2014-01-20, 08:25
Price: 146,85 USD
Chipset: MTK 6582
First impression
The Z700 comes delivered in a neat black-and-blue box, which holds phone, accessories and a very concise manual. On the screenprotector it says that the phone has a octocore processor, which isn't true: the processor is a Arm 7 quadcore @ 1.3 GHz.
The construction is solid, strong plastic sides, glass front and a somewhat thin back cover, pretty standard for a mid end phone. The right side contains two buttons; volume and on/off/standby. The bottom side contains a micro usb port.
In the manual it doesn't say you should charge the phone before first use. I do it anyway, since that is proper procedure. After app. one hour it is full, and I fire it up. Starting it the first time takes a while, during start up it shows a white screen with Zopo Z700 in blue letters.
After start up Android 4.2 runs smoothly. The touch area below the screen takes some getting used to: after 5 seconds it dims and the buttons dissapear completely. Since there are only three buttons down, you will probably get used to it soon. What stands out immediately is the tiny bright LED at the top of the screen, it indicates battery charging/charged, and it blinks when receiving a new message / email. Handy! Let's see if there's any bloatware: no! The phone comes with (near) stock Android.
After installing the essential apps, ( for me: my mail accounts, compass, GPS tool, Maxthon Browser, Ubuntu One, alarm clock, Kingston Office, Voice over IP and some other stuff that I find useful) performance is still excellent. Battery life however, does not meet the expectancy, Chinavasion claims 13 hours of active use and up to 250 hours of standby time. If I make an estimate based on a few days user experience, then I come up with five hours of intensive use, or 3-4 days if you are only checking email and occasional calls and have WIFI and sync on. That is still pretty good, but mind you, this is a new battery and it is much less than promised.
Futhermore, there's a bug in the charging. After about an hour, the phone reports it's full. After 30 seconds or a reboot, it turns out that in reality it is only 1/3 charged. To completely recharge an empty battery, you need to hook it up to the charger 2 or 3 times. Annoying. The fact that it is at this moment not possible to order a battery seperately, makes battery life and buggy charging an important issue imho.
Hardware
Even after installing several apps the phone continues to react rapidly. Playing a HD movie is seamless thanks to the graphics chip, a Mali-400 MP, the IPS screen looks beautiful. The camera makes quite nice photos, about what you can expect from a midrange phone. Playing music through the built-in speaker sounds surprisingly good, the ears work, but the sound is a bit too soft for me at maximum volume. The GPS gives position inside and outside the house in less than 10 seconds. Wifi does what it should do, Bluetooth sucks. But it does that always with me, It's probably me. And you can make phone calls with the Z700, of course.
OS
The Zopo Z700 comes with Android 4.2.2 and there are no updates issued by the manufacturer. With the Graphical Root Tool supplied elsewhere in this forum by Gizbeat it is possible to root this phone.
Brief overview
Pro
price
-IPS screen
-notification LED
-hardware
Contra
-battery life is disappointing, replacement of battery is difficult, if not impossible .
-limited vendor support.
-Maximum volume earphones a bit too low
Conclusion
The zopo Z700 is an excellent midrange device, with a lot of "bang for bucks" but also a few shortcomings, the most important being for me that the advertised battery life is not fulfilled, and the battery is not available separately. Main advantages are the excellent hardware, the IPS screen and the low price.
Specs
OS Version: Android 4.2
CPU: MT6582 Quad Core
Processor Speed (max): 1.3GHz
RAM: 1GB
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b / g / n
2G: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
3G: WCDMA 850/2100 MHz
Bluetooth
GPS
FM Radio
OTG
Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot (3G Tethering)
8 Megapixel Rear Camera + 2 Megapixel Front-Facing Camera (5MP Interpolation)
Video Resolution: 640x480 Front / Back 1280x720
Mic and Speaker
Battery Size: 1750mAh
Usage Time: 13 Hours
Battery Standby: 250 Hours
Display
Display Size: 4.7 Inch IPS Screen
Display Resolution: 960x540
5 Point Capacitive Multi Touch Display
Memory
Internal: 4GB
Micro SD Card up to 64GB
Ports
2 SIM Card Slots - 2x GSM / WCDMA
Micro SD Card Slot
3.5 mm Audio Out Port
Micro USB Port
Sensors
Magnetic Field Sensor
Accelerometer Sensor
Gravity Sensor
Light Sensor