ZTE Pushes Into U.S. Smartphone Market With Budget 'Maven' And 'Sonata 2'

ZTE launched two new budget smartphones in the U.S. today. One is the ZTE Maven, which is available on the AT&T network, and the other is the ZTE Sonata 2, which went to Cricket Wireless.

ZTE has been doing rather well in the U.S. in terms of sales lately. The company saw a 43 percent jump in sales compared to last year and is now the third largest Android smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. According to Strategy Analytics (mentioned in the press release), ZTE now owns 9.1 percent of the postpaid market and 12.3 percent of the prepaid market.

The company has been focused mainly on the low-end of the smartphone market so far, and the Maven and Sonata 2 smartphones are two new budget devices from this segment that should help ZTE further increase its sales volume in the U.S.

The ZTE Maven comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 SoC that contains a quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, Adreno 305 GPU and LTE modem.

The device also brings a 4.5" screen with 854 x 480 resolution, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of storage (3.1 GB free), microSD support, a 5MP rear camera, a VGA front-camera and Bluetooth 4.0 support. It also has a 2,100 mAh battery, which, combined with the smaller screen size and resolution, should give more than a day of battery life. Surprisingly, ZTE is launching the Maven with the latest Android 5.1 on board.

The ZTE Sonata 2, which launched on Cricket Wireless, has a dual-core variant of the Snapdragon 400, a 4" screen with 800 x 480 resolution that's protected by Dragontail Glass, 1 GB of RAM, 4 GB of storage, microSD support, a 5MP rear camera, 2MP front-camera, and a 1,650 mAh battery. The device will run the older KitKat version of Android.

The ZTE Maven is now available as a prepaid phone on AT&T's network for $60, while the ZTE Sonata 2 can be purchased for $30 with activation on Cricket Wireless.

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