After reading a little about the new flagship smartphone from ALCATEL ONETOUCH, called IDOL X +, I suddenly realized one fact that I want to share, combining it with the story about this phone. In fact, IDOL X + is a black swan, which foreshadows the coming big changes in the relatively young market of inexpensive portable high-end players. I used this smartphone for a week as a player, and that's what I can say ...
The list of electronic gadgets that "buried" modern smartphones is very, very large. Many classes of devices, from PDAs to amateur digital cameras - were out of work. The rapidly developing HiFi market for entry-level players has every chance of dying at the very beginning of its development. The thing is that there were smartphones offering a comparable sound quality, while possessing a much wider range of functions. I will not intentionally stop the attention to most of the traditionally smartphone functions, but I'll tell you about the sound and the associated with it.
What if you can not fight the raspiarennymi flagships of leading manufacturers, in advertising which pour huge budgets? Of course, to offer a device that is comparable in performance, but for less money. This is how we came to the creation of our flagship. The phone turned out very affordable, and it should be taken into account.
Specifications
- OS: Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
- Processor: MediaTek MT6592, 8 cores, 2 GHz
- Display: 5 "IPS, 1920 × 1080, 441 ppi, without air gap with Gorilla Glass 3
- Cameras : main 13.1 megapixels, front 2 megacs
- Memory: 2 GB
- Built-in memory: 16 GB (version with 1 Sim), 32 GB (two Sim)
- Battery: 2500 mAh
- SIM: micro-SIM
- Wireless features: 2G, 3G; Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n, GPS (A-GPS)
- Sensors: G-sensor, light sensor, proximity sensor, digital compass
- DAC: ESS Saber 9018K2M
- Amplifier: Max9720
- Weight: 125g
- Dimensions: 69.1 mm × 140.4 mm × 8.1 mm
Appearance and design
The phone looks good, especially against the background of Chinese players (it's with them I'll compare it during the review). It is thinner than most of them, but more in area, since almost the entire front part is occupied by the touch screen. The screen is very good for a phone of this price category, 5 inches, FullHD resolution, good viewing angles, absence of air layer makes itself felt. From scratching it covers Gorilla Glass 3 generations. This screen can not boast of any of the players of the legion of Chinese HiFi. Three standard buttons Android - touch, they can be seen only when you turn on the backlight. In the upper left corner there is a white LED.
The side faces are silvery, each has a SIM card slot (in the version for two SIM cards), a volume rocker is placed on the right side, a headphone jack and a shutdown / lock button are on the right.
The back cover is not removable, it is made of glossy plastic that collects scratches. There is obviously a miscalculation, as the previous version of IDOL X could boast of a pleasant and durable soft touch coating.
The second notable disadvantage is the presence of only 32 GB of memory (in the older version) without the support of MicroSD cards. I do not know what prompted developers to take such a step, but the idea of using the phone as a player is kind of overshadowing.
On this, in fact, the shortcomings end, and dignity begins.
In addition to the class screen, smart will please the buyer 2 GB of RAM and 8-core processor from Mediatek. This is quite enough for comfortable work, and the games are going well. Benchmarks confirm this.
If we talk about using the phone as a media player - the performance margin allows you to easily rotate movies in very good quality. Moreover, the phone supports DLNA and Wi-Fi Display.
Smartphone pleases a good camera, 13 megapixels with autofocus, stars from the sky, it certainly is not enough, but with good lighting, photos and video are quite decent.
Music
This is where the fun begins. ESS Technologies is rightly considered one of the leaders in the manufacture of microcircuits for converting a digital signal to an analog one, and their Saber 9018 chip is used in many top solutions. In this phone (more precisely, as I understand it, in its older version with two SIM cards) is a mobile version of this chip 9018K2M, the same can boast, for example, the iBasso DX90 player, worth more than $ 400. Of course, one DAC for high-quality sound is not enough, you also need an amplifier. Here, the company's engineers were forced to make concessions. Since neither the price nor the size of the phone allowed to place a full-scale amplifier circuit, they used a simple chip Max9720. On the one hand, such an amplifier is better than no one, so IDOL X + easily gives a voltage of up to 0.86 volts on the headphone output (for comparison: Samsung Galaxy S4 has this figure of 0.38 volts), which is beneficial to the sound, especially with tight headphones. On the other hand, the amplifier is really simple and does not allow Saber to fully reveal itself, emphasizing the main drawback of the latter - cold HF.
In the pluses of IDOL X + is almost flat frequency response, good dynamic range and low noise level. In the minuses - very mediocre indicators of intermodulation distortions and separation of channels when working with headphones. What is most interesting, when using an active external amplifier, these indicators equalize to an acceptable level. In general, the measurement figures are not audiophile, but they are quite good for a mobile phone. Pleasantly pleased with the zero-output impedance, which allows the smartphone to feel confident with multi-turn fittings.
By the way, ALCATEL ONETOUCH tried to emphasize the musical orientation of the phone and put a good headset in the kit, the development of which was made by specialists from JBL. They sound pretty good, and the complete headset of most smartphones (including flagships) goes around the head.
Enable / disable the use of the DAC with an amplifier can be done on the quick settings panel or by using the corresponding button in the built-in player. To enable this mode, called simply "HiFi", you need to connect the headphones (or something else through the headphone jack) to the phone. This mode does not work for built-in speakers, which is logical, because they still do not hear sound quality from the flagship of ESS Technologies, although it's fair to say that they are not bad.
Traditionally, for Android-devices, all the advantages of hardware sound can not all third-party players. I do not know why, but this feature affects all devices that use Android (for example, the same Sony ZX1), to ensure that all sound-producing programs use one audio stroke - the developers of the OS have not yet happened. Fortunately, the complete audio player is good enough: it understands FLAC files, including high-definition, allows you to view the library by albums / artists - in general, it is easy and enjoyable to use.
The sound of the phone is fairly neutral, with a slant in a light sound. It is best played with reinforcing headphones with an accentuated low-frequency range: Westone, Ultimate Ears, etc. Dynamic headphones are also good, even the HiFiMan Re600 reveals very well. Sound pleases with good detail, decent microdynamics and even attacks in general do not cause a rebound. The separation of tools is not bad, although it is not prohibitive. As I wrote above, the main disadvantage is the synthetics and cold of the HF range, but given the price, the minus is low and leveled by suitable headphones.
Pay for it all, of course, has a lifetime on one charge, in HiFi mode, the phone played for me for just over 8 hours (high-resolution FLAC files), although for players this is quite a good figure.
Connecting an external portable amplifier transforms the sound by raising it a step higher. The imaginary scene improves, the positioning of the sound sources becomes more localized, and the lower frequencies are more outlined. In the "sandwich" variant IDOL X + is able to compete already with the middle segment of Chinese HiFi.
conclusions
I can safely say that the future of the initial segment of HiFi is for smartphones. Specialized players will remain in the upper segment, where uncompromising circuitry does not allow to squeeze everything into small volumes, and most users will miss smartphones with improved sound.
The flagship, despite the presence of some shortcomings, is interesting in both its hypostases: both as a smartphone and as a player. On the one hand, it is a convenient modern phone with an excellent 5-inch screen and good stuffing, on the other hand - a player that can compete on an equal footing with many specialized solutions. Yes, it in some aspects is a compromise in sound, but interesting features of a full-fledged smartphone are more than compensated for. The development of modern music broadcasting services, the ability to access DLNA devices or, for example, the ability to quickly distribute the Internet with the mobile hotspot function - make it even more attractive.
I think that the day is not far off when manufacturers of HiFi equipment and mobile phones will converge in a new battle for users' wallets, and then manufacturers can safely say that they have become one of the innovators in this segment.
The article is based on materials .
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