Review: ZTE Grand X 2
ZTE really wants to be a player in the entry level smartphone market. To underscore that, they’ve just released their latest player in that space in the form of the Grand X 2 which can be found at Bell and Virgin Mobile. Here’s what it has going for it in the way of specs:
The phone is easy to hold and has a solid feel to it. The back is textured and it is removable to expose a removable battery as well slots for the SIM card and MicroSD card. A headphone jack is on top, the power button is on the right, volume button on the left and MicroUSB port on the bottom. The screen is bright and clear, though, it does attract fingerprints at a rate that requires you to keep a microfiber cloth handy at all times. The screen can also get washed out in bright sunlight as well.
The Grand X 2 felt decently quick when I used it. Only graphics intensive games seemed to bog it down. But the real story is the speed that it is capable on Bell’s LTE Network. I averaged 65.67 Mbps downstream and 24.29 Mbps upstream. That’s far from slow. One thing to keep to mind is that this phone is capable of doing 150 Mbps on the Bell LTE network, so you might be able to get faster speeds. Another part of the story is the fact that ZTE’s implementation of Android 5.1 is pretty clean and free of bloat. No useless skins or software that you don’t need is on board.
Another key feature is the camera. It’s does 8MP stills and 1080p video. That means to test it, I need to take a trip to Pearson Airport in Toronto. Here’s the stills that I captured. Click on them to see them in full resolution:
One thing that I really liked is the camera was quick to recycle after each shot. That means that if you like taking action shots, you’ll love the camera. Now over to the videos. First, I saw that a plane was coming in to land while I was on the move. So I quickly got the phone out and managed to get this video. Set it to full screen and to 1080p:
Next I got a video of multiple planes taking off:
In both cases, the video and audio quality is pretty good. Users of the ZTE Grand X 2 will have nothing to complain about when it comes to the camera.
Finally, the battery lasted almost a day and a half when I used it as my daily driver which is outstanding. If you need a phone that can last as long as you do, this is it. So, how much do you have to pony up for the ZTE Grand X 2? It’s $0 on a 2 year plan or $150 outright. That’s more than affordable. Given everything that I see here, you have to think that other phone companies may start looking over their shoulders as ZTE is quickly catching up to them and maybe even passing them as the ZTE Grand X 2 is one phone that is going to get a lot of attention from buyers.
June 11, 2017 at 7:52 pm
Do you happen to know whether you can upgrade the Grand X2 to Marshmallow?
June 11, 2017 at 8:20 pm
That upgrade was promised around the time that the phone came out. But I have not seen it. ZTE has a tendency of being slow in terms of releasing updates for the phones. So it may still eventually show up.
June 29, 2017 at 1:25 pm
Thanks for the review. Its on clearance for $99 these days (June 2017) at Loblaws through their PC Mobile brand, and I was thinking of picking one up as a cheap smartphone. Not sure if the camera is much good though – alotta blur outside the center area.