A Closer Look at ZTE’s Android Phones: ZTE Era and N910

ZTE announced a total of 15 devices today at its Mobile World Congress Press conference, but the ZTE Era definitely got the most buzz.

The Era is ZTE’s first quadcore offering running the NVIDIA Tegra 3 1.3GHz AP30 chipset. I also got a chance to play with the N91, an LTE dual-core phone also announced today.

ZTE claims that the Era is “one of the thinnest quadcore phones.” At just 7.8mm thick, the Era has a very slim profile and feels really nice in hand. The construction feels high quality and the design is eye-catching with a silver and black color scheme.

The other highlight of the Era is its 4.3-inch qHD (960 by 540 pixels) TFT display, which looks incredibly bright with vivid colors and sharp detail. It also has an 8-megapixel camera as well as an MHL port for connecting to your HDTV. Another important feature to note is that the Era has the Icera HSPA+ modem, which is also made by NVIDIA. The Icera modem is also found on the ZTE Mimosa X, which was announced last week.

Performance-wise, the ZTE Era was incredibly snappy. In my brief hands-on time, I was able to open up multiple applications with ease. The network connection was shoddy in the hotel where I was demoing the Edge, but the entire OS felt smooth.

The other LTE Ice Cream Sandwich phone, the ZTE N910, also has a 4.3-inch display, but it is WVGA at a slightly lower resolution of 480 by 800 pixels. It sports a 5-megapixel camera with a flash and is powered by a Qualcomm 1.2GHz dual-core processor. The N91 is a CMDA LTE phone. The ZTE 910 doesn’t feel as high quality as the other two phones, but you still get pretty good specs for what is supposed to be an inexpensive phone.

For more blogs, stories, photos, and video from the world’s largest mobile show, check out PCWorld’s complete coverage of Mobile World Congress 2012.