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Chinese budget Android phonemaker ZTE is the latest to launch a high-end smartphone based on Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chipset but the ZTE Era opts for a smaller 4.3-inch display.
While the rest of the market has stampeded towards massive 4.7-inch and up phones with 1280 x 720 pixels, ZTE’s new Era opts for 4.3-inchs with 970 x 640 pixels. The quad-core Tegra 3 mated with Android 4.0 and an 8-megapixel camera capable of shooting 1080p video, as is in vogue with the latest crop of Android announcements at MWC 2012.
ZTE has a little more pedigree than fellow China mainland rival Huawei in higher end Android phones, typically making phones rebranded for carriers. However both manufacturers have since declared for the high-end with announcements of large quad core Android 4.0 phones destined for the world market.
The ZTE Era, being slightly smaller, slightly lower resolution and with a 1.3GHz Tegra 3 versus the 1.5GHz of top-shelf rivals, will very likely come with some aggressive pricing to boot. Nevertheless it still manages a positively svelte 7.8mm-thick profile.
It looks like ZTE is also dipping their toes into software development with an Android 4.0 customised front-end called Miflavor although this wasn’t demonstrated at the show. Demo models were running Gingerbread.
There’s no clue on pricing but the device is scheduled to appear somewhat later than other rivals, some time during the third quarter.
