ZTE made headlines when it launched the now-popular Nubia Z7 series of smartphones. The three devices from the Z7 series come with high-end specs, and are more or less affordable considering what they have on offer. ZTE today announced the Star 2 smartphone, which comes with a good specs set as well, but doesn’t look like much of a VFM prospect.
The Star 2 is announced with a 5-inch 1080p display, a Snapdragon 801 SoC and 2GB of RAM. We’ve seen many smartphones do the same, and often cost about US$300, or even lesser at times. The Star 2, however, comes in with a not-so-pretty price tag of US$400. However, there’s more to the Star 2 than meets the eye, according to the makers. The phone comes with ‘system-level voice control’, which makes the phone operable even when it isn’t connected to the internet. According to ZTE, the device has a response rate of 1.2 seconds, with a success rate of 90%. ZTE also claims that it took more than a thousand patents to get to the final product; 158 of which have to do with voice control.
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Other than that, we’re looking at the usual suspects for what one would call a mid-range 2014 phone. There’s a 13 mega-pixel rear camera on the Star 2, supported by a 5 mega-pixel front camera to take care of your photography and video calling. Besides that, the Star 2 has a 2300mAh battery, and runs on Android v4.4 KitKat. Dual SIM fans are out of luck with this phone, because it supports only a single micro SIM. It however offers 4G LTE support.
With an asking price of US$400 (2499 CNY), does the Star 2 sound like a phone you would want to have?
Wow, voice control! I was waiting for that feature for a long-long time. Finally it comes true. Incredible! But I don’t need something ringing for that price. Can I buy the voice control only?
I feel that for that extra 100$ they could have included the extra gig of ram and maybe even 805 chip.
2300 mAh battery, NO, NO, NO! This phone is worth max 200$.
YES!!! ….. YES!!!!
Really? Just because the battery is rather small doesn’t make it worth so little. Around $350 is more like it.
Dolby sound- great, Gps- great, cpu- Snapdragon 801 and ram-2GB, great, dual led-great,
voice control- not more then nice,
battery- must be at least 3,000
price too much- not more then 250$, because of the old cpu.
Snapdragon 801 is OLD to you? Really? You seriously expect too much.
What’s wrong with zte? 2300 mAH battery? I hope it’s at least removable
What a dreadful build quality
You can’t judge build quality without using the product first.