ZTE Blade III Specs
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The ZTE Blade III is most commonly compared with these phones:
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This is my second phone from ZTE and it has been horrible. The phone's battery indicator does not work, it jumps between 90%+ battery to 5% randomly. The phone regularly crashes and restarts itself. Applications seldom work as they also force the phone to crash. Overall, the phone is horrible and it is not worth the low price.
Similarly the ZTE Dublin was a horrible phone. Its internal memory could not support applications and transferring them to SD cards did not work.
Don't trust ZTE phones.
Forget all the industry snobbery about devices made in China being cheap & nasty. This, I promise you, is a really good device for its price band. In fact it's an exceptional device for the price band. In the UK this device retails for £79.99 which includes a £10.00 P.A.Y.G voucher from Virgin Media. At the time of writing the device had shifted so many units that it was out of stock, but a little bird at @zte_uk twitter tells me that more are expected in by the middle of April 2013. I'm promising you that the price is incredible when you consider how the ZTE Blade 3 looks, feels & uses. You will read a lot of rubbish about devices made in China being second rate. I'm telling you that as far as the ZTE Blade 3 goes those stories are absolutely untrue.
The phone has a fantastic screen size, which at 4" is a big an iphone4 & only marginally smaller than the ZTE Grand X which retails for £199.99 in the UK also from Virgin Media. The ZTE Blade has a single core processor unlike the Grand X which has a dual core but it packs the same amount of ram at 512mb.
The build quality is much the same too as it's bigger brother, & the styling is sleek with a chrome plastic band encompassing the sides of the device. It feels both comfortable & solid in your hand whilst you use it & I promise you that using your device in public will not make you wish to hide it away.
The device itself runs ICS so android freaks won't feel hard done by about being palmed off with Gingerbread. For the rest of us the OS is fast & fluid, seamlessly taking you through a day’s texting or checking up on your Facebook pages or Google + account. The battery is also a generous size & has the added benefit of being removable.
OK so where is the downside? For that money you can't expect that much surely? Well you can from the ZTE Blade 3. The camera is 5MP & by making sure that you have enough natural daylight around you to make up for the lack of a flash, remember only £79.99, your pictures will be fantastically crisp & clean. The video camera, whilst not making you Bollywood movie director, is very good for all normal needs.
Browsing is smooth & fast, although personally I ditched the android browser for Google Chrome, but I'm an internet freak. For most needs the standard browser is all you'll need. What about the internal size, I hear you ask. The ZTE Blade 3 has both an internal memory and an SD memory enough for filling up with your favourite apps from Google Play. There’s an external micro SD slot for all you pictures & videos etc.
No it's not a high end android device, but then for £79.99 you wouldn't expect it to be would you? For this price band up to well over the £150.00 price band in the UK, there is only one choice the ZTE Blade 3.
Two last features. One, yes it can do screenshots, or screen grabs, I've read that this device can't, but mine does, so who you going to believe? I won't make myself popular with ZTE nor Google, but the device can easily be rooted too.