The ZTE Axon 7s may be getting a less powerful variant

The ZTE Axon 7 was first announced in late May 2016, and in April the company revealed the Axon 7s, with some upgraded hardware. Today, the China-based regulatory agency TENAA posted some images and a little information on an upcoming ZTE phone that may or may not be a variant of the Axon 7s.

The listing says that the code name for the phone is the A2018, compared to the Axon 7’s code name of A2017. The images that were posted show a design that’s very similar to the one on the Axon 7s. The new phone will have a 5.5-inch 2,560 x 1,440 pixel resolution screen. The back of the phone shows it will have a fingerprint scanner, along with a dual camera setup, again like the Axon 7s. It is also supposed to have dual stereo speakers.

However, while the Axon 7s has 6 GB of RAM, this new phone only has 4 GB of memory. The battery size of 3,320 mAh for the new phone is also slightly smaller than the 3,250 mAh battery that’s been confirmed for the Axon 7s. Finally, the processor for the phone is listed as a quad-core chip running at 2.15 GHz, while the Axon 7s has the faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor.

There’s not a lot to go on with this TENAA post, but there’s enough to get the speculation fires burning. If ZTE has submitted this phone for approval by TENAA, it means that we could get an official announcement on this device, including full specs, its price and a release date, very soon. Hopefully we will also get a clarification on if this is indeed just a variant of the Axon 7s at that time.