Gadgetory

double the play double the fun and potentially double the work but the story is not as simple as it seems an undoubted leak ooh look into our smartphone future or what it could be gets bogged down by problems we are still having today it's Joshua Vergara what's going on everybody and this is our full review of the ZTE axon M obviously this phone is a foldable device with two screens comprising the outer shell and at first glance when it is closed it might look like the original Nintendo DS revealing the two displays shows the 5.2 inch full HD IPS panels that can be used either independently or together like one large canvas and that yields an effective six point seven five inches of what can be described as a tablet like surface we'll get into the actual experience of using these displays a little bit later but one thing I do have to say is that these IPS panels are decidedly average now take it on their own it's 5.2 inches at full HD resolution and the resolution doesn't bother me a whole lot it's more about the color reproduction for a film that's supposed to be literally all displays all the time it doesn't really scream eye candy when the experience of looking at these things for media or gaming hasn't exactly been on par with plenty of other flagships there's very little to say about the inner portion after all the camera's not even found there it's found atop the main display and it is used for both rear and front facing functions all of the buttons are to the left of the main screen including the power button which has a fingerprint sensor embedded in it unfortunately if the power button is a little bit recessed into the body of the device which makes it a little bit awkward to press especially if you're using your right hand and you have to use an index or middle finger to unlock the device there's also another button down here that can be used for triggering the shutter in the camera and you can double tap it to even launch the camera but since this is an 18 T exclusive device what AT&T wants you to know is that you can program holding this button down to trigger Direct TV in a mode called TV mode now I wish I could say more about TV mode but basically it's just a shortcut to opening any programmable media application it actually doesn't change the functionality of that app or the way that it is shown in the display a whole lot overall it's the heft of this device that lends it a sturdy feel and when used in the closed configuration it is a little bit thick which means that it feels pretty secure in one unfortunately there's one big issue with this a lot of users out there might complain that a glass panel on the back gets really smudged up by one's fingerprints well that's the same case here except that glass panel is an actual display so the more you use this phone in this configuration the more you're just smudging up something that you potentially will be looking at so before we get into the experience of using a dual screen phone let's talk about the specifications and one of the reasons why I'm doing it this way is because the specifications are actually not the best the Snapdragon 820 one is what powers this with 4 gigabytes of RAM expandable storage beyond the included 64 gigabytes and a 30 180 milliamp hour battery we've seen plenty of other phones this year with single screens have 6 gigabytes of RAM or even 8 gigabytes of RAM and Rock the Snapdragon 835 so ZTE is kind of shooting itself in the foot for not trying to put the absolute best specifications in a phone that might have to pull double-time and as far as battery life is concerned using the phone in the close configuration with just one display brought about four hours of screen on time which is kind of typical for a full HD display phone like this however opening up the device and using it as much as I could throughout the day in a dual screen fashion kind of cut that battery life in half and it kind of tickled me a little bit how much that made sense I got about two and a half hours of screen on time when I was trying to use the phone as much as possible with both screens so let's get the camera out of the way as well because it is made up of just one unit that is above the main display a 20 megapixel shooter that lacks a number of enhancements that are kind of necessary for most flagship cameras the main issue here is the lack of optical image stabilization the app does feature quite a few different modes and is actually somewhat robust in its manual mode but unfortunately it's a bit of a pain to have to flip the phone around every single time when you want to take a selfie or just a regular photo but the problem is that this shooter while seemingly powerful on paper just doesn't get the job done without stabilization pictures had blur in all but the brightest conditions alongside this main issue is the cameras trouble with dynamic range even with HDR on the lack of stabilization also shows in video capture where shakiness tends to break the otherwise decent 4k capture while it can be a decent shooter in the brightest of conditions the way it falls apart and even medium lighting is hard not to look at the rest of the phone is fairly standard including headphone jack and a speaker that is powered by Dolby Atmos it's not the best speaker out there in terms of sound quality but it does get decently loud so if you're sharing content with one other person for example in the tent formation that you're seeing here well you might have a pretty good time sharing content with them this tent configuration and using the mirrored mode so you can show the exact same thing on either display is one of the cooler aspects of using a dual screen phone like the ax on em but how about all of the other uses for a dual screen device all those possibilities are designated by the M in the soft key bar which changes the display mode it is actually possible to only use the left screen even when the phone is unfolded there's also a stretched mode where both screens in portrait are used as one big canvas a mirrored mode like I just said for the 10 formation and finally a dual mode where either screen can be used independently for multitasking now for the kind of user that quite literally wants to dual monitor Android this is the only device that can do it and multitasking is definitely a good thing to do on two screens of the axon M for power users out there who want to be able to do as much as possible at the same time well here's an example I'm reading my script over on the left and then here is YouTube on the right showing a piece of video content it's something that I did very often with this and there a couple of other scenarios where this multitasking was actually fun and came in handy one of my favorite tasks has been for gaming in this example I used Final Fantasy 9 I promise I'm gonna finish it eventually on the main screen while the secondary display showed a walkthrough that I referenced whenever I got stuck one of the issues I did get into sometimes was Android pulling focus with an app like YouTube that is made to work in the background if you have YouTube right especially it will continue to play no matter what however if you have something like Netflix clicking on the Netflix panel will then pull focus from the other application and vice-versa meaning that the Netflix video might actually pause when you're doing something on the other screen in another mode both displays can be used together as a whole canvas as the software stretches applications out and you can force this on pretty much any app this is the most interesting but ultimately the most flawed approach however where on the one hand you have the double screen real estate but on the other hand there is a distracting line of bezel that cuts right down the middle another thing I did notice with the display is that the second display plays a little bit of catch-up with the first display if you're scrolling up and down applications like Reddit for an example you can see that there's a tie tiny fraction of a second delay on the right screen as you're scrolling on the left one it doesn't really destroy the experience of using this display however it is something that you can't unsee once you notice it this extended mode definitely has a bit of a WOW factor but even those people that were impressed by it when I first showed them it got a little bit annoyed by those same nagging issues the second time around and that's kind of the story of this device I later realize that what I was doing here was tolerating some of the bigger issues and those issues all had to go back to the same reason the software not even mentioning the fact that the performance specifications don't lend themselves to the best multitasking in general the software turned out to be less equipped for the task it comes down to that lack of attention to detail for example why not make it so that the phone could be used in a single screen mode but switch to either display at will so you can flip it around or when in the stretched configuration why does Instagram require the phone to be in landscape mode all the time even when auto rotate is off and while we're added why is the original multi-window Android function disabled even when using the single screen maybe I don't want to unfold the device but I still want to be able to multitask a little bit and even better imagine the possibility of having three or even four applications open at once even if the specifications are already kind of cut at the knees so if you have include into it by now the ZTE axon M is a story of trade-offs you get two screens on here and multitasking could be a joy on here but it requires users to adapt and to have a lot of patience now we give ZT a lot of credit for even making this device and we really wanted to like it but putting an extra screen on a phone like this doesn't really change things if you don't work on the core experience first and that in a nutshell is the problem with the ZTE axon M now if you're looking for this kind of form factor this kind of multitasking this kind of experience specifically then that's fine but for everybody else having a phone like this is just not going to dramatically change your existing Android life as always thank you guys very much for watching and hope you enjoyed this review of the ZTE axon M now I know I sounded a little bit harsh on the phone in this review but the first dual screen smartphone comes with a lot of expectations and the fact that the X on em doesn't really meet most of those expectations hit a little bit harder than we expected it to still we'd like the device we think it's a great concept and we're excited to see what comes next and if you really want multitasking the axe on em just might be the phone that you're looking for even if it doesn't fulfill too much else otherwise but nonetheless you can stay tuned Sandra Authority for more about the axe on em and more about all of the flagships we've had in 2017 as we're drawing this year to a close so with that in mind happy holidays everybody and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already because we are your source for all things Android