Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra Review

Alcatel One Touch is one of the brands of TCL Communications. With its unique designs and user interface, Alcatel One Touch offers a great deal of entertainment, easy-to-navigate devices and many more. The Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra, also known as the “Iron Man” phone, claims to be as one of the thinnest smartphones in the world however, ‘thinnest’ has also its downsides. Let’s take a look at this review.

FORM

The Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra is only 6.45 mm thick. It’s thin but not frail chassis houses the 4.65 inches HD display (720 x 1280) with 315 ppi. The gorgeous screen is coated with an AMOLED screen with damage-resistant DragonTrail Glass. Colors are well-adjusted while the contrast and brightness are carefully calibrated by default. Viewing angle is also topnotch.

At the top of the device lies the On/Off button and the micro-USB port. The metallic volume rockers are beautifully placed at the left portion of the Idol Ultra. The microsim slot is located at the right side; and at the bottom, you will see the microphone.

The seemingly near-perfect build and gorgeous design of the Idol Ultra is marred with the exclusion of the 3.5mm headset jack. In order for the headphone to work, Alcatel included a headset adapter in which you can input it at the micro-USB port.

The Ultra Idol has well-lighted 3 capacitive buttons (BACK, HOME, RECENT APPS) located at the bottom portion of the device.

CAMERA

The One Touch Idol Ultra sports a back camera with 8 megapixel quality and surprisingly, the captured photos are distinctively amazing and pretty good with well-lighted subjects while the video capture quality is supported up to 720p. This is also the first time that I have encountered a front camera that captures very clear and beautiful shots. The front camera has 1.3 MP but seemingly produces almost-5 megapixel quality shots. Take a look at our examples.

HARDWARE SPECIFICATIONS

A Mediatek MTK6577+ 1.2 Ghz Dual Core processor powers the One Touch Idol Ultra. A 1GB RAM significantly helps the device run apps and mid-ranged graphics games. Take note though – the speakers at the back is a bit small and not that loud. We ended up using a headset just to hear the movies and music properly. More so, the Idol Ultra has a 1800 mAh Li-ion battery, which is categorically ‘just right’ for a mid-ranged device. Note: The battery of the Idol Ultra is built-in and cannot be removed.

As for the ratings:

The Alcatel One Touch has Quadrant Benchmark of 3,105 rating and an Antutu Benchmark of 6,466 rating, which we find acceptable but a little low for a mid-range device with dual-core processor.

We thought that the reason behind the modest score of Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra is the 1 GB RAM. The 1 GB RAM is not enough to help its processor. If only they added at least 1 GB RAM more, then performance would have been significantly better.

CONCLUSION

The Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra is a very simple yet elegant phone. It sports a quality hardware specifications like the 8 MP camera, Mediatek processor and the AMOLED screen with DragonTrail Glass. The 6.5 mm thickness of the Idol Ultra plays a wide role in this situation. It is not quite a powerful phone but the physical appearance makes it a total headturner.

The Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra is available at a retail price of Php14,990. It is free at Plan 999 at Sun Cellular.

ALCATEL ONE TOUCH IDOL ULTRA SPECIFICATIONS:

• 4.65-inch AMOLED display @ 720×1280 pixels, 315ppi
• Dragon Trail Glass
• MediaTek MT6577+ 1.2GHz dual-core processor
• PowerVR SGX531 graphics
• 1GB RAM
• 16GB internal memory
• 3G/HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps
• Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n, WiFi Direct, WiFi hotspot
• Bluetooth 4.0
• GPS w/ A-GPS support
• 8 MP camera w/ LED flash, 720p@30fps
• 1.3MP front-facing camera
• Android 4.1.1 Jellybean
• Li-Ion 1,820 mAh battery
• 134.4 x 68.5 x 6.45 mm (dimensions)
• 115g (weight)

+ POINTS:

• Lightweight and beautiful form
• AMOLED with DragonTrail Glass
• Both cameras are above average.

– POINTS:

• Unremovable battery
• So-so battery life
• Exclusion of Headset Jack

Gianfranco Viterbo

Gianfranco is the co-founder of gadgetpilipinas.net. He graduated from Far Eastern University. A Psychology student turned tech-savvy. He's currently the HR Supervisor of Blip Media and one of the content producers of Gadget Pilipinas. He enjoys playing competitive video games and binge-watch American TV series.