After launching the Blade V7 Plus smartphone in Russia and Australia, Chinese smartphone maker ZTE on Saturday updated its “Blade” series smartphone portfolio with the launch of an another budget-oriented handset, “ZTE Blade Spark” in the US tech market. Carried a price tag of $99.99 (Rs. 6,450), the new ZTE Blade Spark is now already made available for purchase in the US exclusively via AT&T Prepaid carrier and other major retail stores across the country in Gray colour option. Sadly, the Shenzhen-based company has made no official announcements about the pricing details and availability of the ZTE Blade Spark for other markets.
Design wise, the ZTE Blade Spark sports a sleek metal unibody design with metal frame all around giving it an overall premium look. The new smartphone features a trio of capacitive navigation buttons and a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, located just middle of the device. The volume up-down keys and the power/lock button are all placed on the right-hand edge of the device and a 3.5mm audio jack is placed on the very top of the phone. The speaker grille is situated on the back panel of the device, while a USB Type-C charging port is placed on the very bottom edge of the smartphone. The rear panel of the handset houses a 13MP camera, LED flash module and fingerprint recognition button, while the top front panel features a 5MP selfie camera, sensors, and an earpiece.
ZTE Blade Spark Specifications and Features:
Technically speaking, the ZTE Blade Spark comes equipped with a 5.5-inch HD display with a resolution of 1280×720 pixels and a scratch resistance Corning Gorilla Glass 3 glass coating on top of the display. The smartphone is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad-core processor coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card. Talking about its software front, the smartphone runs on Google’s latest Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system out-of-the-box.
For photography, the ZTE Blade Spark houses a 13-megapixel rear camera with phase detection autofocus (PDAF), and an LED flash. On the front, it sports a 5-megapixel front-facing shooter for capturing selfies and making video calls. The rear camera is capable of recording full-HD (1080p) videos at 30fps. Talking about its multimedia department, ZTE Blade Spark comes with Dolby Audio technology that provides premium sound to user while listening to music, watching videos and playing games on the device.
In terms of connectivity, the ZTE Blade Spark offers various connectivity options including 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.2 Low Energy, GPS, a 3.5mm headphone socket, and a USB Type-C port for superfast charging and data transfer. Sensors on the device include an Accelerometer, Fingerprint sensor (rear-mounted), Ambient light sensor and Proximity sensor. On the battery front, the new ZTE Blade Spark comes packed with a decent 3,140mAh Li-ion polymer battery that is rated to deliver up to 17 hours of talk time, up to 53 hours of music playback time and up to 240 hours of standby time. Dimensionally, the handset measures 156 x 77.7 x 9.65 mm and weighs around 173 grams.
