AlcatelOneTouch Idol 3 Global GSM Unlocked 4G LTE Smartphone, 4.7 HD IPS Display, 16GB - Gray

Pros-Smooth Performance-All Day Battery Life-Excellent Build Quality-Good Quality Screen-NFC (Android Pay Compatible)-Decent Camera-MicroSD ExpansionCons-Awkward Button Placement-Squeaky Vibrating Motor-Updates not guaranteed-No Gorilla GlassShould you buy: YESActual Value: $220I loved my Moto G. It made me always question why people spend over $600 on phones when a $200 could work just as well. With the new Moto G, I was willing to buy it right on the spot. But what turned me off was the nearly 3 weeks I’d have to wait for one to be delivered. So I started my search for the next best phone under $200, which lead me to this phone. I’ve had some experience with Alcatel phones, so I didn’t have much expectations with this phone. That being said, I’ve had a couple of days with it and I can say with absolute confidence that I love it.-Design-This is one light phone. I’m starting with that because you have no idea how light it is until you hold it in your hand. I actually thought for a moment that the battery wasn’t inside it yet. But it is pleasant to hold in the hand. The design is all plastic, so don’t expect anything premium on this phone like metal. But it is solidly built, rivaling even the Galaxy S5 in build quality. Speaking of which, this phone is lighter and slimmer than the S5. If the phone were sold for more money, I’d still be satisfied. It’s not just good build quality for the price. It’s excellent build quality. Period. The chrome accent is a nice touch and the speaker grills are slightly angled towards the phone, which add a bit of sparkle to an otherwise black phone. No soft touch plastic on this phone, but it does land on a middle ground where the plastic is nice to touch and is resistant to fingerprints. The design is completely symmetrical, which is important for a certain feature that is unique to it. I’d love it even more if it were available in a different color such as white, but that is personal preference. Overall, I can’t find much to complain; especially for the low $180 price.-Performance-If you have seen the Moto G’s specs, you’re pretty much getting the same hardware. It uses a Snapdragon 410, 720p display, microSD expansion, Android Lollipop, and even the same camera module (Sony IMX 214). However, there are a few key difference that make this a better phone than the Moto G. For instance, this phone has 1.5 GB of RAM (Moto G=1GB), actual front facing stereo speakers, a 4.7” compared to the 5”, NFC, and 16GB of storage(Moto G=1GB). In benchmarks, I have gotten similar results to the Moto G in both CPU and graphic performance. But benchmarks are only one side of the performance experience. The other is daily user experience. Based on the couple of days with it and after installing many apps, I can tell you that this phone is snappy. It’s not as fast as the current flagship lineup, but it never lags or clips the graphics. Apps open relatively quickly and the animations are smooth, as well as the transitions from one app to another. In my testing of multitasking ability, it opened Chrome, Angry Birds, Pokemon Puzzle, and YouTube with no lag and each app open where I left them off. Opening more will force the phone to suspend one of those apps to save RAM, but 4 apps at once without closing is pretty good for the cost. Games also perform good, as long as you have reasonable expectations. 2D games such as Angry Birds, Pokemon Puzzle, and Clash of Clans run smoothly and without an issue. Other games like Asphalt 8 and Real Racing 3 will run smooth, but not at the highest quality setting. But that’s to be expected from a midrange phone. Signal quality is good. I was able to get 62 Mbps download speed and 8 Mbps upload on T-Mobile’s 4G LTE around Pasadena, CA. Thanks to band 12 support, cell signal in buildings is good with the signal almost never going under 3 bars. The speakers are also amazingly good and loud, coming close to matching HTC’s Boomsound phone speakers thanks to the help from JBL. Overall, it performs close to flagship specs, albeit a bit slower. Most people should be happy with this phone.-Display-The phone itself has a beautiful HD display with a 312 PPI (note that the iPhone 6 has a 324 PPI) and it is advertise as being calibrated by Technicolor. While they aren’t at the S6’s quality display, it does come close. The display has a nice color calibration, with vivid colors and nice blacks and whites. It is also bright enough for using even in direct sunlight and the good contrast means you can clearly see what you are doing. It isn’t perfect since there are a couple of issues. The colors do have a VERY slight cool tone, meaning that the whites do have a TINY bit of blue to them. Another small issue is that there is a slight amount of light bleed on one side of the displace. But it isn’t noticeable in daily use and it is good for the price of the phone. One crucial one is the fact that they aren’t using Gorilla glass on this display, opting for the more discreet Dragontrail Glass. Since this is going to be my daily driver, I didn’t want to test the toughness (if Alcatel provides me a unit, I’d gladly test it) but I’ve looked into it and it trades scratch resistance for toughness. It might be easier to scratch it, but it is more resistant to shock. Only time will tell and I will update this review as time moves on.-Camera-The camera is a back-facing 13 MP camera and a front, wide angle 5 MP camera. The rear camera uses a Sony Exmor IMX 214, which is the same unit found in the new Moto G and the more expensive Nexus 6. The results are mixed though. On one side, outdoor pictures are good. Whenever there is good lighting such as outside or a well lit room, the pictures do come out high quality with colors mostly accurate and the camera absorbing a lot of details. However, during the night, the picture quality takes a hit, with the camera struggling to get any details from the lack of light. It will get some details if they is ANY type of light, but not much. The lack of OIS also contributes to this issue, but there is no phone with OIS at this price range at the moment. The flash is okay, but since it isn’t a dual tone unit, the light tends to overflow and photos tend to lose their details. Videos are also a similar story, with good lighting providing good results and the opposite being true. There is EIS, but the effect isn’t that noticeable and it doesn’t really help with the quality. This isn’t a camera you’re going to use for important, memorable moments. But for things that most people use, like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, it works great. This is especially true for the front facing camera, with the selfie cam grabbing a lot of details, provided there is good amount of light.-Software-This is basically running a close to stock version of Android Lollipop. It is running version 5.0.2 with a Stagefright patch already added to protect the phone from foreign attacks. There are a few changes to the software. For instance, the icons look like similar to the iPhone, which can be both a good and bad thing, depending on whether you love or hate that style. Other than that, everything works just like stock Android. Except for one feature that I’m surprised isn’t universal to all phones. That is the fact that this phone is reversible. It doesn’t sound as exciting as fingerprint sensor, but it is a rather practical and underrated feature. I’ve answered the phone to test the sound quality and it wasn’t until after I hung up that I realized the phone was upside down. It sounds equally good on either orientation and it is brilliant. Of course, if you don’t like this (for some reason) there is always the option to turn it off. Overall, the light touch that Alcatel added onto Android hasn’t hurt it much and any problems can be easily fixed.-Conclusion-I wasn’t expecting to get a high quality phone, especially after my experience with an old model that I can’t even remember the name. But Alcatel did deliver a high quality experience and an astonishing device. It does have some compromises, but Alcatel chose them wisely and the overall result is great. There is a couple of phones that compete in this range, but the biggest one is the Moto G. Is this better? Yes and no. For power users, I would still recommend the high end Moto G because of the extra RAM or even a OnePlus One, which is on sale now for $299. But if it must be under $200, like for college students like me, this beats the $179 low end Moto G due to the higher quality speakers, display, NFC, and the slightly more RAM. This phone helps to answer the question: Do people really need to spend over $800 on a phone to get a high quality experience? The answer for most people is no. They don’t. There is a market for people who need to have the latest and greatest with all the new extras like fingerprint sensor and DSLR-like quality cameras. But for the rest of us, there are phone that does what we ask from it and reasonably well not just for the price, but just overall. If you are on the fence and frustrated from searching like I was, let me help you. Go for this phone and you won’t be disappointed.

This phone is awful with its performance and the configuration which was mentioned in the product description is just on papers looks like nothing works. Below are the issues I'm facing1. Battery sucks big time, I made sure I had 100% battery before I went to bed and morning the reading on batter power was just 37% left. There was no activity on the phone but battery drains for no reason.2. LTE never worked so far (Please don't argue, I was able to get LTE speed with other cell phone with the same service provider) and also network drops and gets back again,this never happened with my age old android phone.3 Phone's performance sucks, hard to believe that the configuration they have mentioned can choke to perform with hardly 2 applications installed newly with the phone(I have no games in phone and I just bought this phone 2 days back)PS: The outlook of the phone looks good and the sound is good (Thanks to JBL) but I'm surprised that amazon sells very cheap below par phone which don't perform as per the description. I love to shop with amazon with some confidence but not with doubts.****************************************************Update - things turned worse to worst!!!Below is the email sent to Amazon.I have issue with my phone it's not connecting with my phone network. From the day two when I got this phone I'm having issue with battery and I have also registered for return but unfortunately I didn't return due to circumstance now the situation is really worse as I'm not seeing signal reception with this phone. My friends, office colleagues and my manager started complaining that most of the time my call was hitting the voice mail, initially I thought it was an issue with my carrier but last month I figured out its the problem with the phone and now for the last couple of weeks this phone is not even attempting to connect, I'm using my 2009 Samsung basic smart phone now, with which I'm able to place and receive calls. It's a real nightmare and I have lost important interview calls as well because of this Alcatel phone. I have taken pictures for ref. Comparing my old Samsung and this Alcatel phone, but I'm unable to add here. Please help me on this regard. I just bought this phone because it was sold by Amazon by itself. Thanks!