Virgin Mobile in the UK has announced an exclusive handset launch in the UK with the ZTE Blade Q Mini smartphone on sale exclusively through Virgin from today. Now whilst it’s not exactly Samsung Galaxy S5-grade, it does add another quality and cheap handset to the Virgin range.
Customers can pick up the mid-range handset from Virgin for the bargain price of just £60, sold via Argos and Sainsbury’s locked to the Virgin Mobile network.
For £60 users will get a decent smartphone on a well-priced pay as you go plan. The ZTE Blade Q Mini comes offering a 4-inch 480 x 800 resolution (233ppi) IPS display, a 1.3GHz dual-core processor with 1GB of RAM and a reasonable 5-megapixel autofocus camera. The phone also has 4GB of storage plus a micro SD card slot that can expand the memory by up to an additional 32GB. The phone will be running the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS, but don’t expect this to be upgraded any time soon. Finally, the phone has a 1,500mAh battery which should last the handset for around a day of causal use.
For what the handset has to offer, £60 is a great price and with ZTE’s stock in the mobile world rising it looks set to be a great Android smartphone for someone just starting out or as a backup handset.
Virgin has exclusivity of the device, but this may change in the future. ZTE has recently shown off what it can do on the higher end of the smartphone scale with the new voice-controlled ZTE Grand S II at last week’s CES show in Las Vegas.
The company specialises in making affordable smartphones on both the Android and Windows Phone operating systems, so we’ve reason to believe the Blade Q Mini will be another solid and affordable offering.