Smartphone ZTE Grand S2: specs, reviews, photos

Now mobile phones and smartphones are developing quite dynamically. Many people change their devices every two to three years, or even annually. A new model is difficult to surprise, but nevertheless companies around the world continue to literally punch mobile devices. A peculiar arms race, if you like. The smartphone manufacturers compete in three parameters at once.

This, first, the efficiency of energy consumption. Everybody wants to have a smartphone that stably holds the charge even with active use. Many companies are striving 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, rather than a real "brick". And, of course, the battle is for the most productive stuffing of the smartphone.

Introduction

Perhaps, at present, smartphones from Chinese manufacturers will be the best option for people who do not have an impressive budget. They practically do not concede in productivity to leading world companies, but at the same time are much cheaper. One of the most proven suppliers of mobile technology on the world market is the Chinese company ZTE. Grand S2, the review of which will be presented in this article, is a good model of the brand.

Equipment

The ZTE Grand S2 smartphone, whose reviews will be summarized in this article, is shipped in a box along with a removable battery, charging, cable and instructions in Chinese. Well, the kit is rather modest, you can say. No headsets, no headphones and other "bells and whistles" in the kit there. But this is not so important.

Battery and charger

So, the smartphone battery has a capacity of 3 100 mAh. The charge actually gives 1.6 A, although the documents say 1.5 A. It works with a voltage of 5 V. The USB cable serves as a synchronization tool with a personal computer or laptop and is integrated into the charging unit of the device.

Appearance

Phone ZTE Grand S2 16 GB black is simple enough, but at the same time and with taste. The case of a smartphone is nothing more than a candy bar. The screen, of course, touch. Its dimensions are almost identical to the size of the screen of the smartphone Samsung Galaxy Note 3. It is worth noting that not only this has been put on the list of similar parameters: similar to each other models and form. If you look closely, you can see that the ZTE Grand S2 16 GB, whose review is given in the article, has rounded corners.

Side faces

On the side edge is a plastic edging silvery. It is painted in metal style. Glass beads over the surface of the smartphone do not perform, which can not but rejoice. So, the phone looks quite attractive and presentable. But it should be noted that there is a bad side: the device is deprived of additional protection against mechanical damage. Therefore, the fall of the device on a hard surface can have fatal consequences for its own sake.

In any case, we hope that this will not happen, and Corning Gorilla 3 glass is installed for a reason, the technology will still protect the device from damage. The frame of the screen is approximately three millimeters, so there is no need to talk about their subtlety. It should be noted that the 5.5-smartphone ZTE Grand S2, whose review is made in this article, is manufactured quite reliably. Building quality, no 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.

Upper butt

Above the display you can see the brand name. There is a conversational speaker. A frontal camera fronted slightly to the right. There is an LED indicator that notifies the user of the phone about events (these can be incoming text messages and voice calls, for example). By the way, you can change the color of the event indicator (you can choose from red, blue, green colors).

In the design built-in light sensors for automatic brightness and screen backlighting, as well as the proximity sensor (when approaching the ear the screen will turn off, so that during a phone call do not press the buttons). As shown by testing, the sensors work more than tolerably.

On the phone ZTE Grand S2, whose review is presented in this article, touch buttons are applied. This is the "menu", "back" and "home." Illumination at the buttons is, so in the dark the user never makes a mistake in navigation. The backlight, by the way, is pleasant to the eye. You can say that the golden mean: and highlights the main 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 the connector of the standard MicroUSB. There is also a main microphone, through which the user can conduct a conversation on the device. The back cover of the phone can be easily removed. To do this, just click on a special cutout, located on the left side of the model ZTE Grand S2.

On the opposite side there are buttons that allow you to adjust the volume of the device. There is also a power 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 of the device there is only a 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack. The company ZTE has advertising, which mentions the presence of an additional microphone next to the input for headphones. In fact, there is nothing similar there.

Backside

Qualitatively, the back cover of the device is also made. It is made of plastic. It is painted in silvery gray color, with a "disguise" for polished metal. Experts have repeatedly noted that this move is similar to the move applied to the smartphone LG G3. The rear panel houses a camera surrounded by a silver rim. Nearby is the LED flash, the grille of the sound speaker, another one, now a valid microphone and the company logo.

Battery ZTE Grand S2, reviews of which we will consider at the end of the article, it is located under the back cover. There are also slots in which memory cards (standard MicroSD) and SIM-cards are installed. Important: The device supports only MicroSIM. You can see the contacts in the design. They are more like the first look at the contacts designed for wireless charging. But the seller assures us that these contacts are nothing but test points, so you can immediately forget about wireless charging, alas.

Display

ZTE Grand S2 has a quality display, the diagonal of which is 5.5 inches. The display device is IPS technology, which reduces the load on the eyes, making screen reading more comfortable and safe for the user. The display resolution is 1920 by 1080 pixels. The density is 401 pixels per inch. By the way, on the Grand S2 screens are installed immediately from three different manufacturers. In different batches of devices the manufacturer of screens is different.

For example, the company previously purchased displays manufactured by LG. They were well read in the sunlight, and the broken pixels were several times less. But the products of the companies 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 requires root rights. ZTE Grand S2 supports the function of working in gloves. Everything works correctly, but with one caveat: gloves should not be too thick, otherwise thermal sensors will not work. Otherwise, the display boasts decent viewing angles, while turning the contrast of the picture does not drop very much. Yes, and this is typical for a display that uses OGS technology.

Work in natural light

In the sun, the screen behaves quite weakly. Although the brightness of the screen is rather big, it's very difficult to get a high-quality picture of the sun in the sun. If at all it is feasible. The exception will be if the brightness is "screwed" to the maximum. You can use a utility called "Lux", which will set a comfortable brightness for darkness. All the matter is that the regular automatic adjustment does not allow to adjust all so precisely.

Screen settings allow you to set the level of color saturation. By the standard there are three options. All of them differ among themselves. The first mode allows you to see colors as they really are. The second mode makes the colors a bit more saturated. Well, the third option is provided for users who like AMOLED.

The touch screen supports the multitouch function. However, at the same time, it can only process 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 true, but let's not forget that the device was designed for general use, and not for various toys designed for devices running the Android operating system.

Operating platform and "iron"

The basis of the phone is the Snapdragon 801 processor. It has four cores. Each of them has a clock speed of 2.3 GHz. At the same time, the graphic accelerator of the Adreno family, model 330, was placed in the hardware platform of the device. Its operating frequency is 578 MHz. OpenCL 1.2 technologies are supported, as well as OpenGL ES 3.0. The RAM is set to 2 GB. This, in principle, is enough for the lion's share of applications. You can free up the volume by removing Chinese programs that we absolutely do not need. After that, it can free up to 800 MB. It should be noted that the interface works really smoothly. No frieze, no lag.

Work with mobile networks

The device supports work with a mobile network of the standard 4G. What is actually obtained? In fact, it turns out that 3G is stable everywhere. That is, you can be at least in Europe, even on the territory of Russia - you will not notice any problems with 3G. This is very important, as many smartphones of Chinese production, without exaggeration, suffer incompatibility with this standard. 4G works stably both in Russia and in Europe, but not with all operators. The coverage of a decent level for this standard is little where, but certain successes are being made by Beeline, MTS and Megafon in this direction.

The device works well with wireless networks through a Wi-Fi module. The signal is simply excellent, the connection breaks are observed. The OTG function is supported. You can always connect an external USB storage device to the device. Preformativirovat it in the file system FAT32, of course. Otherwise, the external media will not be read by the phone.

Navigation

GPS works just fine. The signals of different types of satellites are steadily perceived. The US GPS system, the Russian GLONASS, and the Chinese Beidou Navigation operate. But with the latter the device works a little worse than with the first two. The explanation is very simple: the Chinese satellites, firstly, are not enough. Secondly, most of them are still processing their territory. In Russia, using a phone, you can see the work of only 4 Chinese satellites.

But what can not be said and the word bad, is the speed of finding satellites. You can find them only in a couple of minutes, or even in one minute. If you compare the work of the device with the same smartphone model Mediatek, then the advantage of the first immediately striking. The thing is that Mediatek is looking for satellites about 10 minutes, no less. At the same time, he can not find anything at all.

Reviews

In general, users who purchased this phone, distinguished the following advantages of the device:

1) Beautiful and comfortable design.

2) Good hardware stuffing.

3) Support a large number of wireless communication standards.

Among the shortcomings were:

1) Low-power screen.

2) Weak battery.