Chinese phone maker ZUK is a startup with backing from Lenovo. The company has just announced its first flagship phone, and like many of the most interesting Chinese phones these days, the ZUK Z1 combines premium features with a mid-range price tag.

The ZUK Z1 features a 4,100 mAh battery, a USB Type-C reversible charger, 3GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. It’s priced at 1,799 Yuan, or about $284.

zuk z1_04

The phone has a 5.5 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, a 13MP rear camera with optical image stabilization, an 8MP front camera, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1, dual SIM support, a fingerprint reader, USB 3.0, and support for fast charging.

The ZUK Z1 ships with Android 5.1 Lollipop with a custom user interface called ZUI.

ZUK did make one rather unusual choice for this phone: It ships with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor rather than the newer Snapdragon 810 chip.

While the Snapdragon 801 was popular a popular choice with premium phone makers in 2014, Qualcomm has been pushing the newer Snapdragon 810 chip for 2015 flagship devices. Unfortunately, the newer chip has been criticized for overheating too easily, which can affect performance.

ZUK says the Snapdragon 801 actually outperforms the newer chip in many situations, because it can maintain high clock speeds for a longer period of time before throttling kicks in.

The Snapdragon 801 is certainly no slowpoke. But at a time when the latest top-tier phones from HTC, ZTE, Sony, OnePlus, and many other companies are shipping with a Snapdragon 810 processor, it’s interesting to see a high-profile (in China, anyway) phone launched with Qualcomm’s older processor.

via GizmoChina and Engadget

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3 replies on “ZUK Z1 is a $284 Chinese phone with USB Type-C, 4100 mAh battery”

  2. While it might seem like an odd choice to use the older snapdragon 801, when i look at the other specs like OIS, that huge battery, fingerprint scanner etc, something had to give at that price. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

  3. To offer a phone with Snapdragon 801 at this price point right now makes sense. Like they say, it’s still a good chip, and the OnePlus One around the same price with similar specs.

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