Table of Contents
Display and Multimedia
The Idol 3 boasts a 5.5-inch IPS display at Full HD resolution or 401ppi. Colors are accurate and have good viewing angles which make it great for viewing photos or watching movies. The screen is also bright so you don’t have to worry about its legibility when using it outdoors.
As mentioned earlier, the Idol 3 sports two front-facing speakers powered by JBL. Together it provided a loud volume range with sufficient bass and crisp and clean sound. Overall, the speakers won’t disappoint and can compete with those found in high-end flagships.
Camera
Taking care of the imaging department is a 13 megapixel shooter with LED flash. In-camera features include Auto mode, HDR, Panorama, Manual Mode, Time-lapse, Bar code scanner, and Face Beauty. Images taken have decent to good quality. Colors are also accurate and vibrant but is more punchy when shooting outdoors or with natural light.
Selfies on the other hand are managed by the 8 megapixel front camera. It has a wide-angle lens which is good for group shot, colors are decent as well but details are soft and not that crisp.
As for video recording, it can shoot videos at 1080p resolution at 30fps in MP4 format. Watch the sample below.
Colors and dynamic range are both good, however, it lacks sharpness and detail. Still, it will suffice for a casual user’s video recording needs.
OS, UI, and Apps
Running the software department is Android 5.0.2 Lollipop skinned with Alcatel’s UI. The company didn’t make drastic implementation in terms of layout and aesthetics aside from the icons, animations, Reversible mode (use the phone upside down and the UI will follow), and OneTouch Stream (gives you a summary of your day including calendar, news, and weather) located on the left side of the homescreen.
One thing we didn’t like about it are the pre-installed apps as it has plenty of it like AVG Antivirues, XE Currency, Cars Racing, Evernote, Facetune, Real Football 2015, Spider-Man Ultimate Power, TouchPal, Truecaller, WPS Office, WhatsApp, Viber, and zApp. And since it’s offered through Globe, it has GCash, GDeasl, GLobe Cloud, GMovies, and GServices.
The good news is, those apps can be uninstalled, leaving you with 11.04GB of usable storage out of the 16GB. Still limited though so make sure you get a microSD card for your photos, videos, and music files. USB OTG is also supported for those quick file transfers.
dont be a noob to believe that compound benchmarks like Antutu have any bearing on actual performance. if antutu is to be believed your flare 4 will actually match/beat the sony xperia z2 and all other flagship phones using the snapdragon 800 chipset, which scores roughly the same in that benchmark. i’ll leave it up to you to see if it really performs like that in real life.
I am a Flare 4 owner and i find the Idol 3’s benchmark score disappointing.. Even my flare 4 with mtk6753 + 2gb ram can beat the idol with it’s benchmark score of 33465 although gap is small and the idol is pushing a full hd screen, i was expecting more from the snapdragon 615 chipset. Im actually in the market for a midrange phone so this is definitely out of my list of choices.