ZTE wants to join a small group of handset manufacturers which make their own chips. At the moment, this group includes the very largest vendors, like Apple, Samsung and Huawei, with LG looking to join them in the near future, as well.

ZTE’s 8-core processor, named the WiseFone 7550s, has already undergone trail production and is ready to launch as early as next month. Full details of the chipset such as architecture, GPU and speed are still being kept a secret but sources have let slip the WiseFone will be more energy efficient - consume 60% energy less than Nvidia’s Tegra 4 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800.

A Chinese smartphone hardware test software shows WiseFone 7550s' core is a little bit higher than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 800.