Qualcomm: ZTE Grand Memo has Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 under the hood, not an 800

On Monday, there was some excitement at MWC when it was announced that the ZTE Grand Memo would be the first handset to be powered by Qualcomm's new top-shelf processor, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800. What added to the importance of the news was the earlier reports that the HTC One and the LG Optimus G Pro are both going to be powered by the 1.7GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600. Even a powerhouse like the  Samsung Galaxy S IV is now rumored to be sporting the 1.9GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 after speculation that the Samsung Exynos Octa ran too hot and overheated the phone.

After issuing a press release on Monday, touting the inclusion of the Snapdragon 800 on the ZTE Grand Memo, the Chinese manufacturer went back and spoke with Engadget and GSM Arena, telling both that the ZTE Grand Memo actually has the Snapdragon 600 under the hood. Despite this, ZTE has not bothered to change the press release, which still touts the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 as the processor powering the Grand Memo. Qualcomm itself has announced that the ZTE Grand Memo is not running the Snapdragon 800, but is powered by the Snapdragon 600 instead.

Additionally, according to Android Police, the ZTE Grand Memo units at ZTE's booth at MWC are actually powered by Qualcomm's older Snapdragon Pro S4 APQ864 processor. And instead of the 2GB of RAM that ZTE claims that its phone carries, the truth is that there is just 1GB of RAM on the device.

Would ZTE, a company that is just beginning to gain relevancy in the global smartphone market hurt its reputation by doing something like this on purpose? For now, we will give ZTE the benefit of the doubt although we're pretty sure that not everyone is being so forgiving. And perhaps the only reason why this is so important is that the NVIDIA Tegra 4 out performed the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 in benchmark tests leaving Qualcomm to basically say that the 800 is their top-shelf product.

source: ZTE, AndroidPolice,GSMArena via UnwiredView