Alcatel One Touch Hero review: Compare notes

Introduction

Alcatel found a new life with Android and has continuously improved its offerings over time. The One Touch Hero is one of the latest - a 6" phablet that throws down a price challenge to the Galaxy Note 3, with a rich feature set of its own.

Alcatel One Touch Hero official images

The Hero has captured the essence of the Note - a large, 1080p screen, a stylus to go with it and split-screen multitasking to boost productivity. The screen is actually bigger - 6 inches - and the bezels are impressively thin.

That said, Alcatel kept its feet on the ground and went for a Cortex-A7-based MediaTek chipset. The amount of inbuilt storage is economical but expandable and there's a dual-SIM version right out of the gate. This keeps the price in check and makes the phablet suitable for emerging markets (where the lack of LTE isn't a huge deal).

Key features

• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support; Dual-band 3G with HSPA
• Optional dual-SIM
• 6" 16M-color 1080p IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen
• Capacitive stylus
• Android OS v4.2.2 Jelly Bean
• Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, 2 GB RAM, PowerVR SGX544 GPU, MediaTek MT6589 chipset
• Split-screen multi-tasking Dual display
• 13 MP autofocus camera with LED flash, geo-tagging
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps with continuous autofocus and stereo sound
• 2 MP front-facing camera, 1080p video recording
• 16GB (dual-SIM), 8GB (single-SIM)
• microSD card slot (single-SIM only)
• microUSB port
• Bluetooth v4.0
• Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• Voice commands
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
• Non-replaceable 3,400mAh Li-Ion battery
• Cool active accessories

Main disadvantages

• Capacitive stylus not as good as the Wacom solution
• 13MP camera not on par with other 13MP shooters
• Non-replaceable battery
• Midrange chipset
• Limited storage on the dual-SIM version
• No LTE

There's a place for the Alcatel One Touch Hero in established markets too - we're seeing a shift towards affordable, capable devices in the mobile world with devices like the Moto G and $200 tablets.

Alcatel One Touch Hero in our office

The One Touch Hero has the build quality wouldn't be out of place in the lineup of better known makers and Alcatel did well to avoid gimmicky tweaks. Where the company stepped outside the box is the attachable accessories, while split-screen multitasking and especially the stylus are right out of the Note rulebook.