The ZTE Blade A512 on Vodafone Pay As You Go (PAYG) great sub £100 phone.

Looking for a great phone then look no further than the Blade A512 from ZTE at £79.99 on a Vodafone Pay As You Go deal.

The main point of me buying this phone was looking for a phone which had that experience changing 2gb of RAM for under £100.  So with the Blade A512, we have that but what other goodies come with it.

We have a nice 5.2 in screen, which is bright and smooth to touch and responsive.

13 Megapixel Camera with LED flash, more than adequate. 5 megapixel front camera.

16 gigabyte of memory to run your programmes / apps from.

Android 6.0, so good enough operating system wise.

Nano sim slot with memory card and 3.5mm headphone socket.

So in the box we get instruction manual, plug, USB lead and some white in ear headphones.

Handling the phone, its light and nice fit in the hand. Feels solid enough. Style wise for under £80 it looks stylish for a phone that's largely black with exception of the silver volume up and down button or power button.

Operation wise, the phone is smooth enough, apps responsive.  Coming with Vodafone Pay As You Go apps, not as much of a hindrance as years gone by.  

Sounds from speaker located at bottom of A512 , one either side of the USB charging point, is not a problem.  Listening to ACDC Thunderstruck on Youtube the speakers handled it well at maximum either holding on hand or on a table. No vibration or apparent distortion for phone speakers.

Camera was responsive and good enough pictures.  If you are going to go into pixel level then perhaps you will find fault.  Video mode with a quick pan of my dim lit room and capturing a wall and the TV playing, the result was pretty much a replay with perhaps a second of out of focus when camera caught moving images on TV. - Update 14th January 2018.  The zoom on this camera is not great at over 2x magnifcation.  So for instance a squirrel on a tree around 10 ft away, the back ground is ok, but the squirrel was not a clear focused pic. If you have a tremor or need to take a quick pic then not responsive.  Though I will dabble with settings and update.

Battery level on a full night charge and an alarm call at 630 am, the phone lasted all day before I put on recharge at night, with about low 20s percent showing.  So that was a day of browsing on a 40 min journey to work, and back.  Some browsing, messaging at lunchtime.  Then an evening of Youtube, a 30 min phone call, some Googlemap during the day and the stereotypical Facebook browsing and messaging.  All in not too bad.   January 14th Update, so after 8 months or so of use, the phone does need recharged more often.  I do charge at work.  Obviously I have added a few more apps but nothing overly intensive.

So is the ZTE Blade A512 worth buying.  Well after a week I would say absolutely yes.  I was impressed the first day, and I'm liking it as the days have gone by.  It's a lovely phone to look at. Well leaving the phone down on my desk, a female colleague picked it up and said as much.  When you say it's Chinese, perhaps thats when people might go mmhh. Hey what stuff aint made in Asia, far east or China these days or last 30 years tech wise.  For £79.00 with Vodafone, it's well worth buying and you will be more than happy with  your purchase.   January 14th update, I am still using the phone but looking at a Nokia 6 phone as my next pay as you go.  With software requiring more RAM etc there has been a few times the phone has been sluggish, though this maybe a software glitch with something I have installed.  The ZTE Blade I would recommend if you are considering it.  My phone s currently on Android Marshmallow 6.0.1.