technolust
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Hi guys
I managed to get an unlocked alcatel idol 4s windows from the US. As we all know, Windows mobile is sadly a little of a diminishing platform which is losing both fans and OEMs. I was thinking, what if you still want to have the windows experience as a secondary device hence why not do short review on one of the available devices if you have to replace your aging lumias or HTC one m8 windows. I have Gotten this mainly as a replacement for my 1520 which is having serious screen burn issues (still feel its one of the best mobile phones ever). Didnt want to get the Elite X3 which is too expensive and large.
See some of the pictures below
Front
Back
The phone build and quality is very nice with glass on metal back and nice gold trim at the top and bottom. The back is a fingerprint magenet though hence a case is quite neccessary. It is also neccessary for another reason which i would elaborate more below
The Pros of the phone are as follows
1) Nice screen with vibrant colours
2) Very powerful front facing speakers that are very loud
3) Nice field and design in hand (subjective)\
4) Fingerprint sensor (more convenient than iris scanner imo)
5) Excellent battery life (maybe due to FHD screen and large battery size)
6) good front facing camera
Now all phones have Cons and this is no different
1) You definately need a case due to glass front/back and also fingerprin magnet back
2) The fingerprint sensor is not very stable and unusual. It doesnt vibrate as ackonwledgement when it recognizes your fingerprint. Instead it vibrates when it doesnt recognise you instead. Also there is signifcant lag before it wakes after recognition. The biggest issue imo is it cannot recognize your finger 30% of the time, later i worked out that this is due to the sensor requiring your finger to be placed quite precisely in a certain position in order to recognize it. the fact that there is no indentation on the fingerprint sensor doesnt help one bit to position your finger. Hence a case with a fingerprint cut out is recommended to improve this. You should also set up the fingerprint sensor with the case on to improve the reproducibility. After this is done, the sensor improved to less than 5% misread
See photo below of said case.
3) Back camera is extremely bad in low light. There is some bug with the software or firmware that renders a blueish hue with all the photos taken in low light in auto mode. You can manually change it but once the photo is taken, it automatically reverts to the auto setting of blue hue. I suspect its related to windows camera being not optimized for this camera as i compared it to a dtek 60 (blackberry) which is essentially the same phone minus some cosmetic differences and Android OS and the dtek 60 did not have the blueish hue issue. This blueish hue is not observed on the lumia 950 or 1520 during night photos.
4) Weird placement of the convenience key. In the windows version of the alcatel 4s, this is fixed as a camera convenience key and being at where a power button is usually located, right handers tend to press it by mistake or brush it by mistake. This cause alot of accidental activation of the camera unitil you get used to it
Other issues of course is the inherent instability of the windows 10 mobile software currently. originally i was running it in production release but with the recent fast insider build 15043.0 (RS2), the build seems pretty stable and phone OS is functioning quite well with the phone now
Hope this short review was interesting and helpful
I managed to get an unlocked alcatel idol 4s windows from the US. As we all know, Windows mobile is sadly a little of a diminishing platform which is losing both fans and OEMs. I was thinking, what if you still want to have the windows experience as a secondary device hence why not do short review on one of the available devices if you have to replace your aging lumias or HTC one m8 windows. I have Gotten this mainly as a replacement for my 1520 which is having serious screen burn issues (still feel its one of the best mobile phones ever). Didnt want to get the Elite X3 which is too expensive and large.
See some of the pictures below
Front
Back
The phone build and quality is very nice with glass on metal back and nice gold trim at the top and bottom. The back is a fingerprint magenet though hence a case is quite neccessary. It is also neccessary for another reason which i would elaborate more below
The Pros of the phone are as follows
1) Nice screen with vibrant colours
2) Very powerful front facing speakers that are very loud
3) Nice field and design in hand (subjective)\
4) Fingerprint sensor (more convenient than iris scanner imo)
5) Excellent battery life (maybe due to FHD screen and large battery size)
6) good front facing camera
Now all phones have Cons and this is no different
1) You definately need a case due to glass front/back and also fingerprin magnet back
2) The fingerprint sensor is not very stable and unusual. It doesnt vibrate as ackonwledgement when it recognizes your fingerprint. Instead it vibrates when it doesnt recognise you instead. Also there is signifcant lag before it wakes after recognition. The biggest issue imo is it cannot recognize your finger 30% of the time, later i worked out that this is due to the sensor requiring your finger to be placed quite precisely in a certain position in order to recognize it. the fact that there is no indentation on the fingerprint sensor doesnt help one bit to position your finger. Hence a case with a fingerprint cut out is recommended to improve this. You should also set up the fingerprint sensor with the case on to improve the reproducibility. After this is done, the sensor improved to less than 5% misread
See photo below of said case.
3) Back camera is extremely bad in low light. There is some bug with the software or firmware that renders a blueish hue with all the photos taken in low light in auto mode. You can manually change it but once the photo is taken, it automatically reverts to the auto setting of blue hue. I suspect its related to windows camera being not optimized for this camera as i compared it to a dtek 60 (blackberry) which is essentially the same phone minus some cosmetic differences and Android OS and the dtek 60 did not have the blueish hue issue. This blueish hue is not observed on the lumia 950 or 1520 during night photos.
4) Weird placement of the convenience key. In the windows version of the alcatel 4s, this is fixed as a camera convenience key and being at where a power button is usually located, right handers tend to press it by mistake or brush it by mistake. This cause alot of accidental activation of the camera unitil you get used to it
Other issues of course is the inherent instability of the windows 10 mobile software currently. originally i was running it in production release but with the recent fast insider build 15043.0 (RS2), the build seems pretty stable and phone OS is functioning quite well with the phone now
Hope this short review was interesting and helpful
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