You can scarcely swing a phone charger these days without hitting an accomplished Android phone for around the $250/£200/AU$330 mark, and here’s another in the Alcatel Idol 4. As that suggests, though, it’s getting increasingly difficult to stand out from the highly competent crowd.
Some manufacturers look to squeeze in a higher-end component or two to make their phone stand out, while others focus on a more premium design. Alcatel, for its part, has decided to throw in a couple of features that tread the narrow line between showstopper and gimmick.
While the initial RRP for the Alcatel Idol 4 is £230 (around $280/AU$370), at the time of writing this review it was possible to pick one up for roughly £190 (around $245/AU$320).
That’s not a bad price for a capable lower-mid-range Android handset such as this, but it’s not a brilliant one either. After all, you can pick up the similarly specced Motorola Moto G4 for £170/$200/AU$330.
However, this price is made more impressive when you consider that the Alcatel Idol 4 comes with a VR headset as standard. It even forms part of the box, so you know this isn’t some temporary give-away à la the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the Gear VR.
Stir in some bold audio claims and an unusual multi-function hot key, and we undoubtedly have one of the more interesting entry-level Android phones we’ve tested in 2016. But does it all hang together?
Future's made of virtual reality
- Customizable Boom key
- Decent VR headset, but the screen isn't good enough
- Impressive speakers
If you’ll pardon that Jamiroquai reference (tough ask, we know), VR is without a doubt the Alcatel Idol 4’s headline feature. The manufacturer hasn’t just thrown a headset in - it’s built the very packaging for the phone out of it.
We’re essentially looking at a competently made, altogether more permanent take on Google Cardboard. The headset is made out of reasonably lightweight plastic, and there’s a headstrap and generous sponge padding around your eyes and nose that both makes the headset comfortable to wear for longer periods and keeps out light.
The Idol 4 hooks into a simple but sturdy clip system, and there’s space for earphones to be used - which really is recommended with any such VR experience.
There are a couple of slightly cheap-feeling, touch-sensitive plastic buttons on the bottom edge of the headset that we weren’t too sure about. We found that we would often mistakenly press one of these in the process of slipping the headset on, so we had to deliberately modify our natural process.
Still, the VR headset itself is an effective piece of kit. What isn’t up to VR scratch is the Idol 4. It’s not the lower-end CPU that does it - though we can’t imagine the Snapdragon 617 being ready for the next wave of advanced VR games - but rather the phone’s display. At 1080p, all of the VR experiences we tried were blurry and ugly.
VR is arguably the one thing that justifies QHD and even 4K resolutions in mobile displays. Using the Idol 4 for VR will have you pining for that Samsung Galaxy S7 with the Gear VR - if such casual VR is your thing, of course.
Tying into this idea that the Idol 4 is a multimedia-focused device, it has an unusually accomplished speaker set-up. Not only does it have stereo speakers - which is still relatively unusual for a high-end phone, let alone an affordable one - but it also has a second pair on the back.
This means that even if your phone is face down, you’ll be able to hear your music loud and clear. You won’t get a lot of bass from that sound, but there’s definite stereo separation in there.
You also get a set of standard JBL earbuds bundled in. They’re not great, but they’re better than most bog standard efforts.
Another unusual feature of the Alcatel Idol 4 is its dedicated ‘Boom key’. This is an additional context-sensitive button found mid-way up the right hand edge of the phone.
It can be customized to fulfil a number of roles. By default, it will kick off a little weather animation on the home screen, while a double tap while the phone is asleep will take an instant snapshot with the main camera. Holding will take a burst shot.
You can also set the Boom key to launch the camera app - though only when the screen is on, unfortunately. It’s also possible to assign a specific app to it, which could come in useful if you’re a heavy Facebook or Spotify user.
We often wonder why more Android manufacturers don’t experiment with such specialist shortcut keys - particularly with the increasing scarcity of physical home buttons. Alcatel’s efforts here aren’t fully formed, but they’re most welcome.
Design and display
- Strong metal and glass design
- Display is bright and well proportioned
We can’t say that we found the Alcatel Idol 4 attractive, as such, but its metal and glass design is streets ahead of what you would have expected of a $250/£200/AU$300 phone just 18 months ago.
Its look and feel benefit greatly from a metal rim, which gradually thickens towards the top and bottom edges. Those edges also stick up above the glass front and back (yes, it’s a fingerprint magnet) by a good few millimetres, allowing for the four speakers to face directly out towards you.
This latter feature isn’t particularly appealing from an aesthetic standpoint, but it’s certainly functional. It also helps the phone stand out from all those iPhone and Galaxy wannabes.
One other thing to note is that the presence of the unorthodox Boom key has forced a bit of a reshuffle on the button front. The volume key feels a lot higher than normal, near the top of the right hand edge.
The power key, meanwhile, has been forced over to the left hand edge. Both buttons fall naturally under your thumb and forefinger, but it will still take a while to adjust to their placement.
At 7.1mm thick and 135g, the Idol 4 is in that sweet zone for a smartphone - it’s just thick and heavy enough to sit unobtrusively in a pocket whilst remaining comfortable to hold. It also makes the phone significantly thinner and lighter than the Moto G4 at 9.8mm and 155g.
One major reason for these smaller dimensions is that the Idol 4 has a relatively petite display by modern Android standards at 5.2 inches. 5.5 inches almost seems to be the new normal for phones, though around 5.2 inches isn’t uncommon where there are two sizes of a phone on offer (as there is here, thanks to the Alcatel Idol 4S).
The screen isn’t lacking in quality, either, with 1080p proving plenty sharp enough for a phone of this size - except when it comes to VR, of course. We were also impressed with the brightness of the display, which is often something that suffers on cheaper phones, whilst the color temperature is nice and cool.
The colors don’t pop as much as they do on a decent mid-range phone, but they’re just fine for something of this price.
First reviewed: October 2016
Interface and reliability
- Near-stock Android 6.0
- Lock screen customization is a little half-baked
Alcatel has gone with a near-stock version of Android 6.0 Marshmallow for the Idol 4. We’re seeing this more and more in cheaper Android phones, and to our mind it’s a very smart decision.
It means that the manufacturer can offer a relatively slick experience with more humble components, because Google’s last-but-one (and only just) operating system is finely optimized by this point.
Plus, it’s just nice to use. Flicking through the Idol 4’s home screens feels familiar, comfortable. Android 6.0’s drop-down notification menu also continues to be one of the best around, so we’re gratified to see that Alcatel has left well alone.
One thing it’s decided to mess with is the lock screen, which now has a bunch of shortcuts stuck towards the bottom of the screen to jump to such random things as recent calls, Shazam, Yahoo search (yes, really) and the timer. You can customize these with other functions, but it all feels a little stuck-on.
There’s a small amount of additional software when you first boot up the Alcatel Idol 4, but most of it is understandable. There are a couple of VR-focused apps, as you might expect.
One is a decent VR Launcher, that lets you access any VR content downloaded onto the device through the headset itself. It’s basic, but it works well enough.
You also get a VR Store app icon, which takes you directly to the appropriate area of the Google Play Store, while the Littlstar app is a gateway to 360 video content.
Less welcome, but kind of understandable, is the inclusion of all of the main social network apps - Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook Messenger.
In terms of outright bloatware, there’s the likes of Alcatel’s own OneTouch Games app - an utterly pointless additional app store - and the TiZR lifecasting app for broadcasting live feeds to your friends.
You also get Fyuse, which lets you create brief 3D video snippets, some Gameloft stuff, and the music streaming service Deezer. None of this stuff can be uninstalled, which is annoying.
Movies, music and gaming
- Fine sound provision
- Decent gaming performance despite mediocre CPU
The Alcatel Idol 4 is surprisingly well set-up as a media player. Its 5.2-inch 1080p display might not be the largest or sharpest, but it’s more than up to the task of streaming HD video content and games.
You don’t get a dedicated app to play your own video content, though. This is taken care of by the generic Gallery app, or through Google Photos. Interestingly, the former allows you to trim your video, which you don’t see in every pre-installed video-playing app.
Meanwhile, those stereo speakers will do justice to such visual content, and the phone’s unusual omnidirectional sound output abilities will be music to the ears of those who like to crank up their tunes in public.
Of course, that sound will be lacking in bass and genuine depth, but people who listen to music in this way can’t be all that concerned about such things, can they?
For the more serious audio head, there are some interesting options here. The Waves MaxxAudio app enables you to tweak the levels to your liking for Bass, Treble and the like. These can be set to different levels for music, movies, and general usage too.
In terms of media storage, you’ll want to invest in a microSD card pretty promptly, as there’s a scant 16GB of internal storage. That’s not bad for a phone of this price. The Bush Spira E3X offers 64GB, but that’s a bit of an outlier in storage terms.
Alcatel’s phone isn’t what you’d call a gaming powerhouse, but it shifts along well enough. We loaded up Oz: Broken Kingdom, which is one of the latest visual showcase games to hit the Google Play Store (Apple even used it to show off the iPhone 7).
It didn’t exactly run with all of the whizzy effects of the iOS version, and we could detect the occasional stutter, but it still looked and played just great (if you like that sort of thing). Perpetual test favourite Dead Trigger 2 also ran well on high settings.
Specs and benchmark performance
- Decent Snapdragon CPU for the money
- Competent, but not class-leading, performance
You won’t be able to fault the Alcatel Idol 4 for performance. Not for less than $250/£200/AU$330, at any rate.
It runs on the same Snapdragon 617 CPU that you’ll find in the highly-regarded Moto G4. This is a lower-mid-range chip, so you shouldn’t expect wonders from it, but it runs everything more than competently.
That’s no doubt helped by the fact that the Idol 4’s CPU is backed up by 3GB of RAM, which is 50% more than the Moto G4.
Despite this apparent advantage, though, the Idol 4 didn’t perform as well as the Moto G4 in benchmark tests. The Geekbench 4 test yielded an average multicore score of 2076 for the Alcatel, while the Motorola scored 3104. That’s quite a difference.
It’s also a good 800 short of the Bush Spira E3X, which is another budget smartphone that’s been making a splash of late.
As we mentioned in the previous section, though, the Idol 4 performs well with some pretty demanding 3D games. The Snapdragon 617 is more than up to the task.
More importantly for a phone of this kind, it handles general day to day tasks just fine. Home screen menus animate smoothly, and you’re only likely to notice the slight delay in apps booting up if you’re coming from a top-end phone.
In the same way, the camera takes a split second to boot up, but it’s not what we’d call slow by any means.
Battery life
- Relatively tiny 2610mAh battery
- Struggles to make it through a day of moderate usage
The Alcatel Idol 4 comes with a non-removable 2610mAh battery, which really isn’t big enough for a modern Android phone. Not when you compare it to the likes of the Moto G4 and the Vodafone Smart Ultra 7, which come with 3000mAh and 2960mAh units respectively.
Yes, their screens are a little bigger, and thus require a little extra power, but not enough to justify such a large drop in battery capacity.
Unfortunately, that shortfall plays out in terms of real world performance. A 20 minute game of Dead Trigger 2 prompted a 14% drop in battery life, while a similarly proportioned spell of VR (where we ran through a few 360 videos and simple games) resulted in an alarming 20% drop.
Meanwhile, the standard TechRadar battery test, which involves running a 90 minute 720p video with the screen brightness cranked right up, ate up 27% of the battery. That’s a massive 10% more than both the Moto G4 and the Vodafone Smart Ultra 7.
Even with lighter usage and less intensive tasks, the Idol 4 struggled. By the end of a day of moderate usage - a few phone calls, a normal level of emails and texts, and a little light web browsing - it was gasping for some juice.
Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 2.0 technology means that you can potentially grab 60% of the charge in just half an hour. Believe me - you’ll be leaning on this feature way more than you should.
Camera
- Decent close-ups
- Strong HDR mode
We were pleasantly surprised by the 13MP main camera on the Alcatel Idol 4. Normally, the camera is one of the first components to suffer in an affordable phone. It’s arguably the one area where it’s still impossible to hide how much you paid for your phone.
You won’t fool a hardened iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S7 user with the snaps you take on the Idol 4, but we can imagine a few mid-range phone users being thrown for a loop. We captured some genuinely decent shots, and at an appreciably quick rate.
In general, colors were well balanced and accurate, though several shots of a tub of flowers failed to keep the brighter flowers on the periphery of the image in check.
The camera’s limitations were also exposed when it came to handling bright skies and dark foregrounds simultaneously, which is a pretty tricky task for even the best smartphone snappers. But even then, we found the HDR mode to be unusually effective for an affordable phone - though you do have to activate it manually.
We were impressed by how close we could get to our subjects for some nice macro shots with plenty of bokeh - especially coming from a phone that struggled with such a thing at twice the price in the Huawei Nova+.
Another reason we found shooting with the Alcatel Idol 4 so pleasant was its camera interface. Like many Android manufacturers, Alcatel has taken a page out of Apple’s photo book - and it’s a wise decision.
The simple layout, black menu, and simple scrolling mode dial makes pointing and shooting a doddle. There’s also a Manual mode that lets you tweak ISO, shutter speed, white balance, and focus settings.
Plus, there’s a self-explanatory Panorama mode, while Micro-video lets you shoot and edit simple square videos on the fly - provided you have ample storage available. Fyuse, as discussed, lets you capture brief 3D Live Photo-like snippets of your subject. Neat enough, but a gimmick we never really found all that useful.
As surprisingly good as the Idol 4’s main camera is, its 8MP front camera doesn’t quite live up to the billing. We found selfies to be noisy and particularly poor in less than optimal lighting.
Camera samples
Verdict
For less than $250/£200/AU$330, the Alcatel Idol 4 is a highly tempting purchase. It’s got a nice metal and glass build, a bright display, a relatively accomplished camera, better-than-average audio and a set of VR goggles bundled in.
However, this has become a highly competitive price band in recent years, and the Idol 4 has a couple of flaws and inconsistencies that the likes of the Moto G4 don’t have to worry about.
The Idol 4’s battery life is atrocious, and while ‘free’ VR sounds great, the phone it’s paired with simply isn’t quite up to the task of rendering VR content effectively. Alcatel would have been better off leaving it out and shaving some money off the price, because that’s the key factor at this end of the market.
Who's this for?
The Alcatel Idol 4 is for those who yearn for the metal-and-glass construction and high-end feature set of top-end phones, but don’t have the associated money to spare.
It’s also a highly accessible entry-point for those curious about mobile VR - as long as you understand that you won’t be getting the ideal experience.
Should you buy it?
It’s difficult to argue that the Alcatel Idol 4 isn’t a high value proposition. You’re getting a well built glass-and-metal phone with a good screen and a decent camera for around the $250/£200/AU$330 mark - and it even comes with a VR headset.
But when the phone’s display isn’t sharp enough to render VR content as well as it really needs to be, that headset’s presence is of questionable value.
More importantly, in day to day usage, the Idol 4 doesn’t quite match up to the very best phones in this category, such as the Moto G4. In particular, its battery life is woeful.
Competition
Although the Alcatel Idol 4 is a good value handset, there's lots of competition at this end of the market. The following are three of its main rivals.
Moto G4
We almost get tired of recommending the Moto G4 any time we discuss an entry-level phone, but the truth is it’s still pretty much untouchable at this end of the market.
The key to its success isn’t in a list of stand-out features and gimmicks, which is arguably what the Idol 4 goes for. It’s the fact that it’s a solid phone that does everything at least moderately well.
It’s fast enough for general tasks, it’s well built, it’s got a decent camera, and it will last you through a full day of usage with plenty of battery life to spare. The Moto G4 remains the cheap phone to beat.
- Read our full Motorola Moto G4 review
OnePlus 2
You can still pick up last year’s OnePlus flagship from the company’s website, and while its knock down price of $300/£250 (around AU$400) is still more expensive than the Idol 4, it’s undoubtedly a much better phone.
For one thing, you get much better performance courtesy of a Snapdragon 810 processor. You also get a bigger display, a fingerprint sensor, and the slick and highly customizable OxygenOS.
Oh, and the OnePlus 2 also comes with a larger-than-average 3300mAh battery, so it’ll actually last you through the day comfortably.
- Read our full OnePlus 2 review
Vodafone Smart Ultra 7
If the OnePlus 2 is our premium alternative pick, then it’s only fair we talk about something a fair bit cheaper. The Vodafone Smart Ultra 7, for those in the UK, costs just £135 on pay as you go.
Its build might not be as premium as the Alcatel Idol 4 - in fact it’s downright plasticky - but it’s got decent performance and a competent camera. You also get a version of Android that’s even closer to stock than Alcatel’s - Vodafone bloatware aside.
If metal frames and virtual reality don’t hold out much appeal to you, Vodafone’s own-brand handset offers much better value than the Idol 4.
- Read our full Vodafone Smart Ultra 7 review
First reviewed: October 2016
