ZTE may not have much a presence in the U.S., but they are selling a ton of phones in China. The upcoming Nubia Z5s and Z5S Mini were announced on November 19th of this year. Pre-orders of the device went live today, and the company is saying that they have broken all of Xiaomi’s amazing sales records. In a press release today, ZTE says it has taken 2.5 million pre-orders for these two smartphones. Not too shabby.
The Nubia Z5S has a 1080p, 5-inch display with a 441 ppi pixel density. It is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 800 SoC clocked at 2.3 GHz. It has a 13-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front facing shooter. With 2 GB of RAM, and running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, this is no slouch of a smartphone.
The Nubia Z5S Mini is the smaller sibling to the Z5S. It has a 4.7-inch, 720p display. It runs on a Snapdragon 600 SoC with 2GB of RAM and has a 13-megapixel rear camera. There are several variants of the Nubia Z5S and the Nubia Z5S Mini. Both devices will come in 16 GB and 32 GB flavors, and also will come in HSDPA and LTE flavors. The Nubia Z5S starts at 1,999 yuan ($329). The smaller Nubia Z5S Mini goes for 1,499 yuan ($246) in its 3G incarnation. The LTE versions will of course cost more than that.
The cameras on these phones come with some new features from Nubia, too. The NEOVISION 3.0 system has independent white-balance, independent focus, and independent light-metering. All of this is new to the Chinese smartphone market. The Z5S and Z5S Mini are being called “Single-Lens Reflex (SLR) Smartphones.” Nubia is also making their camera software technology available for other handset manufacturers to download for themselves.
The smartphone battle in China is heating up. ZTE is selling tons of phones, Huawei is focusing on international markets after pulling out of the U.S. market, and Xiaomi is looking to broaden their horizons with the help of Hugo Barra. ZTE is one of the Top 5 mobile handset and smartphone manufacturers in the world, according to global industry analyst IDC. Huawei is even trying to market their devices as having “better value” than Xiaomi’s current offerings. China has one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world, and these companies want a piece of the pie.