AT&T GoPhone – ZTE Maven 4G No-Contract Phone Review
ZTE Maven Benchmarks
We ran a number of benchmarks to test the general speed of the ZTE Maven: 3DMark, Vellamo Mobile Benchmark, Antutu Benchmark, Geekbench 3, GFXBench GL Benchmark, and Lightmark. For many of the benchmarks, the Maven scores at, or near, the bottom of every test we subjected the device to. The results of the benchmarks didnt exactly make us jump for joy, but it did help us to understand where this mobile phone fits relative to all other devices on the market that can double as personal computers with a tremendous amount of horsepower. Of course the more the horsepower, the more you pay a price in battery life and with your pocketbook. Even though the Maven didnt really give us stellar benchmarking results, we were satisfied that the device could actually get through all of our benchmarks without crashing or locking up. For a mobile phone that is priced under $60 the results were more than adequate enough for us.
When using the ZTE Maven, we were able to easily get a full days use out of the mobile phone. In fact, with normal usage (texting, checking e-mail, phone calls), the Mavens battery lasted comfortably for more than 2 days. Of course battery use will vary depending on the applications and individual use, but comparing using this device to our Samsung Galaxy S3 and S5, we felt that the Maven did a very good job of battery conservation and easily lasted longer than Galaxy S5 which we had to charge at the end of a typical day of use.
Although the Maven’s camera wasn’t anything extraordinary, we were fairly happy with the results of using the 5MP rear facing camera. This is mainly because we didn’t really expect too much. Under bright and natural lighting situations, the Maven produced some clear images of our subjects. We were less satisfied when using the flash in lower-light situations or when the object was in motion. Many times our subjects were over-exposed or had a too much white light when taking pictures. You will see from our test shots in the gallery that there is a significant amount of graining and blur in many of the selected shots. When we tried to capture a test subject that was in motion, this graining and blur were even more pronounced. The color reproduced from the camera was also an issue as images were a bit “flat”. Applying a filter or other forms of post-processing could help, but we thought that native images could have been better.
On the positive side, we were actually surprised to see so many camera options at your disposal on the ZTE Maven. Some of the exposure problems that we talked about above were minimized with using many of the Mavens photo options. The first thing you can do is switch to Manual mode versus the default Auto. “Fun” mode let you pick from a number of different effects that you can shoot your subject with. The ZTE Maven is ideally suited for a person who wants to capture the essence of the event and not one who is submitting their image to a museum or art show.
The Manual Mode gives you the option of viewing a grid to help frame your subjects. There is also a White Balance option that will allow you to have a bit more control of the look of your image. You are even able to make adjustments on the ISO and Exposure. For those photographers who want to control all aspects of their photos, this is a pretty impressive suite of options to have especially for $60.
Besides the CPU and GPU benchmarks we ran earlier, we also did a few network speed tests with the SpeedTest.Net application. Since the ZTE Maven could only connect to our 802.11n wireless network and not the Wireless-AC network in our Legit Bunker, we didnt really expect industry leading speeds over Wi-Fi.
The download speeds for the ZTE Maven maxed out around 26 Mbps which is about 25% of the speed of our Samsung Galaxy S5 (110 Mbps) while the upload speeds of around 10-11 Mbps, equal to that of the Galaxy S5. During the course of our testing and Maven use, we never noticed any lag or drop issues when the Maven was connected over Wi-Fi.
When we turned off Wi-Fi and tested the LTE speeds (at various locations around the city), we found that the Mavens speeds were consistent with that of our Samsung Galaxy phones as well as our Apple iPhone 6.
ZTE Maven Final Thoughts & Conclusions
The ZTE Maven is offered exclusively by AT&T as part of their GoPhone package. The GoPhones are pay-as-you-go or pre-pay plans that start at $30 a month for unlimited talk and text data. With one of AT&T Smartphone plans, you can then choose to purchase the ZTE Maven for $59.99. The ZTE Maven is available from other retailers such as Best Buy as well. Of course if you are already on AT&Ts network, you might be able to take advantage of grabbing this phone and adding it to your current account. (Talk to AT&Ts customer service for more information!)
Going into this review we had very low expectations for how the ZTE Maven would behave and if it would be a phone that we would be interested in. After all, what do you really expect from a smartphone priced at under $60? Surely, there will be limitations on the size, screen resolution, and battery life, right? Well, the ZTE Maven exceeded our expectations in all of these areas.
Even though the ZTE Maven only has 1 MB of operable RAM for its processes, we never really had a poor experience using the Maven even with a bunch of apps open and using the phone to text and make calls. The engineers have obviously optimized how the processor is working and were the Maven is able to prioritize certain applications not hindering the users experience using the device.
Legit Bottom Line:
Even though the ZTE Maven is on the smaller side, with a screen size of 4.5-inches which is about the same size as an Apple iPhone 5, it is powered by a functioning Android-5.1 OS that lets you run all of your favorite programs and apps with no problem. For anyone looking for an inexpensive, but fully functional, pay-as-you-go smartphone, the AT&T ZTE Maven GoPhone should be at the top of your list.