ZTE V5 review: Good phone, buggy software
It is likely you would not be aware that Chinese hardware maker ZTE is the world's seventh-biggest smartphone maker. The company shipped about 40 million smartphones, last year. A large number of these devices are white label phones which are rebranded by telecom operators and sold as their own.
Even in India, CDMA phones made by ZTE are sold by the likes of Reliance and Tata DoCoMo (erstwhile Tata Indicom) under their own brand names. This is also one reason why brand awareness for the company is low among smartphone consumers even though the network equipment made by it has been widely deployed by mobile carries in the country.
ZTE says it wants to change this with its Nubia line of smartphones. The company has introduced high-end devices in the global market and wants to introduce these phones in India in the near future. But for starters it is eyeing the lucrative budget segment which is witnessing a lot of action with players like Motorola, Xiaomi, Micromax and Asus battling it out.
ZTE has introduced V5 which boasts of Moto G-like hardware specifications and a much better camera. It has priced the phone at a sweet spot of Rs 10,999. Will the ZTE V5 be able to make its presence felt in the crowded budget smartphone market? We try to find out in our review.
Design and build
ZTE V5 looks better compared to similarly priced-phones phones sold by domestic handset vendors. The fit and finish of the phone doesn't really give us a reason to complain. It is not very lightweight but the heft balances out well with the phone's physical dimensions and exudes a feeling of durability even though the back panel of the phone is removable.
There were no squeaks or wobbles. The phone has rounded corners and the plastic front panel is stacked on top of the base frame.
The front is dominated by a 5-inch display with the three capacitive navigation buttons placed just below it and the 5MP front camera located towards the top. The blue-coloured Home capacitive button features what ZTE calls the 'breath light' which pulses whenever there's a notification (for charge status, and events). You can even control the brightness levels of this notification light. The back and menu keys can be interchanged.
The left edge features the volume rocker key while the power key is at the right edge. Both keys offer good tactile feedback and were responsive. The top edge sports a 3.5mm headset jack and the micro-USB port is right at the bottom edge.
The contrasting, white coloured back cover has a matte finish and looks premium. The 13MP rear camera protrudes out a bit and looks but the blue ring around it secures the lens and matches the colour theme. There's an LED flash and a speaker outlet as well.
Taking off the back cover reveals a removable blue coloured battery, two micro-sim slots and a microSD card slot.
Display
The phone sports a 5-inch 720p IPS display made by Sharp. It has Asahi Dragontrail glass protection.
ZTE V5's display is one of the best in its class. Colours look really vivid and brightness levels were optimum. Sunlight legibility was also pretty good. Viewing angles were really wide and there was no distortion.
Thanks to the higher display resolution, images and text appeared to be crisp and sharp. We also found the capacitive buttons and the touch screen to be very responsive.
ZTE also offers a setting for screen saturation levels with Glow, Standard and Soft options, as per your preference.
Camera
The camera on the ZTE V5 is one of its best features. The 13MP rear camera that boasts of blue glass composite IR filter and a Sony Exmor RS CMOS sensor, takes great pictures in daylight with good level of detail, accurate colours and balanced contrast.
Pictures taken indoors with sufficient ambient lighting also turned out to be good.
However, we observed that pictures taken in low light conditions had a lot of noise even though these pictures offered good detail compared to other phones of the same segment. The large f2.2 aperture facilitates better exposure but it appears that the image processing had some issues. It is worth pointing out that we did not switch to the night mode while taking these pictures.
The camera is capable of recording up to 1080p resolution video and the output was decent enough for casual use but did not stand out when compared to similarly priced phones.
What's really worth mentioning is the phone's ability to take good quality selfies thanks to its wide-angled, 5MP front facing camera. The BSI sensor makes low light selfies tolerable but the final image could have been less noisy. The phone's camera app lets you apply a number of special effects to enhance your facial features and hide imperfections.
The camera app also offers the option to toggle between a simple mode and an advanced mode with the latter offering granular control on attributes like brightness, exposure, and white balance.
Software
ZTE V5 runs a highly customized version of Android 4.4 KitKat. The company calls the software skin Nubia UI and adds custom apps, app icons, menus and transition effects to give it a distinct flavour.
Just like Xiaomi's MIUI and Gionee's Amigo skins, the UI is devoid of an app drawer and app icons and widgets are spread across the home screens. The unified home screen-app launcher style may come across as user-friendly to people who have not used an Android phone before. But it will take some time to get used to if you have already been using an Android smartphone. You can of course download and install an alternate launcher.
One major quirk that we discovered was that the default UI lacks a 'recent apps' menu for switching between and dismissing running apps. We checked with the ZTE product team team which confirmed the same. Even after installing the Google Now launcher, we were not able to access this functionality.
The omission feels odd, specially if you have used an Android phone before. There's an iPad-like finger swipe gesture for cycling between apps though (requires three and not four fingers). This also means you can't dismiss background apps selectively although there's a toggle to clear all app cache.
The phone comes with a sleep mode that even plays music to relax you. There's motion based gesture control with support for flip to mute, shake to clear notifications and motion sensing answer, among others. In our use the gestures worked without any hiccups but we don't think you'll use them on a daily basis. The phone also lets you disable widgets and lock screen notifications in case you don't want these.
ZTE V5 software has a number of bugs. For instance, you can't change the messaging and notification alert tones. The Gallery app crashes after enabling Sleep Mode. A number of instructions or prompts feature English text that reads awkward probably because of translation issues. Also, the phone's settings menu is a little unintuitive; for instance, the storage settings are hidden under the 'About' menu.
Performance
The ZTE V5 is powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and 1GB RAM. Navigating across the phone's menu, launching apps and switching between them was mostly smooth.
In synthetic benchmarks, the phone's scores are slightly lower than the Motorola Moto G. The phone scored 17,008 in Antutu, 8033 in Quadrant and 55.2 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. Some of these scores are better than the Nexus 4. These scores are considerably lower than Xiaomi's much cheaper Redmi 1S smartphone. However, we'd not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.
In terms of multimedia, the phone comes with FM radio, and the default video player supports most popular multimedia file formats. The phone's built-in speaker offers decent sound output but sound tends to get muffled when it lies on its back on a soft surface.
The phone comes with just 4GB internal storage out of which about 3GB is available to the user. Fortunately, it comes with a microSD card slot and lets you install apps on it.
We did not encounter any problems while making calls or hearing the other party, however, a number of people we called complained that our voice was not very loud. This could be a signal reception issue as the problem was not persistent. Voice clarity and loudness levels were also up to the mark.
The phone comes with GPS for navigation and maps and was easily able to lock a signal.
The ZTE V5 comes with a 2,400mAh battery that offers decent backup. With moderate to high usage, including about one to two hours of making calls, playing games, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, it easily lasted us a full working day, with the screen brightness at the highest level and 3G turned on. The phone comes with a Powersave mode that restricts CPU use, screen brightness and turns off data when the phone battery is low.
Gaming
Games like Subway Surfers and Temple Run run smoothly without any lag or stutter. Even graphics-intensive games like Asphalt 8 and Riptide GP 2 performed decently with occasional frame drops.
Verdict
At Rs 10,999, the ZTE V5 could have been a great budget smartphone, especially with its good camera hardware, decent performance and battery life, and nice build quality. However, the phone's software lacks refinement, and prevents us from recommending it over the new Motorola Moto G and Xiaomi Redmi 1S. The omission of the recent apps menu would annoy users who're switching from another Android phone.
The high level of noise in low-light images also appears to be related to a processing issue. We hope ZTE comes out with a software update to fix these glitches.
In terms of alternatives, the Xiaomi Redmi 1S offers a better smartphone experience and costs Rs 5,000 less. However, it is hard to get your hands on the phone as it 'sells out' in seconds during its weekly flash sales. We're also not sure how long Xiaomi would sell the phone. The company halted the sales of its Mi 3 phone a month after introducing it. Motorola Moto G (second generation) is also a great budget option if you can stretch your budget by Rs 2,000.
Even in India, CDMA phones made by ZTE are sold by the likes of Reliance and Tata DoCoMo (erstwhile Tata Indicom) under their own brand names. This is also one reason why brand awareness for the company is low among smartphone consumers even though the network equipment made by it has been widely deployed by mobile carries in the country.
ZTE says it wants to change this with its Nubia line of smartphones. The company has introduced high-end devices in the global market and wants to introduce these phones in India in the near future. But for starters it is eyeing the lucrative budget segment which is witnessing a lot of action with players like Motorola, Xiaomi, Micromax and Asus battling it out.
ZTE has introduced V5 which boasts of Moto G-like hardware specifications and a much better camera. It has priced the phone at a sweet spot of Rs 10,999. Will the ZTE V5 be able to make its presence felt in the crowded budget smartphone market? We try to find out in our review.
Design and build
ZTE V5 looks better compared to similarly priced-phones phones sold by domestic handset vendors. The fit and finish of the phone doesn't really give us a reason to complain. It is not very lightweight but the heft balances out well with the phone's physical dimensions and exudes a feeling of durability even though the back panel of the phone is removable.
There were no squeaks or wobbles. The phone has rounded corners and the plastic front panel is stacked on top of the base frame.
The front is dominated by a 5-inch display with the three capacitive navigation buttons placed just below it and the 5MP front camera located towards the top. The blue-coloured Home capacitive button features what ZTE calls the 'breath light' which pulses whenever there's a notification (for charge status, and events). You can even control the brightness levels of this notification light. The back and menu keys can be interchanged.
The left edge features the volume rocker key while the power key is at the right edge. Both keys offer good tactile feedback and were responsive. The top edge sports a 3.5mm headset jack and the micro-USB port is right at the bottom edge.
The contrasting, white coloured back cover has a matte finish and looks premium. The 13MP rear camera protrudes out a bit and looks but the blue ring around it secures the lens and matches the colour theme. There's an LED flash and a speaker outlet as well.
Taking off the back cover reveals a removable blue coloured battery, two micro-sim slots and a microSD card slot.
Display
The phone sports a 5-inch 720p IPS display made by Sharp. It has Asahi Dragontrail glass protection.
ZTE V5's display is one of the best in its class. Colours look really vivid and brightness levels were optimum. Sunlight legibility was also pretty good. Viewing angles were really wide and there was no distortion.
Thanks to the higher display resolution, images and text appeared to be crisp and sharp. We also found the capacitive buttons and the touch screen to be very responsive.
ZTE also offers a setting for screen saturation levels with Glow, Standard and Soft options, as per your preference.
Camera
The camera on the ZTE V5 is one of its best features. The 13MP rear camera that boasts of blue glass composite IR filter and a Sony Exmor RS CMOS sensor, takes great pictures in daylight with good level of detail, accurate colours and balanced contrast.
Pictures taken indoors with sufficient ambient lighting also turned out to be good.
However, we observed that pictures taken in low light conditions had a lot of noise even though these pictures offered good detail compared to other phones of the same segment. The large f2.2 aperture facilitates better exposure but it appears that the image processing had some issues. It is worth pointing out that we did not switch to the night mode while taking these pictures.
The camera is capable of recording up to 1080p resolution video and the output was decent enough for casual use but did not stand out when compared to similarly priced phones.
What's really worth mentioning is the phone's ability to take good quality selfies thanks to its wide-angled, 5MP front facing camera. The BSI sensor makes low light selfies tolerable but the final image could have been less noisy. The phone's camera app lets you apply a number of special effects to enhance your facial features and hide imperfections.
The camera app also offers the option to toggle between a simple mode and an advanced mode with the latter offering granular control on attributes like brightness, exposure, and white balance.
Software
ZTE V5 runs a highly customized version of Android 4.4 KitKat. The company calls the software skin Nubia UI and adds custom apps, app icons, menus and transition effects to give it a distinct flavour.
Just like Xiaomi's MIUI and Gionee's Amigo skins, the UI is devoid of an app drawer and app icons and widgets are spread across the home screens. The unified home screen-app launcher style may come across as user-friendly to people who have not used an Android phone before. But it will take some time to get used to if you have already been using an Android smartphone. You can of course download and install an alternate launcher.
One major quirk that we discovered was that the default UI lacks a 'recent apps' menu for switching between and dismissing running apps. We checked with the ZTE product team team which confirmed the same. Even after installing the Google Now launcher, we were not able to access this functionality.
The omission feels odd, specially if you have used an Android phone before. There's an iPad-like finger swipe gesture for cycling between apps though (requires three and not four fingers). This also means you can't dismiss background apps selectively although there's a toggle to clear all app cache.
The phone comes with a sleep mode that even plays music to relax you. There's motion based gesture control with support for flip to mute, shake to clear notifications and motion sensing answer, among others. In our use the gestures worked without any hiccups but we don't think you'll use them on a daily basis. The phone also lets you disable widgets and lock screen notifications in case you don't want these.
ZTE V5 software has a number of bugs. For instance, you can't change the messaging and notification alert tones. The Gallery app crashes after enabling Sleep Mode. A number of instructions or prompts feature English text that reads awkward probably because of translation issues. Also, the phone's settings menu is a little unintuitive; for instance, the storage settings are hidden under the 'About' menu.
Performance
The ZTE V5 is powered by a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor and 1GB RAM. Navigating across the phone's menu, launching apps and switching between them was mostly smooth.
In synthetic benchmarks, the phone's scores are slightly lower than the Motorola Moto G. The phone scored 17,008 in Antutu, 8033 in Quadrant and 55.2 in Nenamark 2 benchmark tests. Some of these scores are better than the Nexus 4. These scores are considerably lower than Xiaomi's much cheaper Redmi 1S smartphone. However, we'd not recommend a phone based solely on benchmarks as real world performance is different at times.
In terms of multimedia, the phone comes with FM radio, and the default video player supports most popular multimedia file formats. The phone's built-in speaker offers decent sound output but sound tends to get muffled when it lies on its back on a soft surface.
The phone comes with just 4GB internal storage out of which about 3GB is available to the user. Fortunately, it comes with a microSD card slot and lets you install apps on it.
We did not encounter any problems while making calls or hearing the other party, however, a number of people we called complained that our voice was not very loud. This could be a signal reception issue as the problem was not persistent. Voice clarity and loudness levels were also up to the mark.
The phone comes with GPS for navigation and maps and was easily able to lock a signal.
The ZTE V5 comes with a 2,400mAh battery that offers decent backup. With moderate to high usage, including about one to two hours of making calls, playing games, clicking some pictures, listening to music and browsing the web, it easily lasted us a full working day, with the screen brightness at the highest level and 3G turned on. The phone comes with a Powersave mode that restricts CPU use, screen brightness and turns off data when the phone battery is low.
Gaming
Games like Subway Surfers and Temple Run run smoothly without any lag or stutter. Even graphics-intensive games like Asphalt 8 and Riptide GP 2 performed decently with occasional frame drops.
Verdict
At Rs 10,999, the ZTE V5 could have been a great budget smartphone, especially with its good camera hardware, decent performance and battery life, and nice build quality. However, the phone's software lacks refinement, and prevents us from recommending it over the new Motorola Moto G and Xiaomi Redmi 1S. The omission of the recent apps menu would annoy users who're switching from another Android phone.
The high level of noise in low-light images also appears to be related to a processing issue. We hope ZTE comes out with a software update to fix these glitches.
In terms of alternatives, the Xiaomi Redmi 1S offers a better smartphone experience and costs Rs 5,000 less. However, it is hard to get your hands on the phone as it 'sells out' in seconds during its weekly flash sales. We're also not sure how long Xiaomi would sell the phone. The company halted the sales of its Mi 3 phone a month after introducing it. Motorola Moto G (second generation) is also a great budget option if you can stretch your budget by Rs 2,000.
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