Over in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, Chinese manufacturer ZTE unleashed a barrage of new smartphones and tablets; a signal of its clear intention to take its business model global.

The company - which grew by 50 per cent in 2011 and achieved a 400 per cent increase in smartphone shipments - has made some pretty big noises about its Era Tegra 3 device at the show but, if you're looking for the best looking smartphone of the ZTE bunch, look no further than the ZTE Skate Kis.

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It may not have the power or performance of its flagship brethren but in the looks department it wins hands-down. Yes, it's HTC "inspired" but that's no bad thing.

Boasting a decent looking 3.5-inch HVGA 480x320 display, the Kis has a smooth silver mock-aluminium finish with a lipped (almost HTC chin-esque) bottom making it a really comfortable device to hold.

Powered by a Qualcomm MSM7225A 800MHz processor backed up by 512MB of RAM, the ZTE Kis runs Android 2.3.6 (with no word on a ICS update as of yet).

Obviously, this isn't the most impressive spec sheet but the performance seemed good enough, with no obvious lag when swiping between standard apps. There were no games loaded on to the demo device so we can't comment on how well it handles more-challenging apps though, as of yet.

On the back is an 3.2-megapixel camera with a flash, sadly there is no front-facing camera for video calling.

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There's no word yet as to when (or if) the ZTE Skate Kis will launch in the UK. We'll let you know once we're given an update.