Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S Retail Box to Double as Cardboard VR Headset: Report

Alcatel is seemingly planning a major push to the nascent virtual reality technology category. The joint venture with France's Alcatel-Lucent plans to make use of the retail box which would ship with its upcoming Android handset OneTouch Idol 4S as a VR headset, according to a report.

Alcatel has found a good use for the retail box that you usually throw in the dustbin or closet only to never go looking for it again. VentureBeat reports that the company is planning to ship its upcoming Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S smartphone in a plastic box that can double up as a Google Cardboard-compatible VR viewer when correctly folded.

The report claims that the retail box will ship with two eyepieces, a slot where you will hold the smartphone, and a button to tap on the screen. The VR setup will be very similar to the Cardboard, which Google introduced at its I/O developer conference in 2014.

The specifications of the Idol 4S smartphone were leaked by a brief listing on the company site earlier this month. The smartphone was listed to sport a 5.5-inch QHD (1440x2560 pixels) Super Amoled display with a 180-degree wide viewing angle. It will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 octa-core SoC with 3GB of RAM and Adreno 510 GPU. Other tipped features include a 16-megapixel rear-camera with dual-tone LED flash, and an 8-megapixel front-facing shooter. The company plans to launch the handset in May.

Alcatel reportedly also plans to launch an affordable smartphone called the Pop 4 next month. The smartphone will be sold for under $100 (roughly Rs. 6,700), and will feature a 5-inch HD display with 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, 8-megapixel and 5-megapixel camera sensors. There will be a Pop 4+ variant as well, which will feature a 5.5-inch display. The company also plans to launch some variant of the Pixi 4 handset, which it launched last month.