At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show held in January Alcatel announced One Touch Idol X– a stupendous thirteen new Android devices. While the Chinese company is a relatively late entry in the smartphones arena it nonetheless drew eyes with its extremely thin One Touch Idol Ultra earning the title of the world’s thinnest smartphone.
And now the newest addition to the One Touch series of smartphones, the One Touch Idol X has made its first appearance at the recently concluded Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Here’s a hands on review of the Idol X.
One Touch Idol X Design
Despite having a 5 inch display size, pretty huge by smartphone standards, the efficient design and form factor of the Idol X manages to make it look and feel much smaller than it really is. The device is entirely touch based and does away with the home button.
The Idol X instead has three touch buttons at the bottom of the screen. Since these buttons are backlit they disappear from view when the display goes dark and therefore require a little getting used to.
The Idol X will come in a variety of colors including Cyan, Magenta, Red, Black, Yellow and Green. The back side of the device is bathed in solid color depending on the model and has a rubber like feel to it which makes it incredibly easy to grip; another reason the device doesn’t feel cumbersome. On the downside, the rubbery surface tends to smudge quite a bit.
Display
The Idol X has a 5 inch 1080p display which in itself may not be too noteworthy. But a super thin 2.4mm bezel on both sides of the display, a bare minimum free space above and below as well as a thickness of barely 7.1mm accomplishes the remarkable feat of making the display look extraordinary. As a result you have plenty of screen real estate for gaming and watching movies without feeling as if you’re holding an unwieldy device.
Software
The Idol X runs on Google’s most recent Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean smartphone operating system. While Google allows hardware manufacturers to make changes to its operating system in accordance with the handset, Alcatel doesn’t seem to have tweaked anything other than slightly sprucing up the icons.
Users of Idol X will be able to greatly personalize their smartphone according to their personal requirements. A plethora of apps from the Google Play Store will be available to download whose icons can then be arranged and shortcuts can be placed on the home screen based on individual user preference.
It will also be possible to view regular social networking or weather updates directly on the home screen icons without the need to open the app.
Hardware
The Idol X is powered by MediaTek’s Quad Core MT6589 processor clocked at 1.2GHz that offers snappy performance. Since the device is a high end one its 2,000mAh battery seems a bit out of place. But considering how thin the Idol X is the battery is as much as can be expected. The device will come in two versions – Single SIM and Dual SIM. The Single SIM version will have an internal memory capacity of 8GB and a microSD card expansion slot.
The Dual SIM version on the other hand will be available in 16GB or 32GB models and come without a microSD card slot. The space for the microSD slot will be occupied by the slot for the second SIM.
While both versions of the Idol X will come equipped with a camera, the Single SIM version will have an 8 megapixel one while the Dual SIM one will have a whopping 13 megapixel camera.
