[Onetouch Idol 3 General] PN04:
I've managed to install the new ROM, and boy, was it an adventure. While relatively "simple" there were variances between the instructions an what actually occurred between the screens on both the phone and my PC. I'm still evaluating the phone itself, and I'll probably post about it later if I find anything that others might want to know, but I will say it's refreshing to no longer have to worry about Alcatel's crappy software.

On the subject of the actual update. Again it seemed fairly simple aside from the fears of the USB getting unplugged during some important step but I'd say the first place where things went off the rails was Alcatel's drivers. Plugging the phone into my computer resulted in a driver install error, forcing me to got to Alcatel's website to download them... surprise! their website is suspiciously broken, so I had to find another source.

Next I needed to manually install the Legacy Devices because of the driver install error, and the instructions I googled assume I've clicked on a device first otherwise the option doesn't appear in the menu (not an entirely obvious thing), there were a couple of other cheek clenchers as I still got a few errors, but despite ignoring them things went okay in the Flashing TWRP stage, but I had to double click the check box rather than the filename box which only required one. The instructions that refer to backing out via the Nav bar didn't match so in one case I think the instruction was to back out 3 times I only had to go once and where it said once I think I needed to back out twice.

After flashing the Rom and being given the option to reboot the phone, it asks right then if you want to install TWRP as a system app. I tried to back out thinking maybe I missed something and ended up flashing the software twice, because it's not mentioned in the instructions until the GAPPS installation section later, so I wasn't sure if this would cause a Boot loop error. I decide it's not the GAPPS so I figure it's safe to install, the phone reboots without a problem, I pick the Pixel launcher and then go back to TWRP ( thinking "hopefully this didn't bork anything").

During the installation of GAPPS it never gave me an installer list to select which apps I wanted, it just automatically gave me all of them as far as I can tell, but I guess if I have bloat at least it's Google bloat that adheres to the rules and only works when you want it to I'll probably end up disabling some of these but most I think are still technically useful.

After it completed the installation I was given the option to reboot, and that's when I realized that there were no check boxes or "Do Not Install" option, but there was back after I first installed the new ROM, and that's where this I needed to see this instruction. Again, I don't think this messed up anything, but I'm still wading through the new phone and it's options right now (holy crap, is there a lot in here). I predict there may still be a few more unintentional crashes on the horizon, like the phone app crashing every time I opened it after the first time swapping between photo and video modes (I did get it back working by using the power button double click method to start it).

Fingers crossed, this may have saved me enough cash to be able to by a new computer.