Last year at CES 2016, ZTE announced Project CSX, with the goal of making a community sourced mobile device. They planned to do this through a member led website that was setup up as a forum. Where members of the “Z-Community” could come together and voice their opinions. Well a year later, ZTE’s Crowdsourced smartphone is a reality as the company has just introduced Hawkeye.
So yes out of 540 names, Hawkeye was chosen, and a unique feature of the device would be a self-adhesive back. Alternatively, rather the adhesive back is in the form of a case that comes with a device. So, while this feature might come in handy sometimes, ZTE made the right call by making it a case. The other top requested feature was eye-tracking, and this comes to fruition as well.
Eye-tracking gets paired with a self-adhesive back as it can be a hands-free experience. Similar to what Samsung has offered on previous devices, Hawkeye will track the movement of your eye, and this can be used to navigate the software experience. This eye tracking technology will also pair well with voice commands.
Rounding out ZTE’s Hawkeye are reliable specifications for a mid-range smartphone. ZTE is keeping quite on most, but we know it has a 5.5-inch Full HD display, Dual-Rear Cameras, a Fingerprint Sensor, Expandable Memory via a microSD card slot, Android Nougat Software, dual SIM card slots, and Hi-Fi audio. They have not yet announced the processor or exact battery size, but hopefully, this will come soon.
ZTE is continuing the crowdsourcing theme, by making Hawkeye available to purchase or rather back on Kickstart today. Hawkeye will be available at a special discounted pre-order price of $199 for a limited time. However, keep in mind that device is scheduled to ship much later this year in September, need $500,000 backing, and not all of the specifications are known. I do have to commend ZTE by truly including customers in the device design and building process. You can check out ZTE’s Hawkeye Kickstarter Campaign, by clicking here.
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