ZTE Grand Memo to reportedly feature Snapdragon 800 and S4 Pro variants

ZTE officially launched the Grand Memo at the Mobile World Congress sporting a 5.7-inch 720p display and packing in Qualcomm's latest and greatest Snapdragon 800 CPU clocking at 1.7GHz. That's what the official press release from the company stated.

Qualcomm, however claimed that the device runs on a Snapdragon 600 processor as opposed to the 800 one. In all the confusion, folks at Engadget decided to dig deep and find out what's really going on. It's safe to say that the cat's out of the bag.

First the site received information in line with what Qualcomm mentioned earlier that the Grand Memo showcased on the MWC floor was running the Snapdragon 600 chip and not the 800 CPU.

Upon further discussion with the Chinese manufacturer, Engadget reports that there will be two different variants of the Grand Memo. The Chinese version will be powered by a Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064, while Europe will receive a Snapdragon 800 variant with LTE support.

This is concurrent with what ZTE officials confirmed to Android Central. The site also claims that the company had an NVIDIA Tegra 3-based Grand Memo on show at its MWC booth as well.

The European version will also sport a 1080p display when compared to the 720p one found in the Chinese variant as seen in Engadget's hands-on video of the device at the event.

What's also a first, not just for the new variant of the device, but for smartphones in general, is the Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. The device runs on Android 4.1.2 out of the box and is skinned with ZTE's MyFavourite UI featuring 3D animation.

Other specs include a 5.7-inch screen, a 13-megapixel camera, a 3,200mAh battery and a 2GB RAM compared to 1GB on the S4 Pro version.

It would've been easier for everyone had ZTE clarified the whole mess in its initial official announcement. Now that it's in the open, many would certainly expect an official clarification from the company publicly.

As far as availability is concerned, the device is only restricted to China and Europe for now and there's no word on availability in India, US or anywhere else. Nevertheless, the company is willing to "explore options" for other regions.

MWC 2013 in pictures