ZTE Axon 7 mini lands in the UK, yours for £249.99 SIM-free

ZTE launched the Axon 7 mini back in September as a smaller, cheaper, and lower-end alternative to the Axon 7 from earlier in the year. Having already become available in some European markets, the Axon 7 mini is making its debut in the UK today. The exclusive retail partner (for now, at least) is Carphone Warehouse.

That's where you can buy an Axon 7 mini (just in gold at the moment, grey is coming soon) in SIM-free and unlocked form, if you agree to shell out £249.99 for the privilege. If you don't want to spend that much upfront, then there's always the option to pick a two-year operator plan and get the phone for free.

If this is your thing, then know you'll need to select a plan that costs at least £17.50 per month in order to receive the handset for nothing. If you choose the cheapest contract, you get 300 minutes, 5,000 texts, and 500MB of 4G data each month from iD, the Carphone Warehouse's own operator brand. There are a couple more plans to consider, the most expensive coming in at £21.50 per month and giving you 600 minutes, 5,000 texts, and 2GB of 4G data.

The Axon 7 mini packs a 5.2-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 16 MP rear camera with f/1.9 aperture, an 8 MP selfie snapper, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 617 chipset at the helm (with a 1.5 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU), 3GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, and a 2,705 mAh battery. It runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow.