The ZTE V9 tablet was a bit of a letdown after seeing some of the other tablets here at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While other companies are rolling out sleek devices running Android Honeycomb, ZTE had on display a number of tablets that looked aimed at tablet buyers on a budget.
One of these, the V9, has a 7-inch touch screen with 800 by 480 pixel resolution. The screen was fairly responsive to my touches, but it had a muted cast to it that somewhat muffled the video I watched. It also felt like there was a distance between my fingers and the Android environment, like the screen was inset a few millimeters into the front of the device
In Video: Hands-On With the ZTE V9 Android Tablet
The user environment is Android 2.1, which, compared with later Android versions, looks flat, one-dimensional, and static-no scrollable screen widgets, no moving 3D background images, no support for e-books. The V9 weighs 14 ounces, and contains a UMTS radio and chipset that can hit download speeds of up to 7.2 megabits per second (mbps). It also sports a Wi-Fi radio and support Bluetooth.
There's a 5-megapixel camera on the back for shooting pictures and video, and a small front-facing camera for video chat.
My impression is that the V9 is meant to be a budget Android tablet. It will become available worldwide later this year, but no information was available on US pricing or availability.
ZTE also had on display a bigger brother to the V9, the V11. The V11 has a 10-inch screen, runs Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), and runs on a 1.2 GHz processor. Unfortunately, the one on display at the ZTE booth would not power up, so we'll have to wait until the product launches to learn more.
Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.