MWC 2013: Various brands overview

MWC 2013

GSMArena team, 25 February 2013.

ZTE Grand Memo hands-on

The ZTE Grand Memo is the company's latest phablet, with a massive 5.7" screen, a 13MP camera and 1MP front-facer, 16 GB of internal storage, 1GB of RAM, and a 3200 mAh battery to power it all.


The Grand Memo and its massive screen


The profile is pleasantly thin

The back of the device is made of textured plastic which looks like faux aluminum.


The back panel has a pleasant texture, but smudges easily

The display is good but not exceptionally so, and the OS features a nifty trick from ZTE called Mi-POP, made for people with smaller hands. It allows you to use capacitive keys from anywhere on the screen via a small popup. You can see it here in our brief video tour of the Android OS:

ZTE Grand S

The ZTE Grand S is the company's own foray into the 5-inch 1080p club, and gives you a quad-core 1.7 GHz processor along with 13MP camera and 2MP front-facer, both capable of 1080p recording. Inside, there's 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM.


The Android performance on the Grand S steals the show

We liked both the display and the performance of the Grand S more than its larger counterpart, and although the Memo didn't feature much slowdown either, the Grand S impressed us with how slick its interface was.


The device has a thin profile and feels comfortable in hand

The Grand S comes in a boatload of color varieties as well, both matte and glossy.

ZTE Open

The ZTE Open is the first device to run Mozilla's brand new Firefox mobile OS. It has a 3.5" capacitive touchscreen of 320 x 480 pixels, alongside a 3MP camera, 512 MB ROM and 256 MB of RAM. The Open is powered by a 1 GHz processor which is a bit on the slow side, and you can sometimes feel it in the laggy OS performance.


The ZTE Open feels cheap to the touch

The Open is designed with a low price point in mind, and the phone really feels and looks the part. It's cheap, and the performance is not impressive.


It also comes in several color combinations

Take a look at this brief hands-on video for a quick glimpse of the OS in action.

Reader comments

  • Mashhood
  • 29 Jul 2013
  • t1$

My best phone fujistu arrows x

LOL Ubuntu for smartphones and tablets make iOS and Android look so outdated! I want one, hope developers join the ecosystem, it has future.

  • smanuola
  • 01 Mar 2013
  • j8S

@Bart from Esato: no it's not, it looks cool but it's the next Kyocira Echo, a short lived phone @gilbs: I don't think either of those OSes will succeed, I actually think there's only room three major OSes and Android and IOS have secured their spo...