Gadgetory

progress evolution we like it when companies take risks and build their brands last year Alcatel delivered one of our favorite budget options for 2016 the idol pushes into mid tier pricing with the 4s it's a crowded market so does this phone have the goods to compete between Moto's and one pluses now positioning a phone at 350 dollars is a delicate balancing act Alcatel has done a commendable job of maximizing these specs for the price we get a really pretty 5.5 inch AMOLED screen with a quad HD resolution its respectively bright with good outdoor brightness and under manual control it hangs right with the galaxy s7 the phone is powered by a Qualcomm 6 5 2 chipset with 3 gigabytes of RAM 32 gigabytes of storage and a 3000 milliamp hour battery with fast charging technology flanking the front face are a pair of speakers those grilles are mirrored on the back of the phone ordering a 16 megapixel camera and in always-on fingerprint sensor that sensor is slower than some of the other options we've played with around this price but it's functional and positioned well to prevent dancing the phone around in your hand even tiny hobbit hands like mine appreciated because glass gets slippery Alcatel maintains the overall look of last year's Idol which is a good thing for the most part as we liked that phone's design graceful tapers rounded corners and these cool edges around the speakers though we are happy to see the camera is more centered on this phone than the easily blocked corner shooter on the idol 3 we still have that wonky button arrangement with the volume rocker on the right and the power button on the left certainly a recipe for finger confusion while you're getting used to it and I accidentally took a lot of extra photos that I didn't need to in the camera app the headphone jack is on the top of the phone with a micro USB port on the bottom both of those ports well offset from the center of the device new for this year the back of the phone is made out of glass raising the bar for a premium look it feels a little like the lovechild of an idol 3 in a oneplus X there's also this new boom key which can be user assigned to launch specific apps which for this reviewer is of course tied to the camera software is also a balancing act for mid-range unlocked Alcatel x' interface here is another what we would call stock plus mostly what we would find from a clean build of Android with a few tweaks we appreciate like a 5th row of icons on your home screen a quick toggle for auto brightness in the notification shade or shortcuts on the lockscreen the 4s includes support for gestures like drawing a C on the screen to launch a phone call these gestures don't clear the lock screen though so we question how much more convenient this might be then using a fingerprint and keeping shortcuts handy lastly this phone ships in a VR headset so we get a handful of apps to show that off alongside a proper store just for more VR applications this is not a bloat free phone but there aren't really any egregious abuses here for pre-installed software looking at performance the Qualcomm 652 chipset is a solid performer a spiritual successor to last year's Qualcomm 808 found in the Nexus 5x or LG v10 it's capable but it tends to run a bit on the warm side the phone benchmarks well and we encountered few issues sliding through the user interface even with only three gigabytes of RAM multitasking performance is decent when sliding back and forth between a handful of services moving beyond communication in social media the idol 4s is a respectable gaming machine implosion ran well on high quality settings a marvel future fight has historically been poorly optimized for Qualcomm chipsets but here we're seeing performance which bests most of the Qualcomm 820 powered phones we've reviewed a happy little perk to see a mid-range err play this well networking performance was also impressive testing around town on ATT the idol 4s regularly bested the galaxy s7 by 2 to 3 decibels and this was mirrored in Wi-Fi connections where the idols seemed to be able to hold on to our router signal just a bit better now we did run into some throttling issues though and they manifested most readily when using the camera so talking about the camera we've got a solid 16 megapixel sensor with an F 2.0 aperture and we see some nice evolution here for the camera app sliding across the screen moves us between modes with controls on the left hand side might I add controls which toggle in place instead of popping out additional menus making you move the target to change options annual mode allows folks to dial in specific photo settings but these sliders can be tricky to use in bright sunlight now photos come out nicely exposed bright and crisp in daylight like most phones maybe they're a touch overexposed but over saturation is more of a concern warmer colors yellows and reds can clip detail even in shade now blues greens and browns look terrific though low-light photos require patience and a steady hand there is no optical image stabilization so landing a crisp shot at night can be difficult the HDR mode in daylight is slow and it's even slower at night now night mode takes a shorter scan of the scene but it still requires you to hold still we also get a handful of fun modes to play with slow motion video is over sharpened but delivers a better than mid-pack output for a 720p image there's also this FIU's fusee fuse mode which creates a parallax effect when scanning around your subject which works surprisingly well and does this cool sci-fi scanning thing when creating the final image unfortunately panorama stitching is rather poor this is a challenging scene but the output still has a significant number of stitching issues but over saturation and panorama stitching aren't the real problems remember how we said the qualcomm 6:52 ran a bit warm well this phone has an issue with throttling in 100-degree heat out here in LA powering a bright quad HD screen shooting UHD video we were only able to shoot a couple short video clips before the phone would start throttling down and wrecking the videos normally I charge each phone while driving in between setups but that kept the battery too hot so instead I kept it on one of my AC vents but that didn't give us much extra time shooting it's a shame as the clips which weren't throttled were shaky but otherwise a high quality Ultra HD video this is only my second experience using a Qualcomm 650 series chipset and like the sony xperia x which throttled when shooting HD video now our second example throttles even faster on UHD video we're hoping this can be addressed in a future update but as such we're holding off on doing a real camera review Audio gets us back on track though these speakers are kill and deliver a robust sound for games and videos headphone audio also delivers the amp output is about what we would find on a Galaxy s7 but the quality of the DAC is just nipping at the heels of phones like the oneplus 3 looking at the audio branding waves is a well-known software developer in the recording world and you'll find their plugins on many recording engineers computers here WAV software forms the backbone of the idols Mac's audio setting giving users granular controls over bass treble reverb stereo image and including a-10 band EQ these settings are also tied to usage so you can have different presets for music movies and general system sounds or you can throw it all over to the Auto Select which will make all of those audio choices for you taking a quick look at some audio tests using the auto select the software is working to augment certain frequencies of sound similar to how boom sound might juice up your music it's not a setting for purists but it does deliver more colourful playback last year's Idol carried JBL audio branding but we're definitely more impressed with this waves plugin battery life is also solid this 3000 milliamp hour battery gets us through the day well enough with some room to spare by dinnertime now we're changing up our media test slightly normalizing for 50% screen brightness on the galaxy s7 we're now setting all phone's brightness to match the same Lux output after 30 minutes of streaming video over Wi-Fi the idol forest drained about 6% of its battery solid performance and the recharge speeds are handy for those who might need a top-off during the day 30 minutes on the supply charger landed a 53% recharge a bit shy of all katella's claims but still great recharging speed lastly it's just fun that Alcatel is shipping this phone with a VR headset and that quad HD screen comes in handy for virtual reality applications this headset is a high quality solution for the idle foam runs all the way around even over the bridge of the nose cutouts provide access to the headphone and USB ports and we get buttons unlike some other headsets we've recently reviewed adjustable lenses would be nice but otherwise we think idle owners will enjoy this hardware so let's wrap this up where's that leave us with the Alcatel Idol 4s we love seeing evolution moving to a higher price point is an exciting move we really liked the Idol 3 and everything we liked about that phone is still here plus some great new features like higher screen resolution and more premium build materials when looking at recent releases this phone lands well against competing options smack dab in between a moto G 4 plus and a 1 plus 3 we do have some performance concerns with how quickly the phone camera can run hot but otherwise we were impressed with the offering Alcatel delivered an ambitious follow-up to last year's phone which gets almost everything right and it slots into this market right where we think it should fit now consumers just need to check their budget as solid competition exists on both sides of this price as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full Alcatel idol 4s coverage and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for pocket Hill I'm Juan Carlos Becnel some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review