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ZTE Grand S2 Hands on, Quick Review, Photos and Video

ZTE had showcased the Grand S2 at the CES 2014 and the phablet will be the flagship for the company henceforth. ZTE has commenced selling smartphones in India and the Grand S2 is expected to make its way soon to India as well. We got to spend some time with the upcoming phablet which will be gunning for the likes of the Gionee Elife E7 and here’s what we think about it

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ZTE Grand S2 Quick Specs

  • Display Size: 5.5 inch capacitive touch screen with 1920 x 1080 resolution
  • Processor: 2.3 GHz Quad Core Snapdragon 800 chipset
  • RAM: 2 GB
  • Software Version: Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean)
  • Camera: 113MP AF camera with LED flash
  • Secondary Camera: 2MP
  • Internal Storage: 16 GB
  • External Storage: Yes
  • Battery: 3000 mAh battery Lithium Ion
  • Connectivity: 3G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 with A2DP, aGPS, 3.5mm audio jack
  • Sensors: Accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass

ZTE Grand S2 Hands on, Quick Review, Camera, Features and Overview HD at MWC 2014 [Video]

Design and Build

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The ZTE Grand S2 is a pretty big device to hold and single hand operations are something that you won’t be able to do on the device. It gets physical capacitive buttons up front instead of on-screen buttons. Build quality is the department in which the Grand S2 does not score pretty high for a flagship device.

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It has a plastic back which is something we just do not appreciate for a flagship smartphone. But the flipside is that it makes the back removable to access the battery unit. The Grand S2 has 5.5 inch screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and a pixel density of 401ppi. So the flagship smartphone does not disappoint in the screen department but the build quality is something it won’t like to write home about.

Camera and Internal Storage

ZTE Grand S2 gets a 13MP camera at the rear with LED flash and support for video recording with a resolution of 1080p @ 30 fps. It is joined in by a 2.1MP front camera unit which we think could have been a better unit instead.

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The Grand S2 comes shod with 16GB of internal storage and there’s a microSD card slot as well for expansion of memory so you won’t have any complaints regarding the storage of the smartphone.

Battery, OS and Chipset

The Grand S2 has a 3,000 mAh battery unit giving it the juice to last about a day. It does a good job of keeping the device alive for a little less than a day.

It runs on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean which is still better than majority of its compatriot flagships which run on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. ZTE will surely upgrade the Grand S2 to Android 4.4 KitKat but the timeline regarding the same is yet unknown.

Doing duty as the heart of the ZTE Grand S2 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset which comes with a Quad-core 2.3 GHz Krait 400 CPU and an Adreno 330 GPU. Needless to say, the smartphone offers a top of the line spec sheet and won’t disappoint you in the performance department.

ZTE Grand S2 Photo Gallery

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Conclusion

The ZTE Grand S2 is right up there with other flagships in terms of specs but is bogged down by its plastic back. If it gets priced lower than the competition, then it may be able to justify the loose ends in terms of build quality. Expect it to be priced around the Rs 25,000 mark when it touches down on Indian shores.

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Abhishek Bhatnagar

Abhishek Bhatnagar, a known technology blogger & YouTuber from India. A Software Engineer by qualification, now he works as the editor-In-Chief, Webmaster, & Managing Director at Gadgets To Use. He runs a number of other technology websites as well.