Gadgetory

what's going on guys long hair from Android authority and ZTE s latest smartphone is supposedly made entirely with consumer in mind and delivers only the things that you would want or value in a smartphone without all the unnecessary fluff but how well does it live up to that claim let's find out with the axon phone by ZTE here in 2015 the design of a smart phone couldn't be more important and with phones becoming somewhat of fashion items with all the different color options and material choices that we have now from the likes of Samsung LG and Motorola it was up to the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer to get it right especially if they really want to make a dent in the US market the body of the axon phone is made entirely of a smooth metal to give it that high-quality premium feel and the back is tapered with rounded corners similar to a phone like the one m9 to make it sit more comfortably in the hand it definitely does feel extremely nice but the smooth metal finish can make the phone feel slippery the phone is also quite tall due to the large bezels and front speaker grills so reaching up top for the notification shade can be a little bit of a chore and makes the phone feel even less secure when you can't maintain your grip the axon phone also isn't going to be winning any awards anytime soon for being thin and light as it weighs in at a hefty 175 grams and is a little over 9 millimeters thick but it certainly isn't a bad thing as the added thickness and weight only makes the phone feel even more substantial than it already is to give the axon phone a unique appeal ZTE added a distinctive grille pattern that can be found in multiple locations like the earpiece front speaker and camera this is supposed to make the phone stand out and grab attention to certain parts of the phone without being overly shouty aesthetically it flows well with the overall design of the phone and it definitely is eye catching when you see it for the first time going around the device the buttons are in very ergonomic locations which really helps with the handling of the phone considering it has such a large footprint the power button is on the right with the volume rockers on the opposing side below the SIM tray but also on the right is a dedicated camera shutter button something we don't see enough of on Android phones on top is the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack next to a microphone and the microUSB port is on the bottom next to another microphone finally on the front the axon phone features a capacitive circle home button with two dots flanking the left and right sides for menu and recent apps a nice touch with the circle home button is that it also doubles as a notification light and will pulsate anytime you get a notification or your battery is low for ZTE to truly compete with the heavy hitters the axon phone had to be packed to the gills with the latest and greatest and smart phone tech and it all starts with the display the screen is a large 5.5 inch LCD panel with the resolution of 2560 by 1440 or quad HD all wrapped up in Gorilla Glass 3 and it's a fantastic looking screen it's big bright beautiful with great color reproduction viewing angles and contrast and it's just an absolute pleasure to use the large size and high resolution makes it great for all sorts of content and there's a nice amount of saturation to make the screen pop it gets bright enough that outdoor visibility isn't an issue and the black levels are pretty good too for an LCD but obviously still pales in comparison to the inky dark of an AMOLED panel inside you'll find the latest chipset from Qualcomm with the Snapdragon 810 and three gigs of RAM to keep things running along smoothly the axon phone is snappy and responsive it flies in and out of applications without hesitation and is able to multitask and play graphically intensive games with very little trouble not only is the axon phone being powered by a very powerful processor but the performance is also helped by the fact that it's not being bogged down with a bunch of pre-installed apps or unnecessary software which helps to maintain a fluid experience all around these Snapdragon 810 is notorious for running hot which we all know by now and there have been a couple of times where the phone did get warm during long gaming sessions and feeling the heat permeate through the metal body is a little bit jarring but it's yet to get to the point where I felt like I couldn't handle the phone or rendered it inoperable ZTE made a pretty big deal about the audio experience on the axon phone and rightfully so it's the first smartphone to be released in the US with a hi-fi audio chipset built-in for both listening and recording you can use any pair of headphones or earbuds that you want to take advantage of it but ZTE does include a very nice pair of JBL earbuds in the box a $50 value which we're essentially free if you took advantage of the pre-order the hi-fi audio definitely works well and I was able to easily notice a difference in audio in comparison to a couple of other flagships that I tried like the s6 and m9 while using the JBL earbuds among all of them on the ax on phone the sound is not only louder but it's also a lot fuller with depth especially along the mids and lows now one part of the audio experience that isn't quite what you might expect is the speaker grilles on the front the dual speaker grilles would lead you to believe that there's dual front-facing speakers but sadly there's only one speaker firing on the bottom and the other is just the earpiece the speaker does sound good and is quite loud but without a second speaker up top for a true stereo sound the audio can be very lopsided when consuming media and landscape and overall it is anything overly impressive other hardware includes the usual slew of connectivity options like Wi-Fi Bluetooth NFC and of course all of the necessary LTE bands for to work on carriers here in the states like t-mobile and 18t now for storage there's only one configuration available which is 32 gigabytes and there's no room for microSD card expansion which was a very odd omission considering this is the only storage option that you get now 32 gigabytes may still be enough for most people but if you're really heavy on the media it may just barely be cutting it as far as the battery is concerned a large 3000 milliamp hour battery is packed inside and battery life on the axon phone is good but it isn't spectacular it's good enough to last a full day with at least four hours of screen on time but that number seemed to be where it would usually cap out even on a heavy usage day where I played quite a few games and took a lot of photos the phone still managed to eke out four hours of screen on time despite only lasting about eight hours off the charger with more casual use that number increases dramatically to around 13 to 16 hours but screen on time only showed a slight increase four and a half hours for those heavier days where you may need to charge midway through the day the axon phone takes advantage of Qualcomm quick charge 2.0 to get you back up and running in a short amount of time another big highlight of the axon phone that ZTE made a big deal about is the camera the main camera on the rear is a 13 megapixel F 1.8 sensor with oh is but there's an additional 2 megapixel lens for capturing depth information similar to what we saw on the One m8 for selfies the front camera is a respectable 8 megapixels and not only is it capable of taking some great looking shots but it's also a wide-angle lens to help you easily fit additional subjects into the frame the camera UI is simple and navigation is done with swipes across the viewfinder to switch between modes typical modes like manual panorama sport HDR slow-motion video etc are all available but the one that stands out the most is the bokeh mode which takes advantage of the cameras refocusing capabilities the interesting thing about this bokeh mode is that allows for manual f-stop control at least that's what it leads you to believe it does alter the depth of field or background blur but unlike a real aperture change on something like a DSLR it doesn't affect how much light actually enters the lens regardless of whether you're shooting wide open @f 1.0 or @f 8.0 shooting in this mode will allow for images to be refocused after the fact along with the level of blur to be adjusted and the camera does a really great job of separating objects in the foreground from the background but it can look very artificial if you get too carried away with the blur effect and can only fully refocus on a different part of an image if it hasn't already been blurred out by the cameras natural bokeh it's cool and can be rather convincing if you follow the appropriate guidelines but right now it still feels more like a novelty than a must-have feature in terms of general everyday picture taking the camera experience is mostly more good than bad the shutter speed and autofocus is very quick which made it very easy to snap photos and the dedicated camera button is a nice touch but an auto mission is the lack of a half press to focus and the camera button is currently not able to launch the camera from a sleep State but hopefully this is something that can be address any future software update now infer to good lighting conditions the camera is able to produce some pretty excellent images with adequate natural-looking colors and maintains a high level of sharpness and clarity even when zoomed in dynamic range is just okay it tends to crush the darks a little too much and you lose a lot of detail because of it HDR works well to alleviate that in most situations but in some cases it does tend to bias towards a more overexposed look with less natural-looking colors macro shots can also be very hit-or-miss sometimes the camera can find the focus point right away and you can get an image with tack sharp focus and other times it almost becomes an exercise in frustration to get the image that you want even with OAS and an aperture of f-18 low-light and nighttime photography is decent at best and the image processing may be to blame there's a lot of noise reduction going on which leads to softer details and colors are much more muted in these situations that it makes it tough to capture an appealing image as they hold the camera is good but as it stands right now it seems to fall a bit short of the hype for software the axon phone offers a very clean Android experience in comparison to the more heavily skinned devices by ZTE the axon phone ships with Android 5.1.1 and it's honestly a mostly stock Android experience with all Google's material design aesthetics kept intact there are a few changes such as the custom launcher that offers the typical features like widgets and wallpapers but you can also change the home screen scroll effect to something a little more dynamic and even theme it but it's not a full-fledged theme engine so there's only a few to pick from for the time being the quick settings toggles have also been slightly tweaked allowing to rearrange these shortcuts in any order as you see fit which is a really nice touch and there's quite a few more toggles than the traditional ones found on stock lollipop another functional change from stock Android is the addition of a quick info panel that's accessible with a swipe up from the bottom with a music player starred contacts a step counter and sports news from Yahoo it can be useful but I found it to get in the way more than anything especially when trying to swipe away the notification panel and the info panel comes up instead ZTE also kept the app experience extremely clean by not bogging things down with a ton of pre-installed bloat there's only a couple of pre-loaded applications with Argos and Rock my run both of which are geared towards health and fitness Argos is a simple pedometer to help keep track of your steps and it can constantly keep you updated on your lockscreen and notification panel you can even connect with your friends to see how well they're doing and help keep you motivated towards your health goals The Rock my run app on the other hand is essentially just a music app but I can tailor the temple to beat to the pace of your run to help keep you going listening to the music is free but if you want manual control over the tempo or have it changed based on your pace it'll cost you $4.99 per month for the service which also eliminates the in-app ads the acts on phone is available now for pre-order directly through ZTE and other outlets like Amazon eBay and Newegg for 449 98 it's available in three colors phthalo blue ion gold and chromium silver to top off a purchase and make users feel more at ease about buying an unlocked phone the axe on phone comes with passport 1.0 a protection plan that offers free premium protection two years of product warranty advanced exchanges and free two-way shipping should anything ever happen to your device for $450 the axe on phone is a no brainer it offers many of the same features as today's mainstream flagships with a premium metal build quad HD display a decent camera and the latest processor at a much lower price point ZTE may be the fourth largest smartphone manufacturer in the US but their presence here in the u.s. among the general consumer is largely unknown in comparison to the likes of Samsung LG and even HTC the axon phone is their gateway phone to changing that and they're certainly on the right track now they just have to convince people to buy it as always guys thanks so much for watching this video if you did enjoy please give it a thumbs up down below we definitely appreciate it and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and feel free to follow me on any of my social media links like Google+ Instagram and Twitter that's all below me as well and if you want to see more here from us 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