ZTE Blade V8 Pro has issues playing Spotify and other music apps, but a fix is on the way

It seems like no matter how good a phone sounds on paper, unexpected issues always arise. It’s like death and taxes. For instance, the Pixel — arguably the best Android device on the planet — still suffered from “the halo effect” and the Samsung Galaxy Note 7…. well, we all know how that went.

When it comes to the ZTE Blade V8 Pro, the phone’s crazy low price point almost defies logic when you take into account the hardware being offered. At $230 unlocked, the ZTE seemingly has it all. Here’s quick look:

ZTE Blade V8 Pro specs

• 5.5-inch 1080p display (Gorilla Glass 3)
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core processor
• 3GB RAM
• 32GB internal storage
• 13MP+13MP dual camera / 8MP front facing camera
• NFC
• Fingerprint scanner
• Dual band WiFi
• 3,140mAh battery

What could possibly go wrong? Well, if you head on over to the ZTE Blade V8 Pro’s listing on Amazon, you’ll see more than a few 1-star reviews from users complaining about a weird software bug that renders most music apps useless on the device. It seems whenever you lock the phone (turn off the screen), the phone isn’t capable of playing music for more than 15 minutes before the phone’s software prematurely closes the app. You’re just kicking back listening to music and boom: app automatically closes.

The same problem is being echoed in ZTE’s own user forum so this isn’t just an isolated incident. We were able to confirm the issue with Spotify and Pandora on our own Blade V8 Pro unit, but we should note that not all music apps are affected by this bug. Some music apps like Google Play Music seemingly work fine. It’s also worth mentioning that the problem persists even after white listing the apps from “Screen-lock cleaning,” the Blade V8 Pro’s overly aggressive RAM management feature.

Whether you frequently listen to music on your device or not, this is sure to be a deal breaker for some. If it’s any consolation, we’ve reached out to ZTE who is well aware of the problem and says a software fix will be rolling out to the ZTE Blade V8 Pro in the coming weeks to address this. For now, try switching to a different music app, or keeping the screen on while you’re listening to avoid these apps from being closed.