ZTE unveils the $99 Zmax Pro with 6-inch display, Snapdragon 617

Today at a special event ZTE announced the third device in its Zmax line and the successor to the Zmax 2 from last year. It's called Zmax Pro and will be sold in the US by MetroPCS.

In ZTE's view, the Zmax Pro will have two main competitors in the market: the Samsung Galaxy J7 and the LG Stylo 2. The Zmax Pro, however, "is simply the one to beat" according to the Chinese company, because it matches or outclasses both in specs while being a lot cheaper than either of those.

The phone comes with a 6-inch 1080p touchscreen, a 13 MP main camera with phase detect autofocus and LED flash, a 5 MP selfie camera, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 617 chipset at the helm (with a 1.5 GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU and Adreno 405 GPU), 2GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a USB Type-C port, a fingerprint scanner on the back, a 3.5 mm headset jack, 4G LTE, and a 3,400 mAh battery. It runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

It will become available at MetroPCS on August 1 for $99, without any contract-signing required. If you pre-register for one before July 31, you can receive a free leather case for the phone when you purchase it. ZTE says the Zmax Pro broke a record, becoming the highest-specced smartphone for less than $100.