Chinese company ZTE announced a number of devices at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, including a couple of new additions to its Blade series.

Our quick take

The ZTE Blade V7 has a lovely, ergonomic design. The metal looks great and it is an easy to handle device.

Its specs aren't ground breaking but they are good enough and the design helps you look over the fact that the latest tech isn't on board.

For a fully-metal device that looks like a premium handset, the ZTE Blade V7 does a good job. It would have been nice to see the fingerprint sensor from the V7 Lite on the V7, as well as perhaps USB Type-C but in terms of design, the Blade V7 looks great.

ZTE Blade V7

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ZTE Blade v7

The Blade V7 and Blade V7 Lite both launched at the show, destined for Germany, Spain and Mexico. The V7 will also come to South Africa and Ethiopia, while the V7 Lite will head for Russia and Thailand.

They might not be destined for our waters or our friends across the pond, but ZTE has gone for the premium look with the Blade V7 so we thought we'd take a look and see what we thought.

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ZTE Blade V7 design

The ZTE Blade V7 is all about metal. It's a lovely device with a slim and sleek body measuring 146 x 72.5 x 7.5mm. The curved corners and slender build make it look a little like the iPhone 6, although the ZTE has a curved rear unlike Apple's iPhone.

There are also no plastic antenna strips on the Blade V7, although the metal rear does have a couple of very thin breaks at the top and bottom, where Apple and HTC both place the plastic strips.

A small camera lens sits slightly raised in the middle at the top of the rear, while the ZTE logo is etched underneath a little further down. The right curved edged has the power button, while the left side features the volume controls.

The Blade V7 is charged via Micro-USB and speaker grilles like the iPhone's sit ether side of the port. No USB Type-C or fingerprint sensor sadly but the overall design of the Blade V7 makes the device look and feel more like a premium handset so it can be forgiven.

ZTE Blade V7 display

The ZTE Blade V7 has a 5.2-inch display that offers a Full HD resolution for a pixel density of 440ppi. It features 2.5D curved edge glass and ZTE says the device has a screen to body ratio of 78.2 per cent.

Colours were nice and vibrant and the viewing angles seemed good but we wouldn't pass final judgement on the display until we had some more time with it. From what we saw, it seemed to do a good enough job.

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ZTE Blade V7 camera

The ZTE Blade V7 has a 13-megapixel rear PDAF camera with a double colour flash. ZTE claims it will focus in 0.3 seconds.

There is a 5-megapixel front camera on board too that has a screen flash like the iPhone 6S. As with the display and performance, testing the camera in trade show conditions and in the short amount of time we had with it isn't really feasible so we can't tell how capable it will be.

It's not the highest of resolutions out there but it isn't the lowest either, sitting in the same box as the recently announced Sony Xperia XA.

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ZTE Blade V7 hardware and software

The ZTE Blade V7 has an octa-core MediaTek processor under the hood, supported by 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage. It doesn't appear to offer microSD like the Blade V7 Lite and as we said, there is no fingerprint sensor on board like its sibling either.

A 2500mAh battery is on board and you'll also find Bluetooth 4.0, a hall effect sensor and FM radio. The specs are pretty mid-range but it seemed to perform quickly enough during our brief amount of time with it. How it will hold up in the real world remains to be seen though.

The ZTE Blade V7 comes with Android Marshmallow. The company has also included its Smart Sense Gesture control on both the Blade V7 and the Blade V7 Lite.