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Kazam Thunder 2 brings lightning-fast 4G LTE

British mobile maker Kazam fashions sequels to its first phones, adding 4G to its top-end Thunder 2.

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Nick Hide
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Kazam's Thunder 2 4.5L is the UK company's first 4G LTE phone. Kazam

Fledgling UK-based mobile maker Kazam -- formed last year by two former HTC execs -- has conjured up more reasonably priced Android phones.

Its new Thunder 2 brings 4G LTE, while the Trooper 2 tweaks the company's midrange options.

Fully embracing Samsung's "a phone for every price and screen size" philosophy, Kazam has three designs -- Thunder, Trooper and the super-budget Life -- but they all come in several different sizes. The Thunder 2 comes in 4.5- and 5-inch models.

The Thunder 2 4.5L is a respectable midrange effort, with 4G LTE, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage, and a middling 1.2GHz quad-core processor. It runs Android 4.3, not quite the latest version of Google's software. Its 854x480-pixel display isn't high definition, and its 218 pixel-per-inch density is far from Apple's Retina quality. An 8-megapixel camera is nothing to write home about either.

Despite also being a Thunder 2 phone, the 5-inch Thunder 2 5.0 features a different spec -- no 4G, 4GB of storage, a 1.3GHz quad-core chip, and the older Android 4.2. But that's balanced by a better 1,280x720-pixel HD display, which has a much higher 294ppi. There's a 13-megapixel camera too, with a 5-megapixel camera on the front.

Kazam's Trooper 2 design comes in four different sizes. Kazam

Kazam's Trooper 2 is actually four different phones, all with the same spec except for the display -- it comes in 4-, 4.5-, 5- and 6-inch versions. All four have a weak 1.3GHz dual-core chip, a meager 4GB storage, and a minuscule 512MB of RAM. The screens have slightly different resolutions, but none are HD.

All Kazam's phones include a two-year warranty and the promise to replace the screen the first time it cracks. There's also the Kazam Rescue app, which lets a service agent remote access your phone and fix any software-related problems.

Kazam phones are only available in Europe for now -- the company says it's a "phased launch" -- with the new models going on sale in the next few months. It will be showing off its new phones at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week, where we'll go hands-on and hopefully find out some prices.