"Image is nothing - thirst is everything" - applies to shower as for Smartphone

The unit is very well made and is stable in the hand. The housing in the "brushed metal" look feels good and grippy. A real eye-catcher is the flat housing which gives the device at least in the muted colors a sophisticated look, including the all-black front also contributes. The display glass itself is surrounded by a narrow plastic frame, which can withstand minimal and prevents the display at least experiencing a minimum protection, if it is "upside down" on the table. A protective film is still recommended due to the non-scratch display glass.

Once up and running, a fall along with the good IPS display with nice thin bezel on directly the sheer flood of pre-installed apps. This can, however, uninstall or disable mostly so so much ballast is removed from the smartphone. After the initial "cleanup" of the apps are just over 5 GB of free space available, which the ambitious smartphone users absolutely sufficient for the purposes of a smart "phones". Gaming, picture, video and music freaks attack anyway into a larger unit with expandable memory to a significantly higher price.

The display shows color and konstrasreich, the viewing angle is okay. The IPS displays from Apple or the AMOLED technology from Samsung can do better, normal TFT displays beats the Alcatel however by far. The camera thanks to autofocus and LED photo-ordinary images, but does not come naturally to the quality of the superclass smartphones zoom. For snapshots, but perfectly adequate and bar and QR code scanner so that also run flawlessly.

The performance with a 1.3GHz dual-core and 512MB RAM makes a at first glance skeptical, thanks to fairly current Android 4.2.3 but everything runs smoothly and mostly smooth. In standard operation, about 200 MB of RAM are always free, so here is hardly to be expected bottlenecks. While the apps do not start as fast as on the current quad cores, but then run smoothly and without delays. Even more demanding 3D games mastered the instrument properly.

The acoustics when making calls (yes, also can use a smartphone!) Is perfectly fine, the reception, both in mobile networks, as well as in wireless, is above average. Where the iPhone 5 after air, respectively. Struggling network that Alcatel has still stable reception. The battery life is comparable to other similar devices, and battery capacity falls neither upward or downward from the frame. Nett is the blue LED, which indicates the active charging and goes out when the unit is fully charged.

The built-in battery I do not see it as criticism - modern batteries last under normal use and a certain minimum care (no deep discharge) loose two to three years with no loss of power through. An SD card slot would not go, here was the second SIM slot victim. If you need more storage, reach for single SIM variant, who needs dual SIM, usually has different preferences when large memory. Through this component strategy gives us Alcatel for cheap and reasonable price for a solid, good-looking and reasonably powerful smartphone in the lower middle class, or ambitious beginners class.

Who is looking for a compact and well-made smartphone with good acoustics, nice display and above average reception characteristics, which had recommended the "Idol mini" with a clear conscience.