Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2 is a 6 inch behemoth

Alcatel is not the company to be featured in many headlines, mostly because so far, it has focused mainly on mid- and low-range smartphones that don’t impress that much, but are fit for their entry-level target consumers.

Nonetheless, Alcatel has come with new arrivals at IFA Berlin this week, arrivals that gave the company a bit of a jump start, especially with the new OneTouch Hero 2 phablet. The phablet’s predecessor, the Alcatel OneTouch Hero was one of the company’s more impressive high-end devices that many appreciated for its stylish design. Alcatel revives that designed with the newest version of the OneTouch Hero, giving it a better screen and overall better specs.

The newly introduced device has a 6 inch Full HD IPS touchscreen, with a 1080p*1920 resolution, 367 ppi pixel density, covered by a Dragontrail scratch-resistant glass with OGS lamination. OGS stand for one glass solution, for those of you who haven’t encountered it as often, and the technology reduces the thickness of the display. The display on the Alcatel is not one of the best you can find on the market, bu considering that the company usually caters to emerging markets, it will probably be sufficient for most that are interested in the handset.

The phablet comes as Alcatel’s attempt to get in on the fast emerging phablet market, now dominated by the likes of the Galaxy Note 4 and Edge, Huawei’s Ascend Mate 7, Sony Xperia T3, LG G3 and many others. In this respect, Alcatel tries making apowerful device by endowing the OneTouch Hero 2 with a MediaTek octa-core processor with 8 cores turning at 2GHz, backed by 2GB DDR3 RAM. The phablet will shoot with a 13 MP rear camera and a 5 MP front-facing selfie-camera. The pretty strong front facing camera is one of the trends at IFA Berlin this year, people going crazy about selfie-phones like the new Lumia and Lenovo Vibe line, Alcatel adopting it to stay in line with current trends.

Other specs of the Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2 include LTE connectivity, 16 GB of expandable storage and will run on Android 4.4 KitKat. What’s special about the Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2 is that it comes equipped with a stylus which supposedly has improved handwriting recognition capabilties, obviously in an attempt to draw in customers that have shown interest in the Galaxy Note 4. Not that any of the phablet’s specs can rival those of the Note 4, but the device still comes off as a premium gadget fit for power users. The phablet is equipped with a 3100 mAH battery, which will surely offer at least 2 and half days of battery life.

Rumors say that the Alcatel OneTouch Hero 2 wil be available across Europe by the end of September. Many have speculated a price around $400 or less, but the company hasn’t said anything about its price-range. In any case, the phablet will probably come cheaper than most flagships offering the same kind of specs and might even cater to customers that are ok with settling for this device because it does have a pretty admirable screen and specs.