Being a chinese manufacturer and giving customers with an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor and a stock Android 4.0 ROM, The Grand X is the new beast by ZTE. Going into the compeitition with Samsung and HTC, ZTE is going to get a hell of a tough time.
HARDWARE/ DESIGN
The overall design is sleek and good looking, with a matte black blackplate which provides a good grip but it wobbles under a moderate pressure.
The capacitive area at the bottom has the old outdated capacitive buttons Menu, Home, Back and Search. At the top there is a small ZTE logo and a speaker along with a front facing VGA camera. A silver plastic button sits on the right of the Grand X’s top edge with the volume rocker on the left edge. At the bottom left corner of the phone you will find a standard Micro USB port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack is at the top left of the phone.At 9.9mm thick its slimmer then Nexus S but doesn’t come close to One X which is 7.8 mm. The device weighs around 110g with the battery which is even lighter then Samsung Galaxy S 2. The phones backplate snaps off easily and reveals a 1,650mAh battery, a standard SIM bay and a microSD card slot. All in all the phone looks good but lacks the quality and that X facter that every phone has these days.
DISPLAY
A 4.3 inch with a Sharpmade qHD (960 x 540) panel offering 256 PPI it can compete with any market leading smartphones display screen. Provides you with solid color reproduction and produces excellent display which is good to watch. But on sunny days Grand X’ s screen becomes the darkest to see, under the bright sunlight it performs badly and picks up fingerprints. The fingerprints is the biggest problem even after cleaning it the screen is full of prints. Furthermore its touch responsiveness is far from satisfying, the casual touches are ignored whenever you select an app. These are two huge problems with Grand X.
CAMERA
It offers the dual camera setup, with a 5 megapixel on the back and a VGA on the front which is not that appealing at all. And the quality is also not that good, the front facing camera shoots grainy pictures and the back one attempts to become a decent camera but fails. In bright sunlight even the pictures are not that good as well. The video goes upto 1080p which is also not as good as the other phones.
SOFTWARE
It comes with an Icecream Sandwich, it feels fresh and adds to the device. But still Android just works on the Grand X, it has no new thing on it and it works ordinarily. The pre installed TouchPal keyboard is a good add on and gives a good experience. Its one of the best for the gaming experience with its Nvidea Tegra 2 chipset.
PERFORMANCE
With its 1GHz Tegra2 processer, 512 MB of RAM the gaming experience is just amazing. The overall software runs smoothly and faslty without any problem or hiccup. The battery lacks behind but still carries out for a day which is quite good. Overall Grand X is good at its performance and makes it worthwhile when dealing with it.
Its available on a monthly contract at £20.50 which is rarely cheap, but still have some problems and ZTE will have to diminish its problems.