A couple of years ago, ZTE was in a similar situation as Huawei is currently. The Chinese firm was the first brand to become listed as a US-banned company. Unlike Huawei, ZTE has violated certain sanctions by dealing with Iran. Therefore, the US applied a ban preventing the company from using software or hardware with US-based technology. Unlike Huawei that has enough resources to keep fighting in the market, ZTE almost closed its doors without hardware or software to keep pushing smartphones. Some Chinese chipset makers such as UNISOC weren’t ready for providing chips in a large scale, or with cutting-edge technology, at that time.
A couple of months after the ban, the
Chinese company and Trump’s administration found an agreement, allowing the
company to return to the market. ZTE may not be among the top-selling
smartphone brands in the world, but it is running to bring innovation. The
brand was the first to deploy a smartphone with an in-display camera and is set
to introduce more innovative devices this year. Now, the company is gearing up
to bring a new ZTE Blade A31 smartphone, and unlike mainstream devices, it
packs a UNISOC chipset.
Today, the new ZTE Blade A31 has passed by
Bluetooth SIG certification. The regulatory agency usually does not bring any
information apart from connectivity features. However, today, it confirmed that
the upcoming phone will pack a UNISOC processor. As far as connectivity is
concerned, the ZTE Blade A31 will pack Bluetooth 4.2 and LTE. So it’s easy to
assume that this is a low-end smartphone. The device should be positioned under
the ZTE Blade A51 that passed by FCC back in November.
The device may carry a similar design to
that of the ZTE Blade A51. We expect a plastic smartphone will at least a
dual-camera setup on the back. It may also come with a fingerprint scanner and
an LCD display. Hopefully, the big battery will be included in the package with
Android 11 running on top. The ZTE Blade A51 has a waterdrop notch display and
a dual-camera setup on the back. So we expect the A31 to be slightly below this
standard. Unfortunately, we don’t know which UNISOC chipset will be present
here, hopefully, it will be one of the company’s Octa-Core solutions.
ZTE is yet to give an official statement
regarding the launch of the Blade A51. The device appeared in FCC in November,
but still haven’t been released. We expect both devices to come at the same
launch date.For those unaware, UNISOC is a Chinese chipset with a long story.
The chipset maker already partnered with Xiaomi in the past. It is gaining more
relevance now that Chinese companies are pushing the home market of chipsets.
After the US ban, Chinese brands need to push local manufacture of chipsets to
use it as an alternative. The chipset maker is already working on 6nm chips, so
it can be a worthy competitor in the future.
