ZTE confirms it's going big and cheap at MWC 2013

ZTE confirms it's going big and cheap at MWC 2013
Mo' money, Mo'zilla

We're going to get phones with massive screens and Mozilla OS, according to ZTE's press conference invite.

In a move that's pretty much given most of the game away for the Chinese firm, the invite was accompanied with the line: "ZTE would like to invite you to the announcement of two major new mobile devices at MWC 2013. To whet your appetite – the hashtags for the announcements will be: #ZTEGrandMemo #ZTEMozilla".

Reading between the lines (actually, simply looking at the actual words) it's pretty easy to see that the ZTE Grand Memo and a phone using the Firefox OS will be launched in Barcelona later this month.

Note to self…

The ZTE Grand Memo, which popped up over in Hong Kong earlier this month, is a large phone with a 5.7-inch screen, a 1.7GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro CPU, a 13 MP camera and run Android Jelly Bean.

In short, it's actually a decent device to spring from ZTE, and looks to be a budget competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

The notion of ZTE launching a phone running on Mozilla's OS is an interesting one; well, to be more exact, the location is. While handsets using the new web-friendly operating system have been mooted in emerging nations, where ultra-low-cost phones are flying off the shelves, there's been little notion of them appearing in Europe.

However, it looks like ZTE is set to buck that trend with its MWC launch, so it seems possible we could see both the Grand Memo and a Firefox-powered phone in the next few months on UK shores.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.