The ZTE press conference takes this year’s coveted ‘worst-arranged event of CES’ award. The room was far too small for the number of people who wanted to attend, and was almost entirely full once the VIP guests had entered. Us ‘peasants’ from the press had to traipse upstairs to the (poorly-signposted) overflow room, where the sound quality was very poor.
No flagship phones were announced, but there were two new mid-range devices: the Grand X3 and Avid Plus. We only heard about these afterwards, as the press event had already begun by the time we reached the overflow room!
The Axon Passport programme is being expanded, which is ZTE’s version of AppleCare. It will now include ‘unlimited’ out-of-warranty repairs and total assistance for device upgrades, replacements, shipping and set-up. The two-year cover will include repairs for problems like cracked screens and water damage, and $100 credit will be issued towards a replacement phone, for one that was stolen or lost during international travel.
ZTE’s ‘big reveal’ was its work on ‘The device of tomorrow’: a community-led project. The company will present ideas to the Z-Community website – either from ZTE’s designers or workable ideas from the community – and these will be voted upon. These votes will determine the features that will be on the phone, which will be launched at CES 2017.
To kick off ‘Project CSX’, ZTE’s Jeff Yee showed the first feature that users could share their opinions of. Portable devices are great, he said, but the screen size limits their usability. What about a rollable screen which could act as an extension to your phone’s display? ZTE’s concept is called Flex Screen, and would be powered by the phone.
Stand Tour
ZTE’s stand was mostly full of existing products, but we did get more information on the new mid-range smartphones.
The Avid Plus will be launched in the USA this month, on T-Mobile and MetroPCS, for around $115. The phone is a 5″ device with 854 x 480 resolution, running Android 5.1 on a quad-core 1.1GHz processor, with 1GB of RAM. Storage is 8GB, expandable to 32GB via a micro-SD slot. The screen is protected by Dragontrail glass.
ZTE’s other new phone is the Grand X3. It will cost $130 and will be launched on Cricket Wireless. The device is a 4G phone with a 5.5″ display with 1280 x 720 resolution, and a quad-core 1.3GHz processor. It has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, expandable to 64GB.
