Gadgetory

a little over two months ago ZTE sponsored my trip to Beijing China to attend the launch party for the axon seven some stuff about their new flagship impressed me with the hands-on feel of the device and the jaw-dropping specs relative to the price being among them but other things didn't the speakers in my engineering sample couldn't go full volume without significant distortion and the camera was a generation or two behind other top-tier flagships making it tough to call it a legitimate flagship killer regardless of the price but since that time the software has been tweaked the hardware has even been tweaked and perhaps just perhaps my own opinion has been tweaked let's see by just how much Tunnel Bear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open Internet to try tunnel bear for free check out the link in the video description so I feel like I have a responsibility to open with this the axon 7 is not going to win every battle today but its $400 carrier unlocked with no contracts or other obligations attached to it with almost every other device that I'm going to compare it against coming in at 300 to 400 dollars more than that for a 64 gig variant which is the axon sevens base model so then with that aside like pretty much every other flagship it packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU 4 gigs of lpddr4 ram and an adrenal 530 GPU the 30 to 50 million power battery is decidedly average given its 5.5 inch screen size but quick charge 3.0 over a type-c USB port is a very welcomed as is the satisfying tactile lock and volume rocker button arrangement noise cancelling microphone and an elongated sim tray that can hold either a second sim or a microSD card for additional storage none of the obvious cost-cutting measures are here really the outer chassis is an all-aluminum affair that makes wireless charging impossible but looks and feels good I'll be it more slippery than I'd like in the hand NFC and dual band a/c Wireless are accounted for and the rear groove under the 20 megapixel rear camera and dual LED flash is a fingerprint reader that while not in my preferred position on the front of the phone where I can reach it lying flat on a desk is lightning fast and very accurate around front under the aggressively noise reduced 8 megapixel selfie camera is the meat and potatoes of the axon 7s standout features including one that wasn't present when they gave me a pre-production device ten weeks ago the 5.5 inch screen is a fantastic looking Corning Gorilla Glass 4 topped 2560 by 1440 that looks awesome from any angle in any conditions and may or may not contribute to the outstanding battery life that I experienced using this device as a daily driver which I'll discuss a little bit more later it's flanked on both sides then by some of the loudest and best positioned cell phone speakers that I have ever encountered the last thing here then something that took me a couple of days to get used to then I absolutely loved is the capacitive buttons that replaced the on-screen buttons in the early sample I mean yes yes capacitive buttons have definitely been done before but what makes these ones better than others is actually something quite subtle look what happens with another capacitive button equipped smartphone there's almost no where to hold it in landscape and others are even worse ZTE gets around this maybe accidentally because they were trying to shoehorn the buttons in in the last month of product development by fitting them into a slimmer than usual strip that makes the chin bar a perfect size for comfortable typing in spite of that speaker placement and by squeezing them in towards the middle of the phone making accidental button presses much less likely while typing and holding the phone in landscape mode it's a minor tweak but it makes a huge difference in the day to day use well done on that note it's been a long time since I've rocked a One m7 or a one m8 and it's easy to forget how much you miss nice loud front-facing speakers sitting on a desk next to me playing music it actually doesn't make much of a difference but when watching video the axon 7 holds its own against pretty much anything as a content consumption device I'm a little disappointed that the last few volume levels are basically the same when listening to music due to some dynamic range reducing tricks that help with distortion but at least they solved the distortion problem in some way as for headphones ZTE makes a lot of claims about the phenomenal three-and-a-half millimeter output of the seven but I guess the s7 must be pretty good as well since aside from being able to push volume levels further past comfortable I really couldn't hear the difference even with a pair of Bayer dynamic DT 990 pro 240 ohm headphones moving on then this is my first experience with my favor ZTE s Android skin so I've got some comments on that overall I give it a B+ there's good stuff like right hand left-handed modes for the nav buttons the ability to uninstall apps directly from the homescreen the default setting configurator for PC USB connections so I don't need to be prompted every time and the stellar default power management profile that managed to make the battery feel about 20% bigger and day-to-day use without affecting the way the device worked for me and then there's mediocre stuff like the functional but slow auto call gesture and the clunky folder creation system for the homescreen followed by some stuff that I would like to see addressed the stock launcher is limited to a four by four grid size on the homescreen please let me put my stuff on here thanks the lockscreen doesn't show notification details until you press a little bell way up in the top left corner something that isn't more secure I'm not hiding my notification details it's just more inconvenient because it's another button to press notification scrolling in landscape is kind of dirt sometimes and then finally there's no fast launch camera gesture or configurable shortcuts at all for that matter I don't care what the gesture is wiggle double press long press let me do something that doesn't require me to reach the lock screen and then press something in order to launch the camera which I guess leads us pretty well into the camera other reviewers are giving pretty mixed reports here and I think there are a few reasons for that the specs are great a 20 megapixel sensor behind F 1.8 sapphire glass with optical image stabilization 4k video capture etc etc and still pictures under certain conditions are actually competitive with the galaxy s7 I mean it's easy to get some really nice comparative pictures out of this thing especially with the manual mode fine-tuning they just have some work to do when it comes to clear capture of moving subjects these shots are from the Galaxy s7 and the axon 7 in auto mode in the same lighting conditions one of them is somewhat usable in a this is kind of crappy looking but at least I captured the moment kind of way and the other one is just kind of crappy looking not ideal if you're an avid shutterbug and most of your subjects oh I don't know say kids and pets are fast-moving objects which leads us that I guess to the bottom line in a world where ZTE was the only Chinese brand targeting a similar experience at half the price of the Samsung's HTC's and apples of the world my conclusion would be very simple sure it lacks water resistance which is a key feature for me but it carries a two-year warranty and it's an unbelievable piece of hardware for the price as long as you're willing to compromise on the camera a little what makes things more complicated is the existence of the 1+3 so it'll be up to you then slimmer sexier form factor with more polished software and from my experience more usable camera or higher resolution better screen bigger sound SD expansion and phenomenal out of the box battery management that's not an easy decision for me and I suspect it won't be for you either so I wish you the best of luck gee Linus what was that great-looking vinyl skin you had on the axon 7 and some of the b-roll great question you must be new it's a D brand skin D brand is your source for awesome vinyl skins they're available for laptops phones tablets consoles game controllers and more the end more is like not a lot more that's like most of what they do and they use high-quality authentic true textured 3m vinyl on every product they feature unrivaled precision great guides for how to put them on and most importantly for people like me who have kind of a you know style flair you we like to play around with different color combinations and see how great or how horribly they go together best thing is the D brand configurator you head over to the site that's D brand comm we've got it linked in the video description and you just try out different skins and color combinations you turn your device around you look at what it's going to look like and boom they ship worldwide it's affordable and once it's applied it doesn't come off until you want it to and when it does it doesn't leave any residue and it protects your phone from accidental dings and scratches while looking great or terrible the choice is yours so check them out at the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the axe on 7 in the video description also linked in the description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one in our community forum which you should totally join now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video over on channel super fun