Today we’re going to be reviewing the ZTE Skate Acqua. The ZTE Skate Acqua isn’t such a powerful phone, however, ZTE phones have often proved to be cheaper than the rest of the high ranking “brand” phones. And trust me when I say that most people who want to try out Android don’t really want to pay a lot of money, yet they do want to get something reliable for their hard earned buck. This phone may just be one of those phones. As I don’t want to waste a lot of time with long intros, let us commence this little review.
SUMMARY
As promised before, from now on for each new device I review I will make a short list at the beginning to state what the phone is good at and what it isn’t. The ZTE Skate Acqua isn’t such a powerful device, as I’ve previously mentioned, but then again, you can probably get one for pretty cheap and in that case the quality would justify the price. The hardware of this phone is way too low for this period, after all, today’s market is dominated by Dual-Cores and Quad-Cores. However, despite lacking hardware strength it’s still pretty decent and capable of running most android apps. It may have a few problem with newer games, but one can manage nonetheless. This phone is really good as far as audio quality goes for all of you who like listening to music from your phone. The ZTE Skate Acqua has a very effective sound enhancement on it that make it into a very advanced MP3 player. That’s all I’m going to let out here, so if you want more details please keep on reading and you’ll see for yourself.
GENERAL
Let us begin the review by taking a brief look at the more general pieces of information about the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a few details about the supported networks and the announcement and release dates of the device. The ZTE Skate Acqua supports both 2G and 3G networks, so that’s pretty good. Those networks are as following : GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900 ( 2G ones ) and HSDPA 900 and HSDPA 2100 ( 3G ones ). The ZTE Skate Acqua was announced in February 2012 and is expect to come out officially world-wide somewhere around Q3 of 2012. That’s about all there is to the general stuff, so let’s move on now to the next part of the review.
BODY
Next up we’ll be taking a look at the body of the device. Here you can find out a bit about the size, weight and see whether or not the device has any particularities related to the display. The ZTE Skate Acqua is a pretty mysterious phone even for the websites where I get my information from. Thus, little is known about the size and weight of the device. However, I can tell you about the screen size and such of the device, but only in the next part. All I can say here is that the ZTE Skate Acqua has Touch Sensitive Controls instead of frontal buttons. Other than that, out of lack of information for this part, I say we move on now to the next one.
DISPLAY
Next up we’ll be taking a brief look at the display of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a bit about the type of screen of the device, the screen size, the screen’s resolution and pixel density and see whether or not the ZTE Skate Acqua has any screen protection and any screen particularities that might set it apart from the rest. The screen of this phone is a TFT capacitive touchscreen with 56 thousand colors. The screen of this phone is around 4.0 inches big and has a screen resolution of approximately 400 x 800 pixels. The pixel density of the ZTE Skate Acqua is around 233 ppi, which is pretty darn good. This phone also has Multitouch, however, it’s not the advanced sort of multitouch that can support more than two simultaneous fingers. That’s about all that can be said about the display of this device so let’s move on now
SOUND
Next up we’ll be taking a look at the audio output capabilities of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here we’ll try and see whether or not the device has any sound enhancements whatsoever on it, be them software-based or otherwise. Anything else such as the alert types, loudspeaker and 3.5 mm jack is already known about Android Phones since they’re all the same on that part. What sets this phone apart on this part is the fact that the ZTE Skate Acqua has Dolby Mobile Sound Enhancement on it and that means that it has a sublime sound quality as far as music or videos on it go. That’s about all there is to know on this part, so let’s move on now to the next part.
MEMORY
Next up we’ll be taking a brief look at the memory of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a thing or two about the internal storage space and ways of expanding said storage space and info about the RAM of the ZTE Skate Acqua. The ZTE Skate Acqua has a RAM memory of 512 MB. Normally that would have been pretty good. And it still is, actually, but comparing it to the current maximum of 2 GB it seems sort of weak, does it not ? Well, the internal storage space of the device is around 4 GB. Should those 4 GB not be enough for you, the ZTE Skate Acqua also has a Micro SD card slot which uses any Micro SD card of up to 32 GB. That’s about it for the memory of the ZTE Skate Acqua, so let us move on now to the next part of the review.
DATA CONNECTION
Next up we’ll be taking a brief look at the connectivity of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a bit about the GPRS and EDGE of the device, the Speed and WLAN and the Bluetooth, USB and other ( if any ) connections. The ZTE Skate Acqua has both GPRS and EDGE. Sadly enough it isn’t mentioned what Class they each are or what Speed they can both reach. Still, moving on : the Speed of this device is as following : HSDPA at 7.2 MB/s and HSUPA. The WLAN of the ZTE Skate Acqua is a Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi hotspot. The Bluetooth of the ZTE Skate Acqua is a v2.1 one with A2DP and EDR. The USB port of the ZTE Skate Acqua is a Micro USB v2.0 one. That’s it for the connectivity, so let’s move on now to the next part of the review.
CAMERA
Next up we”ll be taking a look at the camera of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a thing or two about the main and secondary cameras as well as see their features and capabilities. The main camera of the ZTE Skate Acqua is 5 MP one that can photograph at resolutions of approximately 2592 x 1944 pixels. The features of this camera are as following : autofocus, LED flash and geo-tagging. This is also one of those more advanced 5 MP cameras that can record video in 720p HD at around 30 frames per second. It is unknown whether or not the device has any frontal secondary camera, so we’ll just assume it has none for the time being. That’s all there is to the camera so let’s move on.
BATTERY LIFE
Next up we’ll be taking a look at the battery of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a bit about the battery type of the phone and see how long said battery can function. The battery of the ZTE Skate Acqua is a Standard Li-Ion 1600 mAh battery. Anything else is unknown about this battery since my most reliable sources seem to turn up nothing about this phone. That being said, out of lack of information, let’s move on now.
HARDWARE
Next up we’ll be taking a look at the hardware of the ZTE Skate Acqua. Here you can find out a bit of info about the three main hardware components of the device : processor, motherboard and graphics card. The processor of the ZTE Skate Acqua is a Single-Core 1 GHz Cortex-A5. This processor is accompanied by a Qualcomm MSM7227A Snapdragon and an Adreno 200 GPU. All and all, not a very strong hardware configuration, but then again, I did say that a while back. That’s all there is to this part, so let’s move on now.
SOFTWARE
Next up we’ll be taking a look at the software of the device. Here you can find out a bit about the OS version of the phone and see whether or not it can be upgraded to a better one ( if it needs an upgrade, of course ). The OS version of the ZTE Skate Acqua is Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Since Android v4.0 ICS is the latest version of the Android OS and the best OS for phones, there’s no need for any upgrade, at least not for a few months anyway. Let’s now move on to the final part of the ZTE Skate Acqua.
FEATURES
Last but not least, We’ll be taking a brief look at the features and capabilities of the ZTE Skate Acqua. The sensors of this phone are as following : Accelerometer, Proximity and Compass. The messaging on this phone can be done via : SMS ( with Threaded View ), MMS, E-Mail and Push Mail. The browser of the ZTE Skate Acqua has HTML but has no integrated support for Adobe Flash, which could prove problematic. The ZTE Skate Acqua also has a Stereo FM radio with RDS. This phone’s GPS has integrated A-GPS support and the phone has Java as well through Java MIDP Emulation. The ZTE Skate Acqua is available in two colors : White and Black.
Here is a brief list of what the ZTE Skate Acqua can do :
- SNS integration
- Active noise cancellation with dedicated mic
- MP4/H.263/H.264/WMV player
- MP3/eAAC+/WMA/WAV player
- Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk
- Document viewer/editor
- Voice memo/dial
- Predictive text input
This concludes our little review of the ZTE Skate Acqua. If you feel that anything is lacking from this review feel free to leave your suggestions in the comment section below for things which should be added and I will be sure to take them into consideration when writing my future projects. In the meantime, I sincerely hope you had as much fun reading my little review as I had writing it.
