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ZTE unveils the Blade Force, an affordable phone for the Boost Mobile network

Christian de Looper
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Cricket Wireless
Kārlis Dambrāns/123rf
ZTE has taken the wraps off of its latest Boost Mobile-destined smartphone, the ZTE Blade Force. Like some of ZTE’s other recent launches, the phone is aimed at offering decent specs at a reasonable price, and will cost $130 from Boost Mobile.

So what are those specs? Well, for starters, it’ll offer a 5.5-inch HD display with a 3,000mAh battery — which should be plenty to get most people through the day, even heavy users. It also offers an unspecified Qualcomm Snapdragon chip with 2BG of RAM, and comes preloaded with Android 7.1.1 Nougat. While that’s not the latest version of Android, the phone is still relatively up to date.

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The camera has become increasingly important in a phone over the past few years, and the camera on this phone doesn’t look to be all that bad. It sits at 8-megapixels, with a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. A good amount of storage is also important, and the ZTE Blade Force comes with 16GB of it — though that can be expanded with the microSD card slot.

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Perhaps the most important thing about this phone is that it’s the cheapest to support Sprint’s High Performance User Equipment, or HPUE, which basically allows for LTE connection speeds of up to a massive 1Gbps. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll hit those speeds, but it does mean that if you live in an area where it’s supported, you may be able to get some pretty fast speeds in the right conditions.

Sure, the phone isn’t a flagship, but it seems to offer some pretty great value for money.

“The ZTE Blade Force continues to demonstrate how ZTE seamlessly blends innovation and affordability into our lineup, while remaining true to what consumers want most in their smartphone,” said Lixin Cheng, CEO of ZTE Mobile Devices, in a statement. “The Blade Force packs big features, Sprint’s HPUE technology, and a lot more into an affordable price point.”

To get the phone, you’ll need to be a Boost Mobile customer or willing to switch over to the mobile virtual network operator. As mentioned, it will set you back $130. Check it out for yourself on the Boost Mobile website.

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Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper
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