Virtual reality is slowly becoming the top trend this days and every tech company wants to have a piece of it. However, developing a virtual reality device and platform costs too much. This is where the Alcatel Idol 4S comes to play, an affordable alternative that makes use of Google Cardboard.

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Rumors had it that the Alcatel Idol 4S will ship with a plastic container that can be used as a Google Cardboard virtual reality viewer. This means that instead of going through the somewhat arduous process of creating the Google Cardboard VR viewer, the Alcatel Idol 4S ships with a ready to use set right out of the box.

Looking at the specs sheet of the Alcatel Idol 4S, it might not pack high-end hardware that can match premium virtual reality rigs like the Oculus rift. However, considering the fact that the Idol 4S is an excellent smartphone with an added bonus of the ready-to-use Google Cardboard kit, it is a jackpot for consumers on budget who wants to experience virtual reality.

In terms of specs, the Alcatel Idol 4S is not a pushover. It packs a 5.5-inch Quad HD AMOLED display with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 pixels. It has 3GB of memory and 32GB of storage space which can be expanded to as much as 512GB via the microSD slot.

At the heart of the Alcatel Idol 4S is the Octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, according to Venture Beat. It also has an Adreno 510 graphics processing unit. It supports 4G LTE networks, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.2 and near-field communication.

It has a 3000mAh battery which is enough to power the smartphone for a whole day on normal use. It has a 16-megapixel rear facing camera with dual tone LED flash. It also has an 8-megapixel front facing camera with wide-viewing angle and real-time face beautification feature, according to GSM Arena.

The Alcatel Idol 4S runs on Google's Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system.

Despite its impressive features, some tech analysts pointed out a couple of shortcomings. For one, the Alcatel Idol 4S does not have a fingerprint scanner, a feature that is becoming increasingly ubiquitous these days.