First look at ZTE's dual-camera Blade V8 Pro

ZTE showed up at CES this year with the new Blade V8 Pro. The phone isn’t going to win any awards for its design or internal components, but the company shouldn’t have any problems selling it since it’s priced at $230 and can easily go head-to-head with the new Honor 6X. The two phones sell for roughly the same amount and come with very similar features.

The spec sheet of the ZTE Blade V8 Pro includes a 5.5-inch 1080p display protected by 2.5D Gorilla Glass 3, Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage, microSD card support (up to 128GB), a front-facing 8MP camera, 13MP monochrome and RGS sensors for the rear camera array and a decent 3,140 mAh battery to keep the phone up and running through a heavy work day.

As you might imagine, the Blade V8 Pro’s main selling point (besides its low price) is the dual-sensor camera. Since ZTE is positioning this phone directly to compete with the Honor 6X, it’s not surprising to see that the camera setup on ZTE’s phone takes a few queues for Honor’s. The monochrome and RGB sensors are used simultaneously, merging the data to deliver brighter and more colorful images. The two sensor also collect depth information, allowing the user to manually adjust the focal point after the shot is taken and apply a digital blur to the background.

For us, the only advantage that the V8 Pro has over Honor’s phone is its software. The phone is still running on Android Marshmallow (the Nougat update is in the works), but it’s not bogged down with bloatware and comes with a launcher with sports a familiar-looking app launcher. ZTE still has a few software tweaks scattered here and there, but it’s a lot more tolerable for those who are not used to the heavy skinning we usually see on phones from Chinese manufacturers.