Now mobile phones and smartphones are developing quite dynamically. Many people change their devices every two to three years, or even annually. It's hard to surprise with the new model, and yet companies around the world continue to literally stamp mobile devices. A kind of arms race, if you like. Smartphone manufacturers compete in three parameters at once.
This is, firstly, energy efficiency. Everyone wants to have a smartphone that stably holds charge even with heavy use. Many companies strive for this. The second parameter is the thickness of the phone. It is much more pleasant to hold a flat and light phone in your hand than a real “brick”. And, of course, the battle is for the most productive smartphone stuffing.
Introduction
Perhaps, at present, smartphones from Chinese manufacturers will be the best option for people who do not have an impressive budget. They are practically not inferior in productivity to the leading world companies, but at the same time they are much cheaper. One of the most trusted suppliers of mobile equipment to the world market is the Chinese company ZTE. Grand S2, a review of which will be presented in this article, is a good brand model.
Equipment
The ZTE Grand S2 smartphone, reviews of which will be summarized in this article, comes in a box along with a removable battery, charging, cable and instructions in Chinese. Well, the kit is quite modest, one might say. There are no headsets, no headphones and other “gadgets” in the kit. But this is not so important.
Battery and Charger
So, the smartphone’s battery has a capacity of 3,100 mAh. Charging actually gives 1.6 A, although 1.5 A is written according to the documents. It works with a voltage of 5 V. The USB-type cable serves as a synchronization tool with a personal computer or laptop and is integrated into the charging unit of the device.
Appearance
The ZTE Grand S2 16 GB black phone is quite simple, but at the same time tasteful. The smartphone case is nothing more than a candy bar. The screen, of course, is touch. Its dimensions are almost identical to the screen sizes of the smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 3. It is worth noting that not only this fell into the list of similar parameters: the models are similar to each other in shape. If you look closely, you can see that the ZTE Grand S2 16 GB, an overview of which is given in the article, has rounded corners.
Side faces
A silver plastic edging extends along the side edge. It is painted in a metallic style. Glass sides above the surface of the smartphone do not protrude, which is good news. So, the phone looks quite attractive and presentable. But it should be noted that there is a bad side: the device lacks additional protection against mechanical damage. Therefore, the fall of the device on a solid surface can have fatal consequences for its very own.
In any case, we will hope that this does not happen, and Corning Gorilla 3 glass is installed for a reason, the technology will still protect the device from damage. The screen frames are approximately three millimeter, so there is no need to talk about their subtleties. It should be noted that the 5.5-smartphone ZTE Grand S2, reviewed in this article, is made quite reliably. The assembly is of high quality, not a single detail creaks. Well the model lies in the hand. But after the smartphone has been increased by only half an inch, users have to get used to the device again.
Top end
Above the display you can see the brand name. There is also a speaker. A little to the right is the front camera. There is an LED indicator that notifies the user of the phone about events (it can be incoming text messages and voice calls, for example). By the way, you can change the color of the event indicator (red, blue, green colors are available for selection).
The design has built-in light sensors to automatically adjust the brightness and backlight of the screen, as well as a proximity sensor (when approaching the ear, the screen will turn off so that you do not press the buttons during a phone call). As testing has shown, sensors work more than tolerably.
The ZTE Grand S2 phone, an overview of which is presented in this article, has touch buttons. These are “menu”, “back” and “home”. The buttons have a backlight, so in the dark the user will never make a mistake in navigation. The backlight, by the way, is pleasant to the eye. We can say that the golden mean: and highlights the basic elements, and does not blind the eye. This is much better than what was done in the previous model.
Bottom end
The bottom panel of the smartphone housing accommodates a connector standard MicroUSB. There is also the main microphone, through which the user can conduct a conversation on the device. The back cover of the phone can be removed quite easily. To do this, just click on the special cutout located on the left side of the ZTE Grand S2 model.
On the opposite side there are buttons that allow you to adjust the volume of the device. There is also a power on and off button. This arrangement is quite convenient, since the size of the smartphone is impressive. Buttons do not sink, they are pressed quite well. In general, made to glory.
At the top end of the device there is only a 3.5 mm stereo headset jack. ZTE has an advertisement that mentions the presence of an additional microphone near the headphone input. In fact, there is nothing of the kind there.
Backside
Qualitatively made and the back cover of the device. It is made of plastic. It is painted in silver-gray color, with “masking” under brushed metal. Experts have repeatedly noted that such a move is similar to the move applied to the LG G3 smartphone. The rear panel accommodates a camera surrounded by a silver rim. Nearby is an LED flash, an audio speaker grill, another, now valid microphone and a company logo.
The ZTE Grand S2 battery, reviews of which we will consider at the end of the article, is located precisely under the back cover. There are also slots in which memory cards (MicroSD standard) and SIM cards are installed. Important: the device only supports MicroSIM. You can notice the contacts in the design. At first glance, they look more like contacts designed for wireless charging. But the seller assures us that these contacts are nothing but test points, so, alas, you can immediately forget about wireless charging.
Display
ZTE Grand S2 has a high-quality display, whose diagonal is 5.5 inches. The display device contains IPS technology, which reduces eye strain, making reading from the screen more comfortable and safe for the user. The display resolution is 1920 by 1080 pixels. Density - 401 pixels per 1 inch. By the way, on the Grand S2 screens are installed immediately from three different manufacturers. In different batches of devices, the screen manufacturer is different.
For example, previously the company acquired displays manufactured by LG. They read well in sunlight, and there were several times fewer dead pixels. But the products of Tianma and Yassi are much worse. There are already broken pixels and incorrect display of content in the sun.
The user can see the display from which manufacturer is installed in his device. However, this will require root privileges. ZTE Grand S2 supports the glove function. Everything works correctly, but with one caveat: gloves should not be too thick, otherwise thermal sensors will not work. The rest of the display boasts decent viewing angles, when turning the contrast of the picture does not drop particularly. Yes, and this is typical for a display that uses OGS technology.
Work in daylight
In the sun, the screen behaves rather weakly. Although the screen brightness is rather big, it is very, very difficult to get a high-quality picture of the display in the sun. If at all feasible. An exception will be if the brightness is “wound” to the maximum. You can use a utility called “Lux”, which will allow you to set a comfortable brightness for the dark. The thing is that the standard automatic adjustment does not allow you to set everything up so precisely.
Screen settings allow you to set the level of color saturation. There are three options by standard. They all differ from each other. The first mode allows you to see the colors as they really are. The second mode makes the colors a little more saturated. Well, the third option is for users who love AMOLED.
The touch screen supports the multi-touch function. However, at the same time, it can only handle three touches. Active users who spend a lot of time playing games on a smartphone can say that this is not enough. Perhaps this is so, but let's not forget that the device was developed for general use, and not for various toys created for devices running the Android operating system.
Operating platform and hardware
The core of the phone is the Snapdragon 801 processor. It has four cores. Each of them has a clock frequency of 2.3 GHz. Along with this, the graphics accelerator of the Adreno family, model 330, went into the hardware platform of the device. Its operating frequency is 578 MHz. Supported technology OpenCL 1.2, as well as OpenGL ES 3.0. RAM installed in the amount of 2 GB. This, in principle, is enough for the lion's share of applications. You can free up volume by removing Chinese programs that we absolutely do not need. After that, up to 800 MB can be freed. It should be noted that the interface works really very smoothly. No friezes, no lags.
Work with mobile networks
The device supports working with a 4G mobile network. What actually turns out? In fact, it turns out that 3G works stably everywhere. That is, you can be even in Europe, even in Russia - you will not notice any problems with 3G. This is very important, since many Chinese-made smartphones, without exaggeration, suffer from incompatibility with this standard. 4G works stably both in Russia and in Europe, but not with all operators. There is not much coverage for a decent level for this standard, but Beeline, MTS and Megafon are making some progress in this area.
The device works well with wireless networks through the Wi-Fi module. The signal passes just fine, connection breaks are not observed. Supported OTG function. You can always connect an external USB drive to the device. Having previously formatted it in the FAT32 file system, of course. Otherwise, the external media will not be read by the phone.
Navigation
GPS works no worse. Signals of different types of satellites are steadily perceived. The American GPS system, the Russian GLONASS, and the Chinese Beidou Navigation also work. But with the latter, the device works a little worse than with the first two. The explanation is very simple: Chinese satellites, firstly, are not enough. Secondly, so far most of them cultivate their territory. In Russia, using the phone you can see the work of only 4 Chinese satellites.
But what can not be said and the words of bad, so it is about the speed of the search for satellites. You can find them in just a couple of minutes, or even in one minute. If you compare the operation of the device with the same Mediatek smartphone, then the advantage of the first is immediately evident. The thing is that Mediatek is looking for satellites for 10 minutes, no less. However, he may not find anything at all.
Reviews
In general, users who purchased this phone highlighted the following advantages of the device:
1) Beautiful and comfortable design.
2) Nice hardware stuffing.
3) Support for a large number of wireless communication standards.
Among the shortcomings were:
1) Low power screen.
2) Weak battery.