Apple iPhone 4S vs ZTE Mimosa X: Mobile World Congress Kickoff Smartphone Battle

Apple won't be debuting a new iPhone at the Mobile World Congress this week, but ZTE is debuting several devices, including the Mimosa X. Previewed only days before the start of the actual conference, there are still a few things we don't know about the Mimosa X, and most important among them are release date and price. It's likely this phone will never make it to the U.S., but the iPhone is available in many countries where it will be sold. MWC starts on Feb. 27, and in the days leading up to the event, many new devices get leaked, announced, previewed and rumored, but the Mimosa X got an official announcement from ZTE Feb. 20.

It will be a 4.3-inch, HSPA+ device running Ice Cream Sandwich, and feature a qHD 960 x 540p resolution display, five megapixel camera and four gigabytes of internal storage. It also supports DLNA for streaming to Blu-ray players and HDTV's. That's something the iPhone doesn't have, and Mimosa X also has a bigger screen with better resolution. On the other hand, the iPhone has a better camera and Siri the voice recognition software. Because we don't know the price of the Mimosa X and some of the other features, it makes these two phones a bit harder to compare, so we'll have to wait for MWC to make a better comparison.

One other interesting thing about the Mimosa X is it's powered entirely by NVIDIA processors. The CPU and even the modem are both made by the chip maker best known for its graphics chips. More and more manufacturers are turning to graphics chips in general because they tend to use less power and give off less heat. Tell us in the comments if you'd give ZTE a try or if you think it still has too much to prove.