It was just yesterday that we wrote about the two variants of the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 were announced in March at Mobile World Congress (MWC). While the 5.5-inch model has been out for about three months, we were told that the smaller, 4.7-inch model, would finally be available this Friday. It will be sold exclusively on Amazon in both the US and Canada for only $179. Today, we are happy to announce that it is now available to order from the company’s online store – of course with shipping and duty to Ontario, it comes to $221.10 and with the current exchange rate, it comes to $290. Suddenly a $179.99 bargain is not such a bargain at all.
The new smaller Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 measures in at 134.6 x 65.9 x 7.6 mm and weighs in at 110 grams. It comes with a 4.7-inch IPS LCD HD display with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels and surprisingly a respectable 312 pixels-per-inch (PPI), due to the smaller screen size. It is a multi-touch display that allows up to 5 points at a time. The processor is a Qualcomm 64-bit Snapdragon 410 quad-core clocked at 1.2GHz. In the North American version the Idol 3 packs 1.5GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage (10GB available to the user), and even includes an expansion option via a microSD card slot to add an additional 128GB of storage.
The primary camera on the Idol 3 uses a 13MP sensor with autofocus and LED flash and for the front-facing camera (FFC), they used a 5MP sensor for social selfies and video chatting. Our review of the 5.5-inch model with the same camera gave some pretty good results. The Idol 3 even comes with front-facing JBL speakers that give great sound, but do not take up a lot of room like the BoomSound speakers on the HTC One M9. It comes with the usual suspects – Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, is NFC capable, a FM Radio and a microUSB port for charging and data transfer. It has a rather small, 2000 mAh non-removable battery, but with only a 4.7-inch HD display, it should last you for an average day. The Alcatel OneTouch will come out-of-the-box running Android Lollipop 5.0 and will also have an update to immediately patch the Stagefright vulnerability we’ve heard so much about lately.