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The ZTE Kis 3 Max comes with a 1,850mAh battery that can easily be removed and replaced.
On paper the Kis 3 Max's battery is apparently able to last up to 700 hours on standby, with 13-and-a-half hours of talk time. I found that in real day-to-day use the Kis 3 Max lasted a full 24 hours with a bit of juice left over. This involved browsing the internet on both Wi-Fi and cellular, listening to music, and making a call.
The 1,850mAh capacity of the Kis 3 Max is larger than the Vodafone Smart 4 Mini, which comes with just a 1,400mAh battery. The Kis 3 Max's battery also beats the Huawei Ascend Y530 and the Nokia Lumia 530, which come with 1,700mAh and 1,430mAh batteries, respectively.
Because of the low-powered components and low resolution display of the ZTE Kis 3 Max, the battery isn't under all that much pressure. It also doesn't support battery-draining 4G, and its technical limitations mean you're unlikely to be playing demanding games.
The fact that you won't use it as much as more powerful smartphones is ambivalent as selling points go, but the Kis 3 Max holds battery well and could be a decent choice if you needed a spare phone that will last a couple of days without charging. The Kis 3 Max could be just the ticket for camping or festivals - but check you'll have Virgin Media network coverage before you go.
Certain tasks drained the battery faster than others though, with around eight minutes of photography outdoors knocking 8% off the battery. The TechRadar battery test (which plays a looped high definition video with the screen at full brightness) cut the Kis 3 Max's battery to 69%. Although this is slightly better than how the Lumia 530 fared (its battery dropped to 66% during the same test), it's not a great result by any measure.
The Huawei Ascend Y530 did a better job of holding on to its battery, ending up with 74% charge after the test.
Unlike other smartphones around its price point, the Kis 3 Max doesn't come with any battery saving features that you can quickly switch on to preserve battery life. You can view battery use and see which apps are particularly power hungry through the settings, but that's about it.
The essentials
The Kis 3 Max isn't impressive when playing games or being used for more intensive apps. This doesn't make it completely useless, and for the essential task of making and receiving calls it does a fair enough job.
Call quality is good, with voices coming through nice and clear. I haven't had much experience with the Virgin Media network, but during my time with the ZTE Kis 3 Max I had no problem getting signal. Admittedly most of my time was spent in a city where you would expect pretty good signal, though this isn't always the case.
A quick look at Virgin Media's UK coverage shows that most of the UK is covered, so you shouldn't have too much trouble connecting. Virgin Media actually uses the EE network, so if you can get EE reception, you'll get a Virgin Media signal as well.
Sending text messages uses the default Android app, which means the Kis 3 Max is perfectly competent here. The keyboard does a decent job of keeping up with fast typing, though I found the keyboard to be less accurate when using swipe gestures to spell words.
Things start to fall apart when using the ZTE Kis 3 Max for internet browsing, which these days is arguably just as essential as being able to make calls and send text messages.
The ZTE Kis 3 Max comes with two pre-installed browsers. The default Browser app does an OK job, but most websites (especially image heavy ones) aren't displayed properly. Chrome is also installed, and although it handles websites better, scrolling is a chore because the Kis 3 Max struggles to keep up.
As I saw when using the Facebook app, scrolling is far from smooth, with frequent pauses that make browsing websites a chore. Images again take a while to display properly, which isn't the fault of the network, as I browsed on both 3G and Wi-Fi and both times the internet experience was disappointing.
As the ZTE Kis 3 Max runs the stock version of Android 4.4 KitKat you get access to the Google Play store and all the apps in it. That gives the Kis 3 Max a versatility that some budget smartphones lack. It comes with an accelerometer, gyro and built-in compass, so it can even be used with fitness and other advanced apps.
However once again the poor specs and performance of the Kis 3 Max mean that certain apps, especially complicated and intensive ones, don't perform very well.
Media playback is another feature that we often consider essential for a smartphone. The ZTE Kis 3 Max uses the Google Play Music app for playing stored music as well as buying and downloading new tunes.
The small 4GB onboard storage is the limitation here, and if you want to keep more than a few albums worth of tracks you'll need to buy an SD card. Sound quality over headphones was pretty poor, with music sounding tinny and flat, even when using a decent pair of cans.
Watching films is handled by the Google Play Movies & TV app. It gives you a range of films and TV shows that you can download or stream, but trying to get the Kis 3 Max to run videos I transferred over to the device via USB proved annoying, with the app not always finding them. Instead I had to find the apps through the File Browser app.
