Gadgetory

as the budget market grows smaller and smaller is there really any room for an above average budget entry I'm mark percent over TechnoBuffalo and these are the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 the idol 3 comes in two models one with a 4.7 inch display with a really kind of tiny form factor and a 5.5 inch model the build quality is the same but the specs are different and that's everything from the screen to the innards so let's talk about this 4.7 inch model really quickly it's a 4.7 inch IPS LCD display 720 by 1280 that comes to a PPI of 312 which is pretty low just running a snapdragon 410 with an Adreno 306 and it's rockin 1.5 gigs of ram this bigger handset has got a 5.5 inch IPS LCD display the 1920 by 1080 resolution for a ppi of 401 a Snapdragon 615 Adreno 405 and you've got 2 gigs of ram in this model both of these two contains 16 gigs of on-board storage and an SD slot which is expandable up to 128 gigs the build on both of these things is actually really good most of its plastic but the metal trim here gives it kind of like a semi premium feel if the specs on this device we're a little bit more robust I'd still be super super happy with the build quality of both of them really I think the best way to describe them is svelte I just I think that word kind of embodies how they feel in the hand they feel slim strong comfortable the design isn't like super groundbreaking or anything like that but it feels nice in the hand it's kind of an offensive the only thing that I don't like at all in terms of the hardware is the placement of that home button that home button is just a little too high up on that left side but this is mitigated by tap to wake in another feature that we will cover very shortly the displays on these devices are good for what they are but the display on the 5.5 inch model is much much better than the 4.7 inch entry the color on the 4.7 inch models display is washed out the contrast is murky a fast and the screen is sharp enough for the size but it's nothing to write home about the viewing angles on both however are very good five point five inch has a much more pleasant display and got a much higher pixel density than the four point seven inch model the color temperature is a contrast all much better on the five point five inch display unfortunately though both of these displays have they must have similar touch panels because they're not the most responsive and you are gonna notice it at times as you're scrolling around you're gonna see just or a tap here and there might not quite trigger on both of these devices so the touch panel left a little something to be desired but nothing too too bad the performance on both devices was totally passable but really nothing to write home about I did notice some non-trivial amounts of lag on both devices I turned on GPU rendering and it's really really clear that they both have a bit of a hard time and again that responsiveness of the touch panel with that in question combined with the lag I can't really say that the idle offered a terribly pleasant experience when it comes to performance though it certainly wasn't the worst it could handle the basics just don't really expect to - much more than that just loading up Adventure Time puzzle quest on this thing was a three minute affair and that's on the higher end model if you notice I don't usually talk too much about the speakers on devices unless they're above average most phones just have okay speakers it's nothing crazy and I just need more time and videos but these are above average while they're not boom sound they definitely sound better than they have any right to their front facing they're pretty crisp and they get pretty loud the camera on both of these devices is fine the 4.7 inch definitely struggles a little bit more than the 5.5 inch model things are a little bit more washed out things are a little bit murkier and definitely has a little bit of issue with noise and neither device does terribly well in low light but in decent light to good light the 5.5 inch device has a great camera better than you would expect a camera like this to be it's even got an HDR mode and it takes some decent shots better than I expected them to be so I was pleasantly surprised by the camera in the 5.5 inch the battery life on both of these was a little weird at first it was working out pretty okay the small one especially since it's a low resolution display it's really not rocking too much in there doesn't eat up battery too quickly but then when I started using them a little bit more frequently throughout the day they had a hard time making it through overnights in standby mode after a full day of usage plus neither of these support fast charging so they are gonna need a little bit of TLC when it comes to battery which unfortunately I mean that's I would really expect more than that from a budget device that should be one of the things that you do really well as a bunch of device and these are okay the software actually had a ton of pleasant little tweaks nothing here is terribly offensive the launcher is skinned but it's fine and a handful of apps that are pre-loaded aren't terribly obtrusive they're easy enough to disregard so that's really not that big of a deal we're all can tell really kind of stepped up is a few touches that make it clear that they're they are making an effort to differentiate wherever possible despite how silly it might seem one of the marquee features of the idles is the fully reversible nature of the screens on these devices sure this is just screen orientation and we've seen it on a bunch of stuff before but until now we've really kind of only seen it on a tablet think about it how often do you pick up your phone when it's turned off and realize that you need to flip it upside down in order to use it happens to me all the time but with these it doesn't matter it's kind of nice you can just pick it up double tap to wake it and then go about using it this one time I actually didn't even realize that it was upside-down until I went to lock it to put it down and it's a small thing but it really made a big difference and I do wish that were standard in every Android build while I did have time overall positive experience with these devices I'm just struggling to figure out exactly where they fit if you're in the market for a cheap phone you could certainly do a lot worse than the 4.7 inch idol 3 it's tiny the battery life is fine the camera spine and the software is inoffensive if someone came up to me and told me that they need a phone for less than 200 bucks this is where I'd point them but then I'd remember that the Moto G is the same price at 180 and it arguably offers you more bang for your buck then we get to the 5.5 inch model at 270 bucks I wonder your money isn't better spent picking up a zenfone 2 at 300 bucks I think the amount of compromises that you're gonna be making in terms of performance at that price point it's just a little bit too much to justify making this particular purchase especially when you take into account the estate of Lux that the market is in right now bottom line is while these are decent devices for the price point they don't really do anything big enough to merit my attention with other more serious contenders in the same price range let me know what you guys think about the idol 3 in the comments and if you enjoyed this video you can hit that like button on the way down there you can also subscribe if you've ever been attacked by an echidna and as always thank you for watching be kind to one another and I will catch you in the next video