Alcatel One Touch Idol S Hands-on

The Alcatel One Touch Idol S has this red color that pops immediately when you glance at it, though it is available in a more mainstream black as well. The polycarb shell is matte and doesn't attract fingerprint smudges as the glossy ones. The 4.7" 720x1280 screen is of average quality, without off-coloring, with decent viewing angles, and sufficient brightness for indoor use, though we couldn't test it outside.

A dual-core 1.2 GHz chipset is powering the handset, which as you can imagine is no speed king, so things tend to happen slower than what we are accustomed to with more powerful handsets. The 4 GB of storage can be expanded with a microSD slot, however, and it is an LTE device, with what seem to be European/Asian bands. Powered by the same 2000 mAh as the Alpha, the Idol S is listed as good for 8.5 hours of talk time in 3G mode, which is somewhat below average.

We liked how thin and manageable the handset feels in your palm, so we are waiting for price and availability info from Alcatel, which shouldn't be far behind, and shouldn't be breaking the bank, judging from the other members of the One Touch family so far.