Chinese handset giant ZTE has been on an aggressive path to establish its brand in India. The leading original equipment manufacturer had launched a couple of devices in July this year including this Blade G2 Android smartphone.
It is to be noted that ZTE sells its smartphones to a lot of handset manufacturers who in turn sell them under their own brand. ZTE is one of the leading handset sellers in Western countries too. Thus, we had high hopes from ZTE smartphones, including from Blade G2. But ZTE Blade G2 is currently available for Rs 9,999-a price point at which it faces several threats from both Indian and MNC players, including devices with 1 GB RAM and huge 8 Megapixel cameras.
So does ZTE Blade G2 offer quality for which you should buy it? Let’s find out.
Design and display
ZTE Blade G2 comes with a 4.5 inch display with a curved back panel that has the bulk of its mass in the middle, which makes it very easy to handle and carry around. The back panel has a rubberized finish that gives it a good grip. The rear camera panel and LED flash are artistically fitted in the rear panel, which further boosts it look. With 9.9 mm thickness and 145 grams of weight the ZTE Blade G2 is also one of the lightest and thinnest smartphones in the sub-Rs 10,000 price bracket.
As mentioned earlier, the ZTE Blade G2 has a 4.5 inch touchscreen. It is an IPS LCD unit and gives very good viewing angles, which is essential while playing running and racing games. The touch response is equally good. It has FWVGA Resolution (480 x 854 pixel,) which is on the lower side considering the fact that most of its competitors come with qHD resolution.
Camera
The ZTE Blade G2 has a 5 megapixel rear camera and a 0.3 megapixel front camera. In the sub Rs 10,000 segment camera quality is a big problem despite the fact that many devices in this bracket come with an 8 megapixel camera.
So rather than talking about the technical aspects of the camera, we have clicked a few pictures (posted below) in different lighting, which should give you a decent idea. You can also use the front camera to click self-portraits and even videos, but you seriously should not try to use the 0.3 megapixel camera if it is not essential. 
Note that while capturing the images we opted for the default setting without any modification.
Battery
There is a 2000 mAh battery in the Blade G2, which claims to provide 15 hours of 2G talktime and 12 hours of 3G talktime, which is almost double of what most of its competitors offer. Also, ZTE claims 300 hours of 2G standby.
As far as experience goes, the ZTE Blade G2 gives very good battery backup. Just charge it fully and forget it for 24 hours if you use the phone for about half an hour of gaming, and as much time for browsing the web and for making voice calls. In another instance, we played games on the Blade G2 for half an hour, with maximum brightness and medium volume, during which it consumed only 10 per cent charge. Also, once we watched YouTube videos over WiFi, using a Bluetooth headset, and it consumed only 10 per cent in half an hour.
Memory
Like most of its competitors, the ZTE Blade G2 also has 4 GB of Internal Memory of which 2.5 GB is available for users. There is an expandable slot where you can use up to a 32 GB micro SD card.
Performance
This smartphone comes with Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean. It has a quad core Mediatek (MT6589) Processor but is underclocked to 1 GHz, which is why it gives stable performance. To support the processor there is a 512 MB RAM and PowerVR SGX 544MP graphics processing unit.
The combination is able to give good performance and you would not have a single crash during day to day tasks, even during multitasking when you have to open an array of apps, like camera, web browser, note pad, etc. It can also play a majority of the games in the Google Play Store like Stick Cricket, Temple Run 2, Temple Run Oz, Subway Surfer, and even Dead Trigger, but it cannot play graphics intensive games like Riptide GP2, Modern Combat 3 etc due to obvious reasons and one cannot expect devices in this range to play such games.
Conclusion
The ZTE Blade G2 has a decent display and very good battery backup. Memory-wise too it is like its competitors. However, it has only 512 MB RAM unlike many of its competitors, which otherwise come with 1 GB RAM. Though ZTE claims that the Blade G2 performs better than its competitors, which come with 1 GB RAM, we did not have a chance to check the claim. Low resolution also mars the video viewing experience as well as the fun of playing HD games.
In a nutshell, the ZTE Blade G2 is mediocre vis-à-vis features but provides very good performance nonetheless. It is ideal for those who want good battery backup and decent all round performance.