Alcatel OneTouch Idol X+ hands-on preview

Last week at CES, our team got to spend some time with Alcatel’s new OneTouch Idol X+, an affordable yet powerful device from a Chinese player with international ambitions.

With the OneTouch Idol X+, Alcatel wanted to deliver a solid Android experience without the price tag that’s usually associated with it. That starts with a MediaTek octa-core processor clocked at 2GHz, that Alcatel says is almost 20 percent more power efficient than its quad-core offerings, and two gigs of RAM. All that processing power is used to move 1920 x 1080 pixels on a 5-inch IPS LCD display, that, as you can see from the video, renders some beautiful colors.

The rest of the specifications are just as appealing – you get a 13.1MP main camera, and 2MP front shooter that is capable of Full HD video recording. Music should sound gorgeous thanks to the SACD 24bit/192KHz playback support, which should, in theory, make music your digital tunes sound better than your average CD.

Design-wise, the Alcatel OneTouch Idol  X+ marries elements from Apple’s iPhone with touches reminiscing of the Galaxy S line, but for the most part, it’s a good-looking and well-balanced device. It won’t win prizes for uniqueness, but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. At 7.9 millimeters, it’s also among the thinner devices out there, though some battery capacity was sacrificed to achieve that slim figure. The unit packs 2,500 mAh, pretty good for a device this thin.

On the software side, you get a very colorful and bright skin on top of Android 4.2. Alcatel kept a lot of elements from stock Android, but added a few features of its own, such as the souped up widget screen in the notification dropdown.

Alcatel primarily sells its wares in China and the adjacent markets, but there’s a good chance we’ll see the OneTouch Idol X+ in Europe and possibly North America later this year. We don’t have details on the price yet, but it’s supposed to be really competitive.