Gadgetory

hey what's up guys this is Bailey Stein with Android Authority today we'll be checking out ZTE slate Astapor double smartphone available on Cricket Wireless this is our full video review of the ZTE grand X max - max - reminds us a bit of the recently announced tax on 7 with its subtle curve to help with handling and similar port and button locations unlike the Exxon 7 however the max 2 is constructed entirely of plastic you could even say that the rear covers gloss is similar to what Samsung used on the galaxy s4 nice in the hand but definitely a fingerprint magnet it's also not the best at resisting scratches unfortunately sadly my unit did suffer a 1 meter drop onto concrete and while the plastic fared well the right side of the band chipped considerably so you may want to pick up a case if you're clumsy like me the ZTE color scheme and patterned rear are both remarkably subtle but nice nonetheless and although the Max 2 is pretty big it's fairly manageable in the hand thanks to it being a bit narrower than similarly sized smartphones like the Nexus 6 the three illuminated capacitive keys are customizable meaning that you can choose where you like the back button to go which is a great setting to have the max - beautiful large 6 inch 1080p display offers a great immersive media consumption experience if you watch a lot of videos TV shows or movies you'll really enjoy this phone and for the price the display is one of the best we've seen has great color reproduction very good contrast just the right amount of saturation and it's reasonably readable outdoors the two and a half d curved glass is also a very nice touch the Snapdragon 615 successor that is the Snapdragon 617 is powering the max 2 and is complemented by 2 gigabytes of RAM overall the max 2 is a solid performer is not going to do particularly well in benchmark tests but it's still pretty good day to day with only a few UI hiccups the adrenal 405 GPU may hinder the phone's gaming performance with our load times and some minor frame drops during gameplay but even high-end games like asphalt 8 are still very playable call quality with a ZTE seem to be excellent on the Cricut network there is 16 gigabytes of internal storage that can be expanded up to 64 gigabytes with a microSD card although we were happy to see ZTE include a quick charge 2.0 enabled USB type-c port which is the newer now reversible standard we were disappointed with the lack of a fingerprint reader the vast majority of smartphones this year have shipped with readers so it seems a bit odd not to include one even though this is an affordable offering the single side firing speaker on the Mac's - sounds great only minor distortion at higher volumes there is also a hi-fi audio chipset onboard which will appeal to those wanting to use headphones with normal usage the grand x max 2 has no trouble reaching about 5 hours of screen on time thanks to its 3400 milliamp hour battery during one of our tests however I use Google Maps for about an hour and a half and then had a 40 minute Google Hangouts video call which resulted in just under 3 hours of screen on time despite this I was never able to kill the grand X next - before the end of my day lighter users may even be able to achieve two full days of use ZTE has included a secondary rear camera which appears to help the software bokeh mode unfortunately this mode did not perform very well in our testing there doesn't appear to be any other use for the dual camera setup sadly the images produced by the grand x max twos 13 megapixel rear camera are disappointing and below average even for the price many of the images that I took are noisy despite good lighting the images are also very soft especially near the corners to be fair some of these images are just simply out of focus but that can be blamed on the phone slow and accurate autofocus in addition color reproduction can be horrendously bad especially when capturing warmer colors like red and orange low-light performance was also below average for the price the phone couldn't focus correctly for virtually every shot and when it did images came out extra noisy the shame that the camera doesn't hold up well to ZTE s camera app is actually quite good offering an easy-to-use automatic shooting experience there is also a built-in time-lapse & panorama modes as well as a surprisingly comprehensive manual mode the max2 runs a lightly skinned version of android 6.0.1 marshmallow outside of a few notable UI and functional changes the software here is pretty much stock Android the most major change is likely the lock screen since the unlocking mechanism is to press and hold rather than to swipe off although we generally like this idea we found that the phone would unlock itself while in a pants pocket opening apps and placing calls on more than a few occasions one thing to note regarding our Cricket Wireless model is the bloatware that comes pre-loaded it's not terrible there's only about 10 apps that are pre-installed most of which are games plus you can uninstall all but three which appear to be helpful for cricket subscribers anyway you can purchase the grand xmax 2 in blue exclusively from Cricket Wireless for $200 unfortunately there's currently only one 16 gigabyte model available and those wishing to store large files will have to rely on the expandable storage up to 64 gigabytes the ZTE grand X max 2 is an excellent choice for those on cricket looking for a large affordable smartphone although we would have liked to see a much better camera stronger build quality and the fingerprint reader it's hard to fault the grand x max 2 for its price max to exceeds where it needs to with a beautiful display great battery life and an excellent software experience if you don't take many images you will likely be very happy with this phone thank you for watching our video review of the ZTE grand X Max 2 please be sure to like this video if you liked it and don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already finally be sure to visit the Android Authority website for additional coverage as we are your source for all things Android