The Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 is a smartphone with a 5.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 octa-core 64-bit processor, a 13MP rear camera, and Android 5.0 software.

But the phone’s most surprising feature might be its price: the Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 goes up for pre-order on April 21st for $250. That’s the price for an unlocked phone which should ship in May.

idol 3

While the phone might not be as powerful as the latest flagships from Samsung or HTC, it sells for less than half the price while offering specs that should be more than good enough for most activities.

Another unusual feature of the phone is its reversible user interface: Alcatel OneTouch says it doesn’t matter which way you hold the phone, because the entire user interface will rotate so that there’s no way to hold the phone upside down.

The smartphone supports 4G LTE, has a 2910 mAh battery, and stereo 1.2 watt front-facing speakers as well as an 8MP wide-angle front camera. It has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, plus a microSD card slot.

Alcatel OneTouch fist unveiled the phone in March, but pricing wasn’t revealed at the time.

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11 replies on “Alcatel OneTouch Idol 3 is a $250 smartphone with strong specs”

  1. A micro-SD slot you say? Heresy!! Ban this phone immediately – lest we put a dent in our cherished Cloud.

    1. the specs on their website indicate it will work with all of the t-mobile bands, including their newest band 12.

  2. Very nice and affordable. Finally a phone that looks decent and runs well enough.
    I think the flagship phone market is going to crash this year..

    Even the lower cost phones do everything that you want. Battery life, may need to get better, but low cost phones play movies have decent screens offer plenty of CPU power. I think the phones are running out of great new features to introduce to make you want to buy the flagship.

  3. I hope that manufacturers start making more handheld devices that are reversible, (no such thing as you’re holding it wrong). I also can’t wait until USB 4.0 rolls out and the toast can stop landing, butter down every time.

  4. Only 16 GB of storage but it is supposed to have a microSD card slot so storage should not be a problem. I am not really familiar with Alcatel. What is their build quality like?

    1. Alcatel is also known as Alcatel-Lucent, a merger of two very old companies (think Alexander Graham Bell on the Lucent side) that are very large (especially on the DSL side). Of course, like the HP’s of the world, they can always slap their name on someone’s contract manufacturing product.

    2. AFAIK, there build quality is ok …. i’d be more concerned about their software …. in the past, its been less than stellar.

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