Phones4U not stopping at making their own network! Own brand phones coming too!

Image Credit: MobileNewsCWP.

   The other day we heard that Phones4U were planning on launching their own mobile network, but it seems like their plans aren't stopping there. The company will, according to CCS Insight analyst Ben Woods' observant eyes, be launching a range of Phones4U branded phones which will be manufactured by ZTE.

   The tweet embedded below contains a picture of ZTE's in house magazine and an interview with some of Phones4U's bosses. When these bosses were questioned on plans for their own brand fo phones the reply read:

"We are planning it. Probably halfway through 2013," which was followed up with the comment that, "We may do that in conjunction with ZTE."

Interesting piece in ZTE in-house mag. @phones4u planning own brand handsets (ZTE?) mid-2013. @ztepress twitter.com/benwood/status…

— Ben Wood (@benwood) February 4, 2013

   We're a little surprised to be hearing this given that both ZTE and Huawei are working on building out their brand names in European and North American countries, but then the more devices in people's hands the better, especially for ZTE, who have already secured the title of the world's fifth biggest phone manufacturer for their efforts in 2012.

   If ZTE's previous efforts with British carriers are anything to go by then the devices will probably be mid- to low-range just like Orange's San Francisco and Monte Carlo were, both of which were good devices in their own rights, especially for their price!

   2013 will be a big year for both companies; ZTE will start their assault with Mozilla's new Firefox OS, whilst simultaneously managing their Android commitment and Phones4U's network, which launches in March, will be offering 4G before the year is out! Hopefully the duos combined projects will give us something to make us equally excited!

Via CNet

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18/07/2012

ZTE announce the Grand X; perhaps not the 'most advanced gaming handset'.

   Zte have just announced what they previously claimed to be the world's most advanced game smartphone. We're not entirely convinced it's exactly that but it is a very appealing little device.

   On board there's Android 4.0.4 so it's a solid build of Ice Cream Sandwich, but the real news here is that it's completely vanilla Android!!!! Thank you ZTE!

   Under the hood things are very mid-range; there's a Dual Core Tegra 2 chipset, a 4.3″ qHD (960×540) screen, 5 Megapixel camera and a 0.3 megapixel front-facing camera. We have already seen this device a couple of months ago at Mobile World Congress. But back then it was known as the Mimosa X. 

   ZTE have also been touting HD Voice and HD video capture, along with Dolby sound and the usual set of sensors and connectivity options. Initially you'll have 4GB of storage but thankfully there's a microSD card for all your baggage.

   The device will be available at the start of August for £190 on pay as you go from both Virgin and Phones4U.

In other news:

• Windows Phone somehow has managed to steal 4% of the US smartphone market, which is surprisingly positive return from Microsoft's dead OS.
• O2 are apologising to their customers for the outage we reported recently. For affected customers they're giving you 10% off your bill and for every customer on O2 they have a £10 voucher to spend in store!
• Sony have announced a little Walkman powered by Android, we recommend considering the Galaxy Player before you look at the Sony device.
• Continuing the Sony news; there have been reports the company is preparing to release the Xperia Z. The device is meant to be top of the range in every respect! We'll let you know when we hear more!
• The Huawei G300 has now got some ICS!
• Jolla and their Meego projects have announced that they plan to lock down the Kernel and prevent custom ROMS on their device when it hits to market. That's a shame as that'll probably put an end to quite a lot of interest, especially from developers.

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