ZTE V5 First Look: A Mid Range Smartphone With Mind Blowing Specs

Rating:

3.5/5

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PROS

• Simple and elegant Design
• Vibrant Display
• Android 4.4(KitKat)

CONS

• Poor Camera
• Expensive compared to competition

ZTE may be an unknown to many Indian users, but the Chinese handset maker is making an effort to get recognition in the world's fastest growing smartphone market. The brand, best known for making telecom network gear, seems optimistic about the sales of top-tier and mid-range smartphones. The firm is now betting big on price conscious consumers in India.

On Tuesday, ZTE launched a new mid-end smartphone, the ZTE V5, running on the latest version of Android 4.4 (KitKat). Priced at Rs. 10,999, the new phone has been made available in an exclusive partnership with one of the India's most reputed e-retailers, Snapdeal.

Compared to ZTE's previous offerings, the V5 offers some decent specs under the hood: a large 5-inch HD display, a faster processor and a 5MP front-facing camera, to name a few.

The smartphone does have a few notable drawbacks. For instance, the ZTE V5 is slightly overpriced, when compared to the Xiaomi Redmi 1S - another budget smartphone with similar specs and features. While the ZTE V5 comes equipped with a 13MP shooter, sample pictures in general turned out overexposed and lacking crispness.

Despite many odds, the ZTE V5 seemed to perform great, all thanks to built-in a quad-core processor. The device shouldn't be ignored just because the brand - ZTE, is largely unknown in the country. The new budget handset from ZTE is likely to compete against the Xiaomi Redmi 1S and the upcoming Moto G2 smartphone.

We recently got a chance to explore the ZTE V5. Here's our first impression about the ZTE V5. Dive in!

ZTE V5 - Form Factor, Design, Display and Operating System (OS)

The ZTE V5 has a solid design and boasts high-quality polycarbonate plastic chassis. Trust GizBot. It's difficult to ignore the ZTE V5. The device isn't particularly given glamorized treatment, but it may seem stylish and elegant looking. On the left and right hand sides are a volume rocker and power buttons, respectively.

Up top is a 3.5mm headphone jack and on the bottom edges you'll surely notice a Micro-USB port. The rear-back of the phone houses a 13MP shooter with a single LED Flash. The camera lens, accented with blue colored stylish rim, looks great.

The phone, ZTE V5, has a 5-inch vibrant and colorful display having a resolution of 720p HD. When tested the screen, colors and viewing angles were accurate. However, we do face issues while operating the capacitive touch enabled buttons at the bottom of the display; they were too sensitive. But we're sure ZTE will solve this issue soon. Overall, we found the 5-inch screen quite responsive to touch.

The V5 is running the Nubia v2.0 UI which is layered on top of Android 4.4 (KitKat). The UI is simple and easy to understand, but Android users will find it difficult to adopt so easily.

Notably, the phone doesn't feature a regular app drawer; instead you'll notice all apps in the pages of app menu. Since the device runs Android 4.4, it includes apps from Google: Gmail, YouTube, Play Store and much more.