Chinese device and infrastructure powerhouse ZTE has debuted its Star 2 flagship mobile handset, a voice-controlled smartphone that can take advantage of China Mobile’s (News - Alert) VoLTE and rich communications services (RCS) network functionality.
The main wow factor is how extensive the voice functionality is. All phone calls, third-party applications and media playback can be enabled without touching the device, so users can simply speak to open, close and toggle between apps, take a picture, start a radio stream and so on. Users can also select wake-up triggers or keywords for the device to avoid making unwanted calls and the like.
Further, ZTE (News - Alert) Star 2’s voice control technology will integrate with RCS voice messaging and call features from China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile carrier by subscribers. China Mobile is in the middle of a VoLTE launch, as well as a commercial trial of RCS services. Together the initiatives open the door for offering over-the-top (OTT)-style apps as network services. Spearheaded by the GSM Association (GSMA), RCS specifications include enhanced phonebook service capabilities and enhanced contacts information such as presence and service discovery, a variety of messaging options including chat, emoticons, location-share and file-sharing, and enriched calls with multimedia content, including sharing content during a voice call, video calls and video sharing (“see what I see”) functionality. The Star 2 will allow all of this to be access and controlled in a hands-free environment.
"For ZTE's newest flagship device the goal was to offer superior voice-control functions that redefine the smartphone user experience," said Adam Zeng, executive vice president for ZTE.
The move to settle on voice control as a differentiator is something that the company has heavily invested in: The Android (News - Alert)-based handset offers platform-wide voice control and an intuitive user interface, supported by more than 1,000 patents (of which 158 are related to voice recognition). And, the company is also relying on Audience’s (News - Alert) eS704 Advanced Voice Processor and “VoiceQ” technology. The latter keeps the phone in a low-power but always listening mode to respond to verbal commands; ZTE boasts that it has a response time of 1.2 seconds and a 90 percent success rate even in noisy environments.
"Voice, as the most natural user interface, is offering a new level of disruptive capabilities that can help catalyze a new innovation cycle in the smartphone space,” said Robert Schoenfield, vice president of Greater China for Audience.
The ZTE Star 2 features a five-inch dual-layer Gorilla Glass 3 screen, 13 MP rear camera and 5 MP rear camera. It also features a Qualcomm (News - Alert) Snapdragon 801 processor with a 2.3GHz quad-core CPU and 16GB ROM, 2GB RAM internal memory and a 2300mAH battery. The Star 2 is priced at about $400.
Edited by Alisen Downey