ZTE unveils Grand S

As part of ZTE’s high-end line of Grand Series handsets, which include the Grand Era and the Grand X, the Grand S is equipped with a 5-inch full HD touch screen, which features 440ppi and is made out of Corning Gorilla Glass.

During my brief time with the handset, the display looked pleasingly bright and crisp, and it’s the biggest display I’ve seen on a ZTE device. However, it was slightly unresponsive — it took a few extra swipes and hard presses to navigate through its five home screens and open apps.

A not-so-sensitive display isn’t uncommon in ZTE smartphones, especially in the entry-level range, but it was disappointing to see such performance on a higher-end product like this.

Fortunately, the build quality was impressive. Its sturdy and thin uni-body design (its profile measure 6.9mm) prevents the battery from being removable, but the Grand S comes in two finishes: matte and glossy. If you want matte, black and white colors are available. Glossy colors include pink, yellow, red, and mint green.

The 4G LTE handset also ships natively with Android Jelly Bean and is powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor.

For starters, yes, we’re looking at a 5-inch HD (1,920 x 1,080) display. The Grand S is powered by a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro and will debut this quarter in China with Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). It’s accompanied by a 13-megapixel auto-focus camera on the rear and a 2-megapixel camera on the front. Both shooters are capable of recording video in 1080p. The Grand S boasts 2GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in storage, and despite its super thin 6.9mm enclosure, it features a microSD card slot — something the Droid DNA can’t match.

If anything, it appears that ZTE sacrificed battery capacity to meet the size constraints of the Grand S, as a somewhat meager 1,780mAh cell is sealed within the phone’s unibody enclosure.