Alcatel has recently provided me with an Idol 3 to review, so let’s get started! The Idol 3 is a serious phone contender and Alcatel means business. It is retailing for $349 at Bell with no contract or 0$ with a 2 year contract. If you have cracked your phone screen, need an upgrade, or you are looking for something new, check this Alcatel Idol 3 review out.
Physical Features of The Alcatel Idol 3
The phone is large, coming in at 5’5″ which puts it at the same size as the Apple Iphone 6 plus or Samsung Galaxy S6 Plus. It comes with 1080p screen resolution. Because of the large size, I do recommend getting a good case and not putting the phone in your pocket. The screen is large and clear and has bright color contrast. They have partnered with Technicolor to give you “true colors”. In the sunlight, colors are still crisp and there is a wide viewing angle from the sides. A really beautiful screen on this phone.
The Idol 3 has two 1.2 w Front facing stereo speakers which produce a nice clear sound. Even when you place it on a table. It can be very annoying, that with some phones you always have to make sure the ‘speaker side’ is up or you will hear muffled/no music.
Overall, The phone looks nice. It has some clean lines and will appeal to most people. There are no real gimic features of the rectangular phone for you not to like. It feels good in the hand and although large, It fits well to make calls, play games, or type emails.
All About The Selfie….
There is a 13 MP camera on the back top corner and an 8MP camera on the front. That’s pretty good front facing camera for selfie taking. It is way better than a lot of phones on the market. Both cameras takes clean clear photos and the camera app has some nice and easy to use features. Focusing and taking photos is straight forward. Sometimes it can be laggy, but nothing I’ve not seen on similar samsung models.
The Insides of the Idol 3
The Idol 3 5’5″ comes with a Snapdragon 615 chipset and has 16 GB internal memory. There is an expandable memory card slot, which can be all too important for your music and photos these days. Several comparable phones on the market (like the OnePlus One) don’t offer this memory expansion feature.
The battery in the phone is 2910 mAh and is not removable. I dislike that and wish more phones has removable batteries. Thankfully the battery life is good with a good solid 8 hours of web browsing coming in. Your mileage may very.
It comes with a very close version to stock Android Lollipop with some custom rounded buttons. Nice clean and simple. All of the basic google apps are included as well as some custom features from Alcatel. Buttons are group into useable categories right out of the box like “Google” and “Tools”.
Pros of Alcatel Idol 3 Review:
- Custom Software features like a custom ROM
- All day Battery Life
- Powerful Speakers on the Front
- Phone can Be used from any angle
- Powerful design like High End phones
- Inexpensive Price
Cons of Alcatel Idol 3 Review:
- Camera can sometimes lag
- No removeable battery
No longer do you need to part with large amounts of money or crazy contracts to get a top notch phone experience. If you are looking for a $0 dollar phone experience you should seriously check this phone out at Telus or $360, Bell or $349 in Canada. I enjoy this phone much more than the previous Alcatel One Touch Idol X+ phone I reviewed and expect more good things from Alcatel in the future.
