China’s ZTE recently showcased the second phone from their Grand S series, the Grand S II, at the CES in Las Vegas. The device comes with an OS that is primarily voice controlled. Everything else on the device is what you expect in a flagship phone, which includes the Snapdragon 800 processor.

How does the device stack up against similarly spec’d phones from competitors? Let us find out.

Hardware

Display

Like many phones launched late last year, the ZTE Grand S II comes with a 5.5 inch screen with a full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. As far as we’re concerned, the real fun of having a full HD display is had only with screen sizes as large as this one. Of course, some may argue but that is what we think. If you can do with a 5.5 inched device, you will enjoy the screen thanks to the good enough resolution paired with a very usable real estate. Gaming, multimedia, browsing, etc. will be enjoyable.

Camera and Storage

The phone comes with a 13MP and 2MP camera duo, which is fast becoming the standard for mid-range devices. Most flagships of today carry 16MP shooters with high-end optics, which is where the ZTE Grand S II might lose out on camera-conscious buyers. No complaints about the front-facer though, 2MP should be enough for a video chat every now and then. The device has 16GB ROM on-board, with info on a microSD card slot yet to be declared by ZTE. Given there’s just 16GB of on-board ROM, we do expect an announcement confirming a microSD slot soon.

Processor and Battery

Not much needs to be said about the Snapdragon 800 processor. The chipset is Qualcomm’s most powerful one at present. It comes with a quad core processor clocked 2.2GHz, and the ZTE Grand S II packs 2GB of RAM along with it. You can expect all games, applications to run as smooth as butter on the device thanks to this processor/RAM combo.

Recommended: How Snapdragon 800 Makes Your Smartphone Special and Different From Others 

The device features a 2500 mAh non-removable battery and ZTE claims around 200 hours of standby time and 6 hours of talk time, which sounds average. Moderate users can expect one whole day of backup while basic users might get to see the dawn of another day on a single charge.

Form Factor and Competitors

Design

The device is naturally quite big, thanks to the large 5.5 inch screen that it features. However, thin bezels along the screen help minimize the overall size of the device.

Competitors

Gionee Elife E7Moto GGoogle Nexus 5

Conclusion

We’re pretty impressed with this offering from the Chinese manufacturer. We hope to see the device being launched in India with a price tag of about 28,000 INR, which would make them go hot on the heels of manufacturers like Gionee and LG (Nexus 5). Price will be a major factor, in fact a decisive on in a price-sensitive country like India.