ZTE Windows Phone 8 devices spotted in the wild? We're not entirely convinced.

By Rich Edmonds
last updated

Today marks the start of the 2012 China International Exhibition, and ZTE has arrived guns blazing with the company's mobile phone market strategy director Dennis Lui sharing a very interesting photo with the world. Analysing the capture above, we can see what appears to be one or two ZTE Windows Phone 8 handsets. The device on the right looks almost identical to the ZTE Tania, which runs Windows Phone 7.5.

Unfortunately due to the blur effect added into the mix, it's near impossible to tell what's what within. As well as the similarities to a legacy handset, we can only spot a USB port in the centre on the device in the middle, which appears to be the standard for Windows Phone 8 hardware. If that wasn't enough, we could well be looking at Windows Phone 7.8 here on the Tania. As for the two devices to the left, we're not entirely sure but they almost look HTC - though we could be (and probably are) mistaken.

Lui also attached "Two heads are better than one, MacroHard" to the photo, which further adds fuel to the fire on there being Windows Phone 8 and 7.8 goodness here. WinP.cn notes that the ZTE Tania looks to be running W Phone 8 to show that the device will be updated to Windows Phone 7.8. A better home screen with more colours. As for the other two, we'll have to wait and see, but the middle one definitely looks to sport the centred USB port, while lefty appears to only have Windows Phone 7.8 / 8 small tiles set up.

Speaking of pretty colours, check out the apparent Android ZTE smartphones and Windows 8 tablet below, which were also shared by Lui.

Is it just us or could we see these being released with Windows Phone slapped on top? Notice the USB port centralised on the bottom of the device? They're definitely eye-catching colours, and we'd love to see such variety in ZTE's Windows Phone line-up.

Let us know your thoughts on both the mysterious ZTE Windows Phone 8 device(s), as well as what you'd think of the above collection of handsets running Windows Phone.

via: WinP.cn; thanks, hengxiang32401, for the tip!

Rich Edmonds
Rich Edmonds
Senior Editor, PC Build

Rich Edmonds is Senior Editor of PC hardware at Windows Central, covering everything related to PC components and NAS. He's been involved in technology for more than a decade and knows a thing or two about the magic inside a PC chassis. You can follow him over on Twitter at @RichEdmonds.

18 Comments
  • I like the colours. but also that Three Wp photo. the first one looks like samantic zoom from Windows 8 
  • The blur photo show "W Phone 8 app". It's not wp8
  • +1 yup, that's the wp8 app
  • +1, recognised it as soon as I saw it. That's just W Phone 8 runnin on WP7.5.
  • SamTC LOL
  • Samsung and HTC together lol mixed
  • The tiles on the red phone are only covering half the screen?
  • So? It's just a style, I think it was done to prove a point but you can have it that way in 7.5, 7.8 and 8.
    What confused me was the middle one, you can clearly see the arrow pointing to the right, suggesting still 7.5...
  • There are "wide tiles" that ate only covering half the screen. That's. NOT wp7.8 or wp8. It's wp7.5 on half the screen. Weird. Coupled with the wp8 emulator app on the one on the right, I call bs.
  • It's look like the HTC device, but the man of ZTE may not could show the HTC device. right?
  • That is the "Windows Phone 8" app. It's not real. That's why they blurred the picture a little.
  • This is very weird, why does the phone on the left have only half the width of the screen with tiles? Looks like a bad PS job...
  • It looks like someone is displaying an image of a wp7 start screen and it's zoomed out. Clearly not wp8, and clearly not a true wp7.x either. Maybe an android displaying a wp7 start screen image? Or wp7.x poorly ported onto a device with a resolution higher than the 480x800 standard of wp7.x? Either way, teams of a crappy fake.
  • I do assume ZTE WP8 devices are coming..but these don't appear to be it. I am loving the orange in that last picture though..I was really hoping the 920 would come in a similar color.
  • For the record, that tablet looks just like the exopc/wetab windows 7 tablet. Its what I've been running the consumer preview on for the past few months.
  • While the colors might look appealing, the construction is questionable. Here's a few things that stand out to me: I guess that the headset jack protruding on top l a nipple (kinda of wiered to me), the volume rocker seem to standoff of the phone pretty far making it easy to compress when in your pocket. I'm not impressed, but to each his/her own. I guess for a low level device it would be okay for some people.
  • These are clearly hacked fakes. Worse than the "leaked" htc elation page. Come on WPCentral, what's the 6/10 on this supposed to indicate?
  • In China, some fake Microsoft products are labeled "Microhard". It's similar to the way iPad fakes are called "aPad", "iPed", and so on.