The market for cheap devices is becoming richer and richer, especially if we’re talking about Chinese manufacturers. In the ocean of these manufacturers, one has always stood out – ZTE. The Blade V7 Lite is a lower class device for 2016, and it stands out because of its LED flash next to the front facing camera, the chassis which is partially made of aluminium, and the fingerprint scanner which is a nice addition for this price range. Inside the box, alongside the device itself, we have: user manuals, a warranty card, a microUSB calbe, a ZTE charging adapter as well as 3.5mm in-ear headphones. The only color option for this device is Silver. Let’s now see what the ZTE have prepared for users with a shallower pocket.
Video review
Unboxing
Display
One of the bright sides of this device is definitely its 5” display, which, for this class, looks very good. It is a 5” IPS LCD display in HD resolution, and the panel shows up to 16 million colors. The picture is pretty sharp, the color reproduction is decent (not nearly as good as on AMOLED displays though). Opposite to the classic V7, which has Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection, the V7 Lite doesn’t have any kind of protection over the screen, which could, overtime, result in scratches. The visibility on the sunlight is surprisingly good, as well as the maximum and minimum brightness of the display.
Hardware and OS
The thing that definitely ruins the overall impression about the Blade V7 Lite (a cheap device with a premium feel) is its hardware. There is a MediaTek MT6735P chipset which is a quad core CPU with the cores clocked at 1 GHz. ARM Mali-T720 MP2 is in charge of the graphics, and together with the CPU simply fails to impress. The work of the system is a little slow, there is a noticeable delay between the command and the execution, and the general impression is pretty bad. We have 2GB of RAM, but there is really no need for it since the CPU struggles with only one more demanding application. What would then happen during heavier multitasking? Ignorance is bliss in this case. There are 16GB of internal storage which is a bare minimum for a modern smartphone. The fingerprint scanner is located on the back of the device and it works rather well.
Camera
The main camera shoots photos in 13MP and it’s equipped with Auto-Focus system, but it makes photos of only average quality. However, the resolution of the sensor itself is pretty good, so if you prefer to have your photos printed out – 13MP is more than enough. Photos have plenty of details, but the colors are pretty poorly reproduced. Next to the classic settings of exposition, resolution and On/Off LED modes, there are also Touch-Focus, Geo-Tagging, Face Detection and Panorama modes. For the high contrast scenes, there’s also the HDR mode. Videos are captured in FullHD resolution at 30fps.
Connectivity
Speaking of the connections built into the Blade V7 Lite – the device has a slot for either 2 SIM cards or a SIM and a microSD card, meaning that if you want your storage expanded, you’ll need to sacrifice one SIM card slot. MicroUSB port is used for charging and data transfer. 3.5mm headphones are shipped with the device, which is another advantage. When it comes to wireless connections, we have:
- WiFi 802.11
- Bluetooth 4.0 (Bluetooth headset supported)
- A-GPS
The NFC is missing, which we would say is one of the disadvantages of the V7 Lite.
Battery
The battery built into the V7 Lite is lithium-ion with the capacity of 2500 mAh. Taking into account that this is a lower class device with performances suitable for this class, the battery can last around 2 days of intermediate use.
Final words
For its price of 120 euros, the Blade V7 Lite brings a lot, from a solid display and cameras to some of the functions from far more expensive phones, such as a fingerprint scanner or an LED flash next to the front facing camera. The thing that really ruins the impression about this device is its weak chipset, which will underperform during everyday use due to its low performances. Those who won’t overload their device with lots of applications, but like to capture a moment or two with a decent camera – will find the Blade V7 Lite a great choice. However, for the users who are a bit more demanding, or those like to have a lot of data either on the internal of external storage – the Blade V7 Lite is a device to pass by.
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