ZTE Blade 3 leaked

Pictures and details of ZTE’s Blade 3 smartphone have emerged via an early listing on a Finnish online retailers web store.

Verkkokauppa appears to have put the handset up for pre-order at 199 euros (about £157) and with an estimated availability 2-4 weeks.

It features a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon single core processor on the MSM7227A chip, with 512MB of RAM, 200MB of onboard storage and a MicroSD slot.

The Blade 3 will be powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and its display is a 3.5-inch LCD with an 800x480pixel resolution. There’s a 5-megapixel primary camera with LED flash and connectivity includes Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, MicroUSB, a 3.5mm audio jack and GPS.

While there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that fairly average hardware setup, £157 might seem a little steep when you consider that, for not much more (still under £200), you can get ZTE’s Grand X model instead.

That means a dual core processor, more memory (though still not very much) and a larger display, amongst other things.

The other issue is that now that Google has put out a Tegra 3 quad core powered device on the market for £159 with the Nexus 7, and a tablet at that, anything less powerful for the same money seems overpriced.