MWC 2017
The world's largest annual mobile event - Mobile World Congress - takes place on the last days of February. We're on the ground in Barcelona to bring you all of the week's news. Tune in here for our full coverage, including hands-on with new phones from LG, BlackBerry, Huawei, Alcatel, ZTE, Sony, and more.
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ZTE Cuts Into the Entry-Level Space with Two New Blade V8s
ZTE today announced the Blade V8 Mini and the Blade V8 Lite, two low-spec'd devices that will sit under the Blade V8 Pro released earlier this year. The phones share a number of features, including metal designs, rear-mounted fingerprint sensors, 5-inch HD displays, 2 GB of RAM, and 16 GB of storage. They both run Android 7 Nougat with ZTE's MiFavor 4.2 UI.
- Blade V8 Mini: The Mini (pictured) is the more capable of the two phones thanks to its octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor. It features a 13- and 2-megapixel main camera combo for advanced features such as bokeh and 3D depth shots. The front camera has a 5-megapixel sensor and its own selfie flash. The fingerprint sensor supports a handful of gestures for answering calls and such. The V8 Mini has a 2,800mAh battery.
- Blade V8 Lite: The lesser of the new ZTEs includes an octa-core MediaTek 6750 processor. The V8 Lite has an 8-megapixel main camera, a 5-megapixel user-facing camera, and a 2,500mAh battery.
ZTE Says Gigabit Phone Is Fast, But Reveals Few Details
ZTE today announced a smartphone that is capable of attaining download speeds of 1 Gbps. The Gigabit Phone, says ZTE, is the first handset to lay claim to such raw speed. The phone is able to do this using ZTE's Pre5G Giga+ MBB solution, though ZTE didn't share many details about the network technology involved. The Gigabit Phone itself relies on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor paired with a Qualcomm X16 modem. Together, they can take advantage of carrier aggregation, 4x4 MIMO, and 256QAM to deliver 1 Gbps downloads. In addition to the speed, ZTE claims the Gigabit Phone is three times more efficient at processing data across today's LTE 4G networks. The Gigabit Phone and the underpinning technology will help ZTE and its partners bridge existing LTE 4G networks with what will eventually become 5G technologies. ZTE did not show a picture of the phone, nor state any other specifications or details such as pricing and availability.
