Unannounced ZTE Axon 7 mini is already on sale in Germany for €299

The ZTE Axon 7 mini was leaked once so far last month and we expected it to become official in August. Yet here we are almost at the end of the month and that hasn't happened.

Even so, two online retailers from Germany have already listed the Axon 7 mini, with one of them even claiming it has units in stock and ready for dispatch. The handset is priced at €299 unlocked.

Usually such listings are helpfully revealing a new phone's specs too, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. That's because all of the specs that the retailers claim are the Axon 7 mini's are actually the specs of its predecessor, the Axon mini from last year. It's highly unlikely that ZTE would only change the design this time around and stick with the exact same innards for a new generation of its smaller Axon-branded handset, so it's unclear what's going on here - and how one retailer can claim to have Axon 7 mini units in stock while apparently not knowing its specs.

Still, if nothing else all this probably signifies that we're getting ever closer to an official announcement of the Axon 7 mini by ZTE. Perhaps IFA, which starts in a few days, will prove to be the perfect venue for such an outing.

According to the one and only leak we've seen about the Axon 7 mini, the new model will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 617 SoC, it will sport a 16 MP rear camera, and a 2,705 mAh battery. It should run Android 6.0 Marshmallow from day one.