Difference Between ZTE Era and Huawei Ascend D Quad

ZTE Era vs Huawei Ascend D Quad | Speed, Performance and Features Reviewed | Full Specs Compared
 

Even though we were expecting quad core smartphones, they weren’t officially announced nor demonstrated till the MWC 2012. Now we are happy to see more and more quad core smartphones coming into the game without letting the leading vendors dominate the market. So far we have laid our eyes upon quad cores from LG and HTC; we’ll talk about two quad cores from ZTE and Huawei, as well. Strangely, we haven’t seen a quad core from the leading smartphone vendor Samsung although it was rumored that Galaxy S III would be released. We are still waiting for that, and when we have that, we have a complete set of aces to be compared and benchmarked against each other. The day we can do that is the day we can confirm their performance with statistics. Till then, let us talk ZTE and Huawei.

Huawei actually claims that they are introducing the world’s fastest smartphone revealing Huawei Ascend D quad. It may have been a correct statement a couple of days back, but now Huawei’s been equalized by several other vendors like LG, HTC and ZTE. The other quad core we picked up to be compared against is called ZTE Era. As you may have already realized, both these companies are not major vendors in the smartphone game. However, with products like this and sufficient element of surprise, they can easily dominate the Asian market and eventually increase their share in other markets, as well. ZTE has also included their new user interface to this device, so it seems to be something we really need to get our hands on. Here, we will speculate the performance of each smartphone and determine which would be more beneficial to invest in.

ZTE Era

ZTE Era is basically a flagship product of ZTE that is meant to take ZTE to higher levels in the market. The executive vice president of ZTE clearly mentioned that they intend to move from low-middle end of the market to middle-high end of the market with the introduction of devices like Era. He further stated that the handset would mark a new era for the company and hence the name. Era has curved edges and a four touch button setup at the bottom. It has 4.3 inches TFT Capacitive touchscreen featuring a resolution of 960 x 540 pixels at a pixel density of 256ppi. Era comes with 1.3GHz quad core processor on top of Nvidia Tegra 3 chipset and ULP GeForce GPU with 1GB of RAM. Android OS v4.0 ICS will be the governing body for this little beast of a phone.

The new handheld device from ZTE has 8GB of internal storage with the ability to expand it using microSD card up to 32GB. It keeps itself connected using the HSDPA connectivity and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n improvises whenever there is a wireless hotspot available. Since the handset supports speeds up to 21Mbps, you can be generous by sharing your internet connection hosting a wi-fi hotspot. ZTE hasn’t forgotten to include an acceptable camera in this device, as well. The 8MP camera is pretty decent with autofocus and LED flash, and it can record 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second. The camera also has Geo tagging, and the front camera bundled together with Bluetooth v3.0 makes it ideal for video conferencing. As we have mentioned earlier, ZTE has included a new User Interface they have been working on, which is codenamed as Mifavor. It is said to deliver intuitive operation, personalized customization and an exciting new user experience as its fundamental characteristics. ZTE claims that they have completely re-engineered the Vanilla Android user interfaces and that Mifavor has nine home screens by default. We will do a separate piece on Mifavor later when we have more information and hands-on.

Huawei Ascend D Quad

Huawei has actually introduced one of their best smartphones at the MWC this time. Ascend Quad D is certainly an Ace in their lot. It has 4.5 inches IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen that features a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels at a pixel density of 330ppi. The display panel is simply awesome and having that resolution while keeping the pixel density intact is great. At this rate, the image and text reproduction would be unbelievably crisp and clear. Ascend D Quad is powered by 1.2GHz quad core processor on top of Huawei K3V2 chipset with 1GB of RAM. The governing body in this case is Android OS v4.0 ICS. With the given specs of the Huawei chipset, we can clearly state that it would work better than any dual core smartphone in the market.

Ascend D Quad comes with 8GB of internal storage with the option to be expanded using a microSD card up to 32GB. The connectivity is defined using the normal HSDPA that spans up to 21Mbps, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n ensure that you can stay connected even using a wi-fi network. D Quad can also act as a wi-fi hotspot, to share your internet connection as well as stream your rich media content wirelessly to your Smart TV. The built in 8MP camera has autofocus and LED flash along with geo tagging. It can also capture 1080p HD videos @ 30 frames per second and the 1.3MP front camera would be ideal for video conferencing. Huawei Ascend D Quad comes in Metallic Black and Ceramic White flavors with slightly curved edges and a thickness of 8.9mm. Huawei also stresses upon the fact that they have integrated Dolby mobile 3.0 plus sound enhancement, which is good news for all the music fans out there. It has a 1800mAh battery and is supposed to work well for 1-2 days with normal usage as per Huawei, but we say it’ll work around 6-7 hours straight from one charge in the scale of our tests.

Conclusion

It always leaves me with a certain ambiguity when I’m asked to compare and choose a product among a set of product. If the set of products are insanely similar, I’m in even deeper trouble. These two handsets are like that. They are more or less alike, and they may well be interchanged without any lasting damage. Anyhow, if you really want me to pick up a match for you among these two, I’d go for Huawei Ascend D Quad. It is true that the D Quad isn’t clocked at a higher rate, but 100MHz wouldn’t make a visible difference in the UI level, so the consumer isn’t about to notice that. There will be no lag whatsoever with both of these phones which is what the consumer sees. What Ascend D Quad did to pull me towards her is flashing her screen at me. The IPS LCD screen looked gorgeous at the 720p HD resolution with such high pixel density. Not only that, but it also has Dolby Mobile 3 sound enhancement which would do great for a music maniac like me. That been said, I actually took a leap of faith by assuming Huawei K3V2 chipset would perform great. We will have to confirm this fact in time to come after the tests we need to perform.

You might think the conclusion is all about Huawei; well that’s not the case. ZTE Era is a great smartphone, as well. The hardware specs and the software integration are just awesome although I so want to take Mifavor for a ride. Other than that, they should have used a better screen panel, and above all, better resolution as we are talking about a quad core smartphone here. Other than that, we see no apparent shortcomings in ZTE Era. Do consider these as guidelines when you’re going to make the purchasing decision and after you bought the handset, you’ll have the satisfaction of making the right choice.