What known issues are there with the ZTE Blade?

[Guest killthatwha]

Which things do you consider a problem with the ZTE Blade? I'm asking as a potential buyer and a cautious one as well.

After searching the forums, I found the following ones -

WiFi problems (but these have been fixed if I read correctly).

Terrible battery life.

Shoddy camera.

Are there any others?

Regards :D

P.S. Before you all flame me, this isn't a troll thread, this is me being paranoid and cautious.

[Guest samjam]

Which things do you consider a problem with the ZTE Blade? I'm asking as a potential buyer and a cautious one as well.

After searching the forums, I found the following ones -

WiFi problems (but these have been fixed if I read correctly).

Terrible battery life.

Shoddy camera.

Standby battery life is excellent, but in-use can go down quickly.

I would say the camera is fair, and good at the price.

A problem that affects a few is touch-screen failing entirely so that the device needs to be replaced.

Another issue is the dreadful software in the stock ROM that in my view really ruins the phone, but I installed Pauls Froyo alpha 5 and find it great.

At £70.00 I'm very pleased with my purchase and do not regret it in the least, I didn't a comparable phone for less than around £300 at the time.

[Guest EndruBoy]

Hello

Please consider that the Bleade is an extremly cheap Android built mobile. If you want to buy an other device with these specs, you have to pay about 2*-3* of it's price.

I think there wasn't any wifi problems. The wifi is disconnects if the phone goes to sleeping mode. I think it's not a problem, but if you running such apps which need to be online in every minute I admit it could be a problem.

Battery life could be very short, especially if you overclock your CPU speed with some custom ROMs. But if you don't plan this, the battery can use about 1,5-2 days with normal usage, which is avarage in Android phones.

Camera... I don't think it is such bad... maybe if you compare it to a double priced phone like a Sony Ericsson, it is. But it's perfect if you want to shoot some pics occassionaly and upload to Facebook. It's true that you may need a compact camera if you want to take pictures in your holiday :D .

Oh, and the 3,5" multitouch screen is very impressive! You should try it somewhere and you'll be sure about your choice :P .

Edited January 8, 2011 by EndruBoy

[Guest veehexx]

all these battery life claims; to me thats expected.

i'm getting 4-5 days between charge, with push-email from both gmail and work exchange.

3g disabled (why bother enabling it), and the phone is used as a phone/messaging device.

laptop is used for surfing/gaming, and i have a car for out-and-about audio. horses for courses sort of thing :D

the only issue i have with it, is the poor materials quality. it doesnt feel like it's going to fall apart, but it just doesnt feel as good as HTC. definately materials quality rather than build quality issues. as whats been mentioned, it's an entry level android phone. you get what you pay for. aslong as you remember that your buying a £100, then you wont be disappointed. trying to compare it to the nexus/iphone/desire/whatever, and your going to be disappointed.

phone for calling

laptop/pc for internet/gaming

and camera for pictures

simple!

[Guest targetbsp]

Yeah, it depends how you use it. Based on a period in which I was ill I reckon I could pull off 8 days of battery life using it purely as a phone which is perfectly respectable. But at some point I'll want to play a game or something which will understandably drop the battery faster because at that point it's basically a laptop and laptops don't go days between charges.

[Guest killthatwha]

Whats the music playback like?

In regards to the camera, I don't care much about it, since the most I would use it for is barcode-scanning since I have a proper Pentax one for photographs and the like.. I know the battery life can depend on the custom ROM. I'm not entirely sure which ROM is the best though, will have to do a bit of searching and get some opinions.

[Guest Colcut]

The only issue I have with it is the camera.

But by issue I mean very minor issue, as everyone has stated, it's a cheap device, I didn't even expect it to be as fast as it is when I bought it.

Yes the camera is awful so if you're going to buy this phone for that, dont.

Also reguarding battery life - mine is quite decent with standard use (I also use airplane mode when I go to sleep), it can last a few days.

That said I always plug it in when I have the chance so it isn't a big issue for me.

Oh also, opening the phone up for the first time can be hard but now I'm just being extremely picky!

[Guest EndruBoy]

Music playback? What do you mean? Sound quality is not bad. The bulit in player is enough for many uses, but there are a lot of alternative players for Android with more functions.

[Guest stanno]

Whats the music playback like?

It's not brilliant. Far too quiet for my liking. Also the stock MP3 player suffers from frequent drop-outs and glitches. You can get around this by using PowerAMP, which also has EQ settings that can simulate loudness, but that causes distortion (on my phones anyway).

[Guest killthatwha]

Music playback? What do you mean? Sound quality is not bad. The bulit in player is enough for many uses, but there are a lot of alternative players for Android with more functions.

I meant sound quality yeah.. the DoubleTwist music player is what I would probably use.

It's not brilliant. Far too quiet for my liking. Also the stock MP3 player suffers from frequent drop-outs and glitches. You can get around this by using PowerAMP, which also has EQ settings that can simulate loudness, but that causes distortion (on my phones anyway).

I'll have to try it out when I get mine and see if I get the same problem.

[Guest Cyburner]

The camera is alright, but I wasnt expecting a award winning camera for the price.

One annoying thing is having to press the on button just to turn it on, when its sleep.

[Guest compi.hu]

I think there wasn't any wifi problems. The wifi is disconnects if the phone goes to sleeping mode. I think it's not a problem, but if you running such apps which need to be online in every minute I admit it could be a problem.

It's not a question of anyone's consideration. There is a setting which is meant to define the behavior of the wifi when the phone goes to sleep (wi-fi sleep policy). If this setting does not affect what it should, it is clearly a problem, regardless of your consideration.

There are two possible solution to the wifi issue:

Either ZTE can deploy an updated rom which fixes the problem, or someone knowledgeable enough can port a source based android (practically cyanogen) which could fix the wifi madness. AFAIK T-mobile pulse is also affected by the same problem and the only solution to it is to install CM on it.

The problem cannot be solved by the traditional "rom cooking" methods as currently there is no android build exists for the blade which handles the wifi sleep correclty.

Finally I cannot agree with you on the seriousness of the wifi problem. Currently noone will get a notofication on emails, messages from GTalk when the phone truly sleeps (can be woken up only by the power button) and wifi is switched on (regardless of the wifi sleep policy setting) I would consider these as basic requirements for any smartphone today.

Edited January 8, 2011 by compi.hu

[Guest killthatwha]

Hmm, I have to admit, one of the best things about this phone, is the huge amount of unofficial development behind it.. if you compare the amount of posts in this forum with the others, it's staggering how many custom ROMs there are.

And hey, with Gingerbread and Honeycomb not having CPU requirements, in the future we might even see a few more unofficial updates haha. What are the chances of that d'ya think? ^^

[Guest oh!dougal]

A lot of the problems lie with the users.

For example, it has a cheap camera without flash. Anyone expecting crisp bright pictures taken by what photographers used to call "available light" has expectations that would not be satisfied by a camera costing what this phone (with camera) costs.

As a phone, the battery runtime is actually pretty good.

But used as a tablet computer, its as bad as any other tablet (even at double the price).

I find it amusing when people criticise the thing and compare it to products costing 5x as much.

[Guest Azurren]

Apart from the Camera all we can do is nitpick :D

I could list as many faults with a Nexus one, galaxy s, Desire etc.

[Guest EndruBoy]

It's not a question of anyone's consideration. There is a setting which is meant to define the behavior of the wifi when the phone goes to sleep (wi-fi sleep policy). If this setting does not affect what it should, it is clearly a problem, regardless of your consideration.

There are two possible solution to the wifi issue:

Either ZTE can deploy an updated rom which fixes the problem, or someone knowledgeable enough can port a source based android (practically cyanogen) which could fix the wifi madness. AFAIK T-mobile pulse is also affected by the same problem and the only solution to it is to install CM on it.

The problem cannot be solved by the traditional "rom cooking" methods as currently there is no android build exists for the blade which handles the wifi sleep correclty.

Finally I cannot agree with you on the seriousness of the wifi problem. Currently noone will get a notofication on emails, messages from GTalk when the phone truly sleeps (can be woken up only by the power button) and wifi is switched on (regardless of the wifi sleep policy setting) I would consider these as basic requirements for any smartphone today.

Ye, you are probably right, but if you only want to get an alarm if a message arrives, you can use 3G/HSDPA network for it. And you can still use wifi to download the messages. It's only an idea, but if you deffinitely want to use wifi for it, I admit it's a big problem.

[Guest pugwall]

wi-fi can be annoying but the 'blade wi-fi' app can sort out most of the problems quickly enough.

Camera isn't the best but the biggest problem is the cover which reduces the sharpness. To fix that all you need to do is take the back cover off and then use a pen (or something simalar) and push the cover off. Surprisingly it make a difference though it's still useless in low light circumstances due to the lack of a flash.

Other than that it's a very good phone for the price and even better if you use one of the custom rom's here.

[Guest compi.hu]

Ye, you are probably right, but if you only want to get an alarm if a message arrives, you can use 3G/HSDPA network for it. And you can still use wifi to download the messages. It's only an idea, but if you deffinitely want to use wifi for it, I admit it's a big problem.

Assuming you have a mobile data plan, you're almost right. Except that you have to manually switch wifi off before allowing the phone to sleep, because if not, it will not switch to mobile data AFAIK.

wi-fi can be annoying but the 'blade wi-fi' app can sort out most of the problems quickly enough.

Negative. Blade wifi fix fixes only one problem found in early blade roms. The system did not realize that wifi connection lost when it came out of standby and did not reconnect. Blade wifi fix just turns wifi off and back on to force reconnection when it happens. It has nothing to do with wifi availability during sleep.

Edited January 8, 2011 by compi.hu

[Guest Mark-J]

My wife got a phone a few days ago, and within 2 days the on/off button starting playing up and then just decided not to work at all! Only thing I can think of is that we did take the back off a few times while sorting out the SD card etc (yeah now we know can hook into PC without removing) so im thinking that if your not VERY careful putting the back on button end first, it could put pressure on the 'ultra' tiny switch and cause problems.

Luckily after complaining to Argos etc, she got a replacement from one of thier other stores as the original store had none in stock (and according to thier computers, not a single store in miles had any, but the head office rang her after she emailed with a complaint and low and behold 1 had got into the other local store, so they reserved that for her, and touch wood, all is great with the new phone!)

Apart from that, shes happy with it, the only other thing we would say is a bit ropey are pictures received via MMS as I sent her one from my iphone and OMG it had butchered the pic into a bad compression picture (on her samsung, the pics were good, so know its not the iphone hammering them before sending etc)

[Guest Magnets]

My wife got a phone a few days ago, and within 2 days the on/off button starting playing up and then just decided not to work at all! Only thing I can think of is that we did take the back off a few times while sorting out the SD card etc (yeah now we know can hook into PC without removing) so im thinking that if your not VERY careful putting the back on button end first, it could put pressure on the 'ultra' tiny switch and cause problems.

A fair few people have reported similar problems with the switch, and others have suggested that not being careful with the back cover as the cause, and tbh it sounds very likely.

[Guest Reading1800]

Nothing for me, wife has a N900 which cost an arm and a leg, don't use camera apart from contacts photos, other than that chuffed with this phone for the money must be the bargain of the year !

[Guest Matthew Ferguson]

Which things do you consider a problem with the ZTE Blade? I'm asking as a potential buyer and a cautious one as well.

After searching the forums, I found the following ones -

WiFi problems (but these have been fixed if I read correctly).

Terrible battery life.

Shoddy camera.

Are there any others?

Regards :D

P.S. Before you all flame me, this isn't a troll thread, this is me being paranoid and cautious.

There's no longer any wifi issue in the 2 main froyo roms, and the battery life issue has also been fixed in these roms, with the phones usually getting the android average for battery life. The camera is pretty bad the UK version, the OSF, but you could see if you can find a 5mpx one online, which might be better.

[Guest compi.hu]

There's no longer any wifi issue in the 2 main froyo roms...

Unfortunately there is.

[Guest agreenjesus]

I'd have been happy if it didn't die on me after a few days.

[Guest phlum]

I've had issues with the power button, but everything else has been fine.

I'm just wondering if there's some way to repair the power button, because returning the phone will be a chore - partly because I'm not sure if there's a stock recovery image I can flash over ClockWorkMod.

EDIT: I tell a lie - the volume rocker is a bit squeaky when I push it down. Weird...

Edited January 17, 2011 by phlum