ZTE’s low cost Grand X Android now on Virgin UK

Rating: Cost competitive access to the Tegra Zone app store

When GoMobile News first saw the ZTE Grand X in action last month [July 2012], we were massively impressed. It runs the very latest version of the Android OS – Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). Unfortunately, the whole ethos behind this particular handset is that it offers powerful performance at a very cost competitive price. So we had to wait until it was genuinely commercially available before we could actually write about it. Luckily for us here in the UK, Virgin Media is now offering its customers the ZTE Grand X on prepay (PAYG) for a mere £199.99. You can check out this offer here.Curiously, the price level is not what most fascinated GoMobile News.

Crucially, purchasing a ZTE Grand X gets you entry into a highly exclusive club – namely, one that enables you to run bleeding-edge mobile games.

That club is known as Tegra Zone and it can be found here. It is effectively a subset of Google Play – previously known as the Android Market.

So let’s be realistic here. You can now obtain the Grand X handset in the UK for a mere £199.

To acquire a typical Apple iPhone 4S you need to commit to, say a 24 month contract (say with 3 UK) which equates to a minimum of £720.

That’s 3.5 times the cost of a ZTE Grand X. GoMobile News has no idea if it is technically feasible, but if the Grand X can be unlocked then it opens up a whole new market niche (for Android mobile gamers).

Crucially, the ZTE Grand X combines an NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core chipset which makes it particularly suitable for high-end mobile video and gaming.

To ensure you get the best video/gaming experience, with Tegra Zone NVDIA has create a subset of Google Play’s app store where you can easily find the games best optimised for your handset.

GoMobile News‘ only gripe about Tegra club is that there appears to be no online method of checking whether or not your precious Android handset is actually endowed with an Nvidia Tegra 2 or 3 processor, or not.

We surmise that NVIDIA just assumes that anyone motivated to buy a Tigra based handset will already know that it can run these top level games. Curious approach.

What we expected was that if you visited the appropriate page on the NVIDIA web site here, there would be some kind of online check to answer your question. Am I Tegra or not?

Anyway, just to keep all of you techies happy we’ve included the full tech specs for the ZTE Grand X below. Let’s see just how successful it proves to be.

Specifications:

Processor: NVIDIA Tegra 2, Dual-core (AP20 Dual Core 1GHz)
Display Size: 4.3″ – 16M QHD (960 x 540)
Modem: NVIDIA i450 (HSDPA Cat14, 21Mbit/s)
Weight: 110g
Dimensions: 127 x 64.6 x9.9 mm
Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi, DLNA
Camera: Dual Camera 5MP AF Flash/0.3 MP
User Memory: 4GB + up to 32GB Micro SD
RAM: 512 MB
Storage: 4GB, expandable to 32GB (Micro SD)
OS: Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS)
Battery: 1650 mAh Li-Ion
Others: Dolby Mobile Sound / HD Voice / HD video capture and playback / Facetones / Evernote / Documents to go / Tegra Zone (Gaming Marketplace)