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Boost Mobile has unveiled its latest budget Android smartphone, the ZTE Warp 7, for mobile customers who want another device option as they peruse the crowded field of no-contract, prepaid handsets.
The $99.99 smartphone includes a 5.5-inch HD touch-screen display with a Gorilla Glass cover, a 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of memory and 16GB of onboard storage. The handset, which runs on the Android Marshmallow 6.0 operating system, also includes a microSD card slot that accepts storage cards up to 64GB for expanded storage, a 13-megapixel main rear camera with 1080p video capabilities, a 5-megapixel front-facing camera and a removable 3,080mAh li-polymer battery.
The handset is 6.07 inches long, 2.99 inches wide and 0.36 inches thick and weighs 5.6 ounces.
The ZTE Warp 7 is available immediately at Boost Mobile’s website and will be available in its retail stores starting Sept. 5.
The phone also includes roaming capabilities in Mexico and works on both CDMA and GSM networks.
“Consumers continue to anticipate the Warp family of products each year and we are proud to introduce the next device in the series with the ZTE Warp 7,” Lixin Cheng, chairman and CEO of ZTE USA, said in a statement. “We continue to push the boundaries of what an affordable premium device is and the Warp 7 available with Boost Mobile incorporates top features at a budget friendly price.”
Boost Mobile no-contract calling plans start at $30 a month with the Unlimited Starter plan, which includes 1GB of high-speed data. An extra gigabyte of data is $5, or customers can pay $10 for an extra 2GB of data a month.
The company also offers its Unlimited Unhook’d plan, which is $50 a month for unlimited 4G LTE data, with optimized lower speed streaming for video, gaming and music.
Customers can add a second line for $30 a month on either plan, with up to five lines per account at an additional $30 per line.
All Boost Mobile calling plans have unlimited talk and text and music streaming with selected partners, $5 per month savings with an auto-pay option, mobile hotspot capabilities, and no contracts or commitments.
Boost Mobile is a division of the Sprint Prepaid Group and operates on Sprint’s network.
In June, ZTE announced its latest flagship smartphone, the Axon 7, for North America, including the U.S., according to an earlier eWEEK story. The Axon 7 handset features a 5.5-inch AMOLED Wide Quad HD (WQHD) touch-screen display with 2,560-by-1,440 resolution (538ppi), a Corning Gorilla Glass 4 display cover and a 2.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 MSM8996 processor with an integrated Qualcomm Adreno 530 GPU. It also includes a 20-megapixel main camera.
China’s ZTE was the fourth-largest selling brand in the United States in the first quarter of 2016, according to Strategy Analytics, behind Apple, Samsung and LG.
ZTE has been shipping its smartphones and other products to the United States for years, including the ZTE ZMAX2 through AT&T in September 2015 and the ZTE Warp Elite in August 2015 through Boost Mobile.
In August, the smartphone maker announced a special program to seek help and direct input from mobile phone fanatics in the development of a new smartphone in 2017. Project CSX allows mobile phone fans to submit their ideas, desired features and opinions about what they would like to see or not see in the user-designed smartphone when it is unveiled in 2017. Project CSX will be part of ZTE’s member-led Z-Community online forums, where participants can register to provide their input to the project. CSX stands for Crowd Sourced X, which is a crowdsourced effort to build any tech project.
