ZTE’s budget monster, the Grand X Max, comes to Cricket on October 10 for $200

By Andy Boxall October 7, 2014

ZTE has announced another new smartphone ready to go on sale in America. It’s the Grand X Max, and it’s coming to the Cricket Wireless network later this month, when it will cost $200 without a contract. The Grand X Max is the latest in a string of new, higher profile devices from ZTE to be released in the U.S., backing up its ambition to unseat LG from third place in the market.

Will the Grand X Max be the device to do it? That depends on your expectations. It’s a massive phone with a 6-inch touchscreen, and at 162mm long and 83mm wide, it’s even larger than the Huawei Ascend Mate 7. It’s slightly thinner at 7.8mm, though. However, the spec sheet can’t stand up to Huawei’s flagship phablet.

The screen’s resolution is 1280 x 720, and the whole device is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon 200 processor running at 1.2GHz. There’s 1GB of RAM, and 8GB of internal storage memory, but luckily there is also a MicroSD card slot to up this figure by another 32GB. An 8-megapixel camera sits on the rear of the phone with an LED flash, and a rather ordinary 1-megapixel camera is above the screen, ready to take a selfie.

Related: ZTE ZMax on sale through T-Mobile

These mid-range specs may not attract power users, but when matched to the big 3200mAh battery inside the Grand X Max, should result in the phone having a long standby time, although ZTE doesn’t quote any numbers to back this up. Android 4.4 KitKat is installed, but there’s no mention whether the Grand Max X is one of ZTE’s new generation smartphones without its own custom user interface over the top. Even if it is, ZTE has still installed several third-party apps, including the Kindle app, Evernote, and the Peel Smart Remote to control your TV.

Cricket will have the Grand Max X up for sale on October 10, both online and in stores.

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Senior Mobile Writer

Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…

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