Alcatel Idol 4S may literally offer virtual reality straight out of the box

For those of you unwilling or otherwise unable to cough up the dough for an Oculus Rift-ready PC setup (which, let's be honest, is most of us), Alcatel may just have an alternative that's a little easier on the wallet.

According to serial smartphone tipster Evan Blass AKA @evleaks and reported by VentureBeat, the upcoming Alcatel OneTouch Idol 4S will ship in plastic packaging that doubles as a Google Cardboard-compliant VR viewer. As a result, buyers will be able to get their hands on a complete VR solution quite literally out-of-the-box.

Granted, smartphone-based VR doesn't quite pack the technical punch of what is possible on high-end gaming rigs like Oculus Rift, but for an all-in price of $400 (around £277/ €353), Alcatel would offering a very tempting package to those wishing to dive into VR as quickly as possible and without breaking the bank.

What's more, for that money you actually get a pretty decent smartphone: sitting at the high end of Alcatel's smartphone lineup, the OneTouch Idol 4S will come with a quad-HD AMOLED screen powered by an octa-core Snapdragon 652 chip, 3GB of RAM, expandable storage and a 16 megapixel rear camera with an f2.0 aperture lens, according to information recently leaked via Alcatel's own website.

Also spotted in the leak was the slogan "Your World Augmented", which suggests some sort of AR/ VR functionality and thus further backs up Blass' claims. The Alcatel Idol 4S has been slated for a May release alongside the slightly less powerful Idol 4, meaning an MWC 2016 unveiling could be on the cards.