Mobile World Congress is in full swing and while we’ve heard from quite a few manufacturers already – with ASUS bringing two more tablets to the market – it’s now ZTE’s turn to show the world what they’ve got. The Chinese manufacturer recently climbed the rankings to become the fourth largest handset manufacturer in the world. Which , after 15 years of making devices it must be nice to have progressed up the ladder. The Grand Memo is the Chinese manufacturer’s device to show off this year and it’s got a strange story behind it. The Grand Memo was shown off in Hong Kong earlier in the year and while the speculation was that MWC would see more of the same device, ZTE have turned the tables on everyone and changed out a lot of the specs to deliver a better-looking device.
Some of the headlining specs are as follows:
- 5.7-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) Display
- Quad-Core Snapdragon 800 CPU Clocked at 1.5 Ghz
- 13 Megapixel rear-facing camera
- Dolby Digital Surrond
- 3200 mAh Battery
- Android 4.1
There’s not as much information concerning the Grand Memo, considering ZTE upped the specs without telling anybody and there seems to be some confusion on the actual resolution of the display as Engadget are reporting but, when there’s more we’ll update this post!
This is the first device to be announced with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800 and it should deliver some notable speed boosts. The 800 is supposed to perform as high as 75% better than the S4 Pro and should be an improvement above the 600 as well. The 800 comes with four Krait 400 cores and the improved Adreno 330 GPU which should deliver much better gaming performance. Perfect for a device with such a large display then, right?
The Grand Memo is larger than the Galaxy Note and of course, that does away with any use of the phone one-handed but, ZTE have some added software elements to help you use it one-handedly. For instance, their is a one-handed dialer, a T9 input input method that apparently works well with one-hand, if you’re a teenager from 2004, of course. All of these little software additions take up one side of the display and you can manipulate them with your thumb, putting them wherever is best for you.
Overall, the Grand Memo looks like just another large-display handset but, ZTE are keen to push the whole package as a consumer friendly device. There was no information announced concerning regional availability but they did say it was coming “soon”. The Snapdragon 800 was listed as coming later on in 2013 by Qualcomm so maybe this will ship Q3 or later.