Gadgetory

just when you think the world of budget smartphones is settled Alcatel comes along with the idol 5s it's design and build belies its budget price in the US the idol 5s sells for two hundred and eighty dollars but it looks downright fancy with its glass front and back it feels like a spelt iPhone 4 and that's a good the idol 5s runs Android nougat which includes Google assistant in use the 5s was very capable of everyday tasks messaging social media and even playing games like Super Mario run modern combat 5 and incredible monster hero there's a fingerprint reader on the back which works well and has a couple of nifty tricks you can set specific fingers to trigger a shortcut for example I can unlock the phone and go right into messages all in one motion I can also use the fingerprint reader to swipe through photos left and right sadly there's no NFC which means no Android pay but the idol 5s does have amazing built-in speakers better than most phones and it has a 12 megapixel rear camera which takes nice photos and shoots good 1080p video there's no 4k no optical image stabilization and that's true of most budget phones but the idol 5s does have digital image stabilization for video which yields good results so is the idol 5s one of the best budget phones you can buy well there's two problems the first is the battery in our looped video battery test it only lasts at 7 hours and 48 minutes that's one of the shortest times for any phone we've tested this year I should say in real world use it got through most days just fine but there were some days where I was searching for my charger by the afternoon and problem number two the moto G 5 plus it is equally spec to the idol 5s but it's battery lasted 13 hours and 22 minutes in our test look I really like the Alcatel idol 5s but the battery is a compromise you'll need to consider if you can get past charging it more frequently it is otherwise a wonderful phone for the price