ZTE has released a phone in the U.S. aimed at smartphone lovers and selfie snappers. The Nubia 5S mini LTE boasts impressive camera and hardware specs and in a surprising move, ZTE is marketing the unlocked version of their phone directly to consumers who want to BYOD to any network. It is
available for preorder now on Amazon for $280 and shipping is planned to start next week.
The phone has some pretty amazing specs for such a modest price and it is compatible with LTE, GSM and WCDMA networks. I couldn’t find a listing of the exact bandwidths but it should work on all of the major U.S. carriers, which is pretty awesome. In a press release, Chariman and CEO of ZTE Lixin Cheng said he thought that it was high time consumers had the option to take their phone to whatever carrier they wanted.
“Selling the Nubia 5S mini LTE unlocked, direct to consumers shows ZTE has faith in its products and is capable of delivering LTE devices and consumer-focused innovation in the U.S.,” Cheng said. “Offering an unlocked Android phone via Amazon addresses consumer demand for alternative devices that deliver more personal value than mainstream brands and don’t tie them to one mobile eco-system.”
Finally, someone gets it.
As far as actual hardware goes, the Nubia has pretty good specs. It is pretty thin with a 4.7 inch HD 720 x 1280 color display, runs Android 4.3 Jelly Bean with a sizeable battery, 16GB memory with a micro SD card slot to expand and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Quad Core processor with Adreno 305 GUP at 1.2 GHz.
But the thing that has most people excited is the near-professional level cameras on this phone. We’ve seen phones with good front or back cameras, but the Nubia has both and rocks independent camera functions like control of focus, light metering and white balance. Here are the camera specs ZTE has released:
- 13 megapixel rear-camera with a BSI image sensor and LED flash
- 5 megapixel front-camera
- F2.2 aperture
- precision optical lens
- Blue glass composite IR filter
- Sapphire lens
- HD 720p/30fps video
Pretty impressive right? And the device is available unlocked with no contract and no hassle (in theory). Here’s to hoping other phone companies will follow ZTE’s fine example and start good phones available on all networks for far less than the $600 price tag common higher-end phones.]]>
