ZTE is announcing three new smartphones running Android KitKat today at IFA. Two of them, the Blade Vec 3G and Blade Vec 4G, look almost identical but have a few differences internally, while the third one, the ZTE Kis 3, has a different design and is targeted at the very low end of the market.
The Blade Vec 4G is the highest-end model of the three and comes with a 5" TFT LCD screen with a 720p resolution, 13MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, 16 GB of storage, 1 GB of RAM, Bluetooth 4.0 and as the name implies, 4G connectivity.
The phone is powered by a quad-core 1.2 GHz Cortex A7 processor from Qualcomm (Snapdragon 400) and runs Android 4.4. It's not a new chip like the Cortex A53-based Snapdragon 410 that we're seeing in some other devices being announced at IFA, but it should have plenty of performance for the level of the market that ZTE is targeting.
The Blade Vec 3G is much like its brother and comes with many of the same specs. The main differences are that it only has 3G connectivity and that it uses an 8MP camera on the back and 5MP camera in the front. It's a little strange that ZTE decided to give the lower-end 3G version a higher quality "selfie" camera, but it probably wanted at least one of these devices to be great at taking selfies.
The Blade Vec 3G seems to have a different processor, too, ditching the Snapdragon 400 for a quad-core 1.3 GHz Cortex A7 Mediatek chip, which should actually be a little faster thanks to the higher clock speed. ZTE most likely chose it because it was cheaper than Qualcomm's processor.
The phone comes with only 8 GB of storage, which is half as much as the Vec 4G, but that should still be enough space for apps for most people. Both phones have a 2,300 mAh battery.
ZTE's low-end smartphone, the Kis 3 Max, comes with a 4.5" screen, 854 x 480 resolution, 512 MB of RAM (which should be enough for KitKat), 4 GB of storage, 5MP rear camera, 2MP front camera, Bluetooth 3.0 and a 2,300 mAh battery. This phone comes with a dual-core 1.3 GHz Cortex A7 chip from Mediatek. All three handsets run Android 4.4 KitKat.
The Blade Vec 4G has already been launched in Turkey, France, Romania, Slovakia, Belgium, Norway and Sweden. The pricing and availability for the other two models will be announced soon.
Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
