Alcatel made a few announcements at Mobile World Congress 2016 in Barcelona, Spain.
The first announcement was that the company has dropped the “OneTouch” from their name, they will now be known as “Alcatel”. They also introduced a new logo to go with it.
Alcatel said the idea was to keep the brand name from sounding like a product name.
Now onto the products. Alcatel has introduced two new phones, the IDOL 4 and IDOL 4S. Both devices have a metal design with curved glass. Both models will also be available in gold, dark grey, rose gold and silver.
Alcatel IDOL 4
The IDOL 4 has a 5.2-inch 1080p display. It is being powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, has 3GB of RAM and 16 of internal storage and a microSD card slot.
It also has a 2610 mAh battery with Quick Charge support, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 8-megapixel front-facing camera, dual stereo speakers and is running Android 6.0 with some customization by Alcatel.
Alcatel IDOL 4S
The IDOL 4S is touted as a more premium device, it has a 5.5-inch Quad HD display, Snapdragon 652 processor with 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage and a microSD card slot. It also has a 3000mAh battery with Quick Charge support.
The camera is slightly better than the Idol 4 with a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera but it still has a 8-megapixel front-facing camera like on the IDOL 4. It will also run Android 6.0 with Alcatel’s customizations.
A prominent feature on both devices is the Boom Key which the user can customize to perform a variety of tasks depending on what the phone is currently doing. For example, if you are watching a video in the Alcatel video app, when the Boom Key is pressed, it can add special video effects or if you are looking at the weather app, it can add animations that show the current weather conditions.
Alcatel have also said that the IDOL 4 and IDOL 4S are reversible. So if no matter which way you pick up the device, the software will adjust to the user and since both devices have dual stereo speakers, the sound is “always on the correct side”.
Also the packaging for the Idol 4S can be turned into a VR viewer (like their own version of Gear VR or Google Cardboard).
Both the IDOL 4 and IDOL 4S will launch in April 2016 and pricing should be about €279 to €449 depending on configuration with the Idol 4S being the more expensive one because of the VR headset box.
Alcatel PLUS 10
Alcatel has also announced their first 2-in-1 device that is running Windows 10, the PLUS 10.
It has a 10-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 by 800, dual front-facing speakers, a detachable 4G LTE keyboard that can double as a Wi-Fi hotspot for up-to 15 devices.
On the PLUS 10, you’ll find plenty of ports, there’s a standard USB, micro USB and a micro HDMI port.
When the keyboard is attached to the PLUS 10 tablet, it offers a total of 8,410mAh of battery which should last all day.
It also has 32GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot. The PLUS 10 is being powered by a 1.92GHz Intel Atom processor with 2GB of RAM.
The rear-facing camera is 5-megapixels while the front-facing camera is 2-megapixels.
The PLUS 10 will be available in a few different finishes and colours, metallic silver, matte white, matte volcano black and a unique warm gray leather finish.
It will be available in June 2016 in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa but pricing has not been announced yet.
TheCanadianTechie 