ZTE’s crowdsourced smartphone is called Hawkeye and in addition to announcing the official name of the device, ZTE is making it available for pre-order starting today through Kickstarter, as they have stated that they want to “continue the theme of crowdsourcing.” Hawkeye was initially announced by ZTE back in August, although that the time it was simply known as Project CSX, and was no more than an idea to get the consumer involved with decisions on producing the phone, from design to features. As part of the project, ZTE had people enter into a contest with their designs, and one month after the Project CSX announcement they started taking concept designs from the winners of the challenge.
ZTE has not mentioned a final price point for the phone, but they do state there will be a special promotional price for those who place their pre-orders through Kickstarter and will offer those consumers the phone at a cost of $199. That being said, once the phone launches later this year it will end up costing more, so those who are even mildly interested in potentially buying it may want to go ahead with the Kickstarter pre-order once it goes live which ZTE states will be today.
As for the launch date of the phone, ZTE has not mentioned a specific date yet, but it is expected to ship globally sometime in the third quarter of 2017, so sometime around the Fall is when consumers can expect to see the Hawkeye phone land on their doorstep if they pre-ordered. At the moment there is no mention of whether or not other retailers will pick up the device, which means that Kickstarter may be the only option for purchase. ZTE has not currently offered up hardware specifications details for the Hawkeye, so there is no way to know the exact quality of things like the cameras, but the image does show a front and a rear camera on board, as well as a rear mounted fingerprint sensor. It also looks like ZTE has opted to use capacitive buttons for the Home, Back, and Recents keys instead of using software keys, and the software is likely to be at least Android 6.0 Marshmallow. For now, though, no specs or features details have been confirmed as ZTE will likely share that information at a later date.