CES 2014: Various brands overview

Alcatel One Touch Idol X+

Alcatel has been doing well lately with a number of low to midrange Android phones, but with the One Touch Idol X+ the manufacturer gave a high-end device a good try.

The phone is built around a 5" 1080p screen and MediaTek's octa-core chipset. The screen is sharp with good image quality (Alcatel's custom UI is very colorful, which really brings out the quality of the screen). It's covered by Dragontrail glass (a lesser known alternative of Gorilla Glass) with fingerprint-resistant coating.

The 5" 1080p IPS screen of the Idol X+

Alcatel calls it a "borderless, edge-to-edge" design and the screen bezels are indeed quite slim. The device itself is pleasantly thin too, at 7.9mm.

The sides of the Alcatel Idol X+

The MediaTek MT6592 chipset packs eight Cortex-A7 cores clocked at 2GHz. A7 isn't the top CPU core, but we've seen it perform splendidly in something like the Moto G (which had half the cores at almost half the clockspeed). 2GB of RAM and PowerVR SGX544 provide a smooth experience, though the Idol X+ runs a slightly outdated OS - Android 4.2.2.

Slightly customized Android 4.2.2

We mentioned the vendor customizations - the good news is that they appear minimal and other than boosting the color palette stay pretty close to Android's flat looks. One interesting change is a custom camera app with live filters and a proprietary spherical panorama option.

Speaking of the camera, it's a 13MP shooter that can record 1080p video. There's a 2.1MP front-facing cam too. There's 16GB of built-in storage, expandable via the microSD card slot. The phone is powered by a 2,500mAh battery.

The 13MP/1080p camera on the back is accompanied by an LED flash

One place where Alcatel attempts to set the One Touch Idol X+ apart is audio - there's support for SACD 24bit/192kHz audio playback. The sound tech in the Idol X+ was co-developed with JBL, which will also be providing the headset for the phone. Unfortunately, the CES floor is much too loud to properly test how it sounds.

The speakers and microUSB port on the bottom

Anyway, the phone has 3G HSPA connectivity (it's targeted at countries where LTE isn't available yet). Some versions of the Idol X+ will have dual-SIM support too.