good deal for the price. If you are only willing to spend this amount of money on a smartphone, the IDOL X+ can be up for consideration for it's above average camera performance, crisp clear display with thin bezels, amazing battery life and accessories like the BOOMBand may fit in to your niche; meanwhile the deal breakers to me would be the terrible skin applied onto a very outdated OS that impacts performance, limited storage option and fingerprint/scratch prone body.