Hands on with ZTE's Grand S LTE smartphone
updated 07:59 pm EST, Tue January 8, 2013
ZTE brings its Grand S LTE phone to CES touting 1080p, 5-inch screen
We stopped by the ZTE booth to check out a new smartphone the company hopes to bring into a number of new markets. The high-end device hasn't been confirmed for the US market yet, however. Its specs are certainly impressive, however, with a five-inch, 1080p resolution touchscreen and a fast 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU with four cores paired with 2GB of RAM.
The body is just 6.9mm thick at the thinnest point as the back is curved, making the Grand S the thinnest handset not yet on the market with a 1080p screen. It is undeniably large in the hand, though obviously not as big as Samsung's Galaxy Note or its successor. It is deceivingly light, however, thanks to its all-plastic construction.
The handset runs on Android 4.1 OS and there are eight homescreens available to the user to which apps and widgets can be pinned. Out back, there is a 13-megapixel camera, though fast, shutterless images can't be taken as we beat the software and heard virtual shutter clicks long after we stopped aiming at our subject.
The 16GB of storage space can be supplemented by a microSD memory card, while other features include DLNA wireless media sharing, a mobile hotspot feature, Wi-Fi Direct, and a Wi-Fi Display to share the screen on a larger display.
The battery is "only" rated at 1,780mAh, which could prove to be insufficient when driving that huge screen. A plethora of colors in both matte and gloss backs was onhand at the booth to try out, though only six colors will be available to consumers at first.
China is due to get the phone later this year, with target trial markets that include Asia and Europe as well. No US carriers have yet committed to the phone, though it may eventually be purchased unlocked through online retailers. No prices for the phone have been revealed.
