ZTE curiously silent on new Blade V7 smartphone at MWC 2016

MWC 2016 is usually an opportune time to put out your latest mobile related wares to take advantage of the synergy of energy, not to mention media attention, congregating in one single place. So it's a bit puzzling that ZTE is so far publicly silent about a new smartphone it has prepared. Especially considering it already unveiled a new projector earlier anyway. The landing page and details for a Blade V7 is apparently already available for public eyes. All that's left is for ZTE to actually make it official and make its availability known.

By today's standards, as in after the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy S7 and the LG G5, the ZTE Blade V7 is pretty much a mid-range device. That, however, has never stopped smartphone makers from flaunting them as if they were the next best thing since sliced bread. And it's not like the Blade V7 is shabby either. In fact, you could probably say that it takes cues, a lot of cues, from popular smartphones. Which, sometimes usually means "look almost like an iPhone".

It's hard not to make comparisons, at least from the front and the sides, with a design that has a lot in common with Apple's smartphone. Even the circular home button feels like a homage to the iPhone, though of a slightly different style. On the back, however, the cover, which seems removable, curves slightly, more reminiscent of an HTC design.

In terms of specs, however, the Blade V7 is a typical mid-range Chinese smartphone. That usually means a MediaTek CPU, an 1.3 GHz octa-core in this case. There's 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. The screen is a decent but big 5.5-inch Full HD panel, toting "2.5D" edges. The cameras seem to be also mildly decent, at 13 megapixels with Phase Detection AF on the back and 5 megapixels on the front. While the front camera doesn't have a flash of its own, the device features what is commonly called a "screen flash", utilizing the brightness of the display as a light source.

Curiously, the spec sheet notes that it runs on "Android M", which was the codename for what we all know now as Android Marshmallow. That, as wells a other scattered bits and pieces, seems to show that the product page is far from being in its final form. ZTE at least has a few days left in MWC 2016 to make that happen. Naturally, availability details are nonexistent at this point.