Earlier this year, ZTE showcased the ZTE Grand S II smartphone and now the device has finally been launched in Indian market through the online retailer Amazon. Not very long back, we saw another Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi come out with their smartphone called Mi3. The Xiaomi Mi3 took the market by storm with its impressive hardware and excellent built quality. It was available through Flipkart and managed to sell in impressive numbers. The manufacturer was playing it safe and sold the devices through flash sales with stocks clearing out in seconds.
With that kind of response and limited availability, it was very obvious that a large number of interested buyers were not able to get their hands on that device. There was no other device in the same price bracket offering features like this. In fact the closest match was Google Nexus 5 which costs twice as much. Now the ZTE Grand S II has entered the market and it seems to be an impressive device. It comes with the same price tag as the Xiaomi Mi3 and the spec sheet looks very much similar. So we take a closer look at this alternative just in case you missed the Xiaomi Mi3.
Design:
Xiaomi took the game of built quality to another level with the Mi3. At this price point, we were used to see polycarbonate devices with just acceptable built quality. The Mi3 came in with an excellent unibody design and while it is a bit tall, it is slim and light to make handling easy. The ZTE Grand S II has got a decent design which you would very much appreciate at this price point; if you haven’t used the Xiaomi Mi3. It hasn’t got a simple unibody design like the Mi3.
What it has got instead is a rounded design which isn’t bad at all. The front is dominated by the screen and the bezels are reasonable. They have used some metal on the device but again, the job isn’t as good as the Xiaomi. You will find large white plastic section at the top and bottom of its back. The camera sits on the plastic section near the top of back panel. It doesn’t feel as solidly built either. It comes with a larger display so it is considerably bigger than the Mi3. It is 13 mm taller and 3 mm wider than the Xiaomi. It is also fatter by a full mm and gains almost 5 Gms of weight but still weighs decent considering its size. Obviously with this size, it isn’t very practical for single handed use.
Display:
Both the devices have got full HD displays running on the same display technology. They are both IPS LCD displays. The Xiaomi comes with a 5 inch display while the ZTE offers a 5.5 inch display. Obviously the difference in size creates a difference in pixel density of both the devices. On the Mi3, you get a pixel density of 441 ppi while on the Grand S II, the pixel density is a bit lower at 401 ppi. Still both of them are very sharp and it is nearly impossible to spot this difference in the pixel density of two displays.
Both the devices replicate colours fairly well and have got really impressive viewing angles. The contrast ratios are decent as well. The brightness of both the devices can be turned quite low for using in the dark but Xiaomi can go really low. We really appreciate this as most of the times, the device is used indoors. The display of Xiaomi Mi3 comes with Gorilla Glass 3 protection while they haven’t said anything like that about the ZTE. So we would suggest investing into a good screen protection as soon as you get the device. That being said, the protection on Xiaomi doesn’t feel very good either as it has started to attract some micro scratches.
Hardware:
Both the devices are very evenly matched here. They both run the hardware that was seen in the flagship devices of last generation. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 chipset was seen on devices like LG G2 and Google Nexus 5 and is quite powerful. There are newer chipsets in the market now for quite a while but that doesn’t mean these devices aren’t powerful. This chipset is still very powerful and these devices can handle a lot. It can handle almost everything you throw at it. Benchmark scores of both the devices aren’t very far due to these similarities. The processor has a maximum clock speed of 2.3 GHz. Both the devices come with 2 GB of RAM.
The Xiaomi Mi3 was available with 16 GB of internal storage in the Indian market. There is no option of adding a micro SD card slot. The ZTE has got an edge here as it has also got a card slot which can support up to 32 GB of storage. Both the devices offer similar connectivity options. Even the battery capacity of both the devices is almost same. The ZTE comes with a 3100 mAh battery against the 3050 mAh battery on Mi3. Expect the ZTE Grand S II to offer similar battery life. Both these devices come with custom version of android.
Camera:
Both the devices come with 13 megapixel primary camera. While we can’t say a lot about the camera of ZTE Grand S II at the moment, we know that the camera on Mi3 is quite good. The custom camera interface offers a wide range of features including manual setting for ISO and shutter speed. The camera on ZTE should also be reasonably good. The front camera on the ZTE has a resolution of 2 megapixels which is the same as Mi3. Overall both these devices are very similar to each other and apart from the display size, there is not much to differentiate between these two devices. If you are looking for a powerful device, the ZTE Grand S II is a good option.
Author Bio : The Author have great interest in writing article on Technology and Handset reviews, currently he is working with 91mobiles.
