ZTE Era joins ICS gang, Kis and Acqua stick on Gingerbread
ZTE is making good on its plans to become a major player in the UK, with an Ice Cream Sandwich phone at the forefront.
The ZTE Era comes packing Ice Cream Sandwich and a quad-core processor, the company announced this morning at Mobile World Congress, while its new Kis and Acqua phones pootle along on Android Gingerbread.
So there's plenty to choose from at the new-look ZTE buffet. But which is for you?
ZTE is showing it can mix with the big boys, with its Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Era. And the Era is quad-core too, with a mighty Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. Despite all this processing grunt, the phone is just 7.8mm thick, which is about 1.5mm thinner than an iPhone 4S -- no mean feat.
The screen is a decent size too, at 4.3 inches, and a resolution of 540x960 pixels. There's 8GB of memory, though you can expand that with a microSD card. There's no word on the camera abilities, but considering this is the flagship handset from ZTE, we'd expect 8 megapixels or more. It'll go on sale in the second half of the year, with its price to be confirmed.
If you're looking for something a little more affordable, ZTE also unveiled a couple of handsets running the older Android Gingebread. The Kis has a 3.5-inch screen, while the Acqua boasts a 4-incher. There's no release dates or prices yet for these other mobiles, and it's not clear whether they'll reach the UK with those names or be snapped up by networks to become own-brand budget phones.
Without much fanfare ZTE took the wraps off its second Windows Phone, the ZTE Orbit. It'll have a 5-megapixel camera, an LED flash and 4GB of built-in memory. The Orbit follows the magnificently monikered ZTE Tania.
The company also showed off the Blade 2, but that's already on sale in the UK as the Orange San Francisco 2. We brought you a hands-on preview with the ZTE Mimosa X dual-core Ice Cream Sandwich phone last week.
ZTE claims that in the last three months it was the fourth biggest phone seller in the world, and it sounds like it's making a concerted push to be number three. Do you think it'll be a household name in the UK before the end of the year? Will it stave off Huawei in the fight to be the new HTC? Let me know in the comments below, or on our Facebook page.
For more Mobile World Congress news, stay tuned to mwc.cnet.co.uk.