Gadgetory

2016 might later be known as the year of the budget Buster thanks in no small part to phones like this axon 7 on paper the specs sound almost too good to be true but are we facing any compromises to reach that $400 price point we're going to dig deep into this camera to see if it can compete with more expensive smartphone offerings buckle up folks we have a lot of ground to cover and I'm gonna move pretty quick first a little housekeeping we don't know what sensor is really in this thing axon details a 20 megapixel Samsung sensor with optical image stabilization phase detect autofocus and an F 1.8 aperture but we can't find exactly what part number axon is using so we don't know exactly what the sensor or pixel size is our best guess is somewhere around a one over two point six inch sensor with a similar field of view two phones like the LG g5 which would result in a slightly smaller pixel size given the increase in resolution now starting off with exposure in color most phones try to impress us with bright vibrant images and the axon 7 is no exception though the phone uses spot metering adjusting brightness where you focus the output is still often a touch on the bright side maybe a third to a half a stop over blues and greens are well represented though I'd like to see slightly richer saturation in shots like these earthy colors are also a touch on the conservative side thankfully avoiding exaggerated oranges but photos can sometimes feel a little plain coming out of this camera yellows are very well captured not significantly oversaturated and that extra brightness delivering just little patches of clipping on this abyss 'kiss and reds are always the most difficult for digital sensors to expose for this Rose is sizzling and petal details are lost because of it but as the axon is keeping saturation in check for the most part when we can give the camera different warm colors to play with it does a better job than most of delineating between the more reddish and pinkish flowers here with spot metering the axon does a respectable job of capturing white objects in direct Sun still dealing with some hot spots but the subject isn't completely blown out and where you focus is really important for landing the exposure you want the axon has respectable dynamic range we can still clearly make out details in the shade while the wall on the side of this building retains its texture unfortunately there are no raw files to edit from so if you cook a shot you won't be able to walk it back to recover over and under expose details looking at file sizes JPEGs are between five and twelve megabytes per exposure and this phone records UHD video somewhere in the ballpark of a forty megabit per second bitrate a minute of video should land just under 400 megabytes the axon 7s camera app is a nice mashup of familiar Android and iOS tropes in Auto you can control flash HDR and timer options from the left-hand side though it is annoying that HDR will toggle in place while the flash controls slide out a different menu for you to hit options on the right we have shutter and filter options to distort your image and fun ways using real-time effects and manual mode is very well featured giving you granular controls over shutter speed ISO exposure compensation white balance and manual focus I like this white balance slider as it's one smooth action with common presets labeled but the Kelvin number is listed as you slide through the range digging deeper into options unfortunately removes you from your viewfinder this is a pet peeve of mine but we have expanded photo and video controls here resolution metering modes voice capture grid geo tagging etc a video mode is super basic only giving us the ability to toggle the flash as a spotlight and slide modest exposure adjustments after focusing and that focusing action can be a bit frustrating as this is another phone which forces you to lock focus and exposure even while shooting video or after a couple seconds it will reset and move to full auto exposure this requires a tap to focus then a completely separate long press to lock the exposure you can't lock it with one long gesture from here the focus indicator can still be moved though and I found it impossible to focus and keep the lock on exactly the object I focused on removing my finger always resulted in a slight shift away from where I initially tapped on the screen and talking about focus that focusing speed isn't anything to write home about either for everything but extreme macro performance the axon was consistent and reliable but the actual time the lock is maybe lower mid pack thankfully the focusing action is smooth and it pretty nice when you're focusing during video circling back to macro shots this was where the axon bought me the most closest focusing distance is actually quite good getting you around three inches away from the lens but at this distance the autofocus is easily confused in busy situations for photos you can switch to manual focus but video would just refuse to find this little flower and even when you do get it to focus if you have to lock the exposure remember the phone will shift away slightly from where you initially focused which can sometimes be disastrous when we're working with tiny objects close up moving to white balance I'm happy to see axon playing a bit more with the quality of light than trying to find the pure white of your subject our sample photos look a bit warm but I honestly feel like the camera is doing a respectable job of capturing what these scenes really felt like with warm California afternoon light and a little smoke in the atmosphere from a relatively close wildfire mixing sunset light and white flowers delivers a really yellowed shot but again this feels pretty close to the scene as you would see it though in shade we'd occasionally find situations where the camera would overcorrect delivering a much bluer tint to output than the scene really called for now taking a look at HDR performance most phones tend to just boost shadow detail and the axon is one of those devices it'll brighten up the darker parts of your shot but it does little to rein in brighter areas of your frame and occasionally the phone would just completely blow out the whole scene and we were never able to determine what would cause this overexposure so there are some consistency issues which should be addressed in future software updates this is a shame because the axon is also one of the slowest we've tested at processing an HDR photo and this is absolutely not a setting we'd use if there's any kind of movement in your scene like say a flower gently listing in a light breeze or this gentleman who was really slowly walking through my background in light this bright there's no reason an HDR photo couldn't use a fast enough shutter to avoid this ghosting and this slow performance is exacerbated at night where it was exceedingly difficult to deliver a crisp handheld HDR photo in low-light conditions panorama stitching on the other hand was actually pretty great feed the bone a smooth pan across the scene and it delivered well expose shots with very few stitching errors even in a busy shot like this the power lines are a bit bumpy but none of them are broken this is very well done okay because you guys are going to ask about it I hate selfies the 8 megapixel front camera here delivers respectable results but even in good light and not using any beauty filters expect some smoothing and noise reduction filtering to blur detail these effects are increased when your subject is underexposed but thankfully we do get some exposure compensation options to dial in brightness video is 1080p but with new stabilization it's pretty twitchy we'd really like to see phone manufacturers start using some kind of software stabilization for our front-facing shooters moving to low-light shots we can easily see another compromise on the axon and that's lens quality prone to flaring fringing and delivering similar distortion to what we saw on LG's last phone the rays of light from this lamp above the creepy tunnel are a bit warped for example this phone does find a happy balance between capturing fine detail and obliterating that detail with noise reduction filtering but it does make up some of that filtering with a little extra sharpening the final image viewed as a whole is usually pleasant but pixel peepers might be disappointed which is another opportunity for me to reiterate that pixel peeping is bad and you should do it when shooting an auto the camera will open the shutter for up to one tenth of a second but the optical image stabilization here isn't quite robust enough to rein in handshake with just a little extra light Street scenes are easier to capture our creepy gate shows off again that the axon is taking its white balance cues more from lighting information than from the true white of your subject as the scene is lit by a really ugly security lamp and lastly a flower in almost no light the axon was barely able to lock focus after several attempts but after five shots this was the closest we could get to a clearer capture looking at some longer exposures manual mode is always fun to play with some streaking tail lights or light painting photos and with up to a 23 second shutter speed you'll have plenty of time to play with some fun effects now it really seems the axon shutter speed two lengths that the image stabilization can't quite keep up with and this is readily apparent in the super night mode this mode absolutely requires a tripod and some exposures were multiple seconds long but the final results were almost always just blown out and super bright I couldn't get a handle on what conditions this mode was actually for and you're probably better served by setting up your own long exposure using manual options moving to video the axon is capable of shooting h.265 compression video the bitrate stays the same but that means we should see a higher quality output over h.264 compression to my eye there's very little difference when comparing similar shots both create blocky artifacts and consistent blue up in the sky but maybe the h.265 artifacts are a little bit smaller maybe regardless whatever differences we can point to are a bit too fine to really show off here in a youtube review this is a super ambitious setting to include on a $400 phone and all of our samples were shot using the highest possible quality modes but we'd probably recommend people stick with h.264 for now until we see better compatibility with video editing programs and the ability to upload h.265 to youtube on the whole however we get a great high quality image out of this camera and with similar performance to what we saw for still photos good contrast good color though like many welcome 820 powered phones this year maybe just a few more dropped frames than what we would prefer low-light videos unfortunately come out kind of muted or dim scenes like these the camera would normally use a longer shutter for the still photo than a one thirtieth of a second shot but the darkest areas of the frame don't find true black it's a washed-out gray which kind of wrecks how contrasty an image like this should look now looking at the OIS as mentioned before this isn't the most robust image stabilization system we've reviewed in a walking test we see a little jello from footfall compensation but even when trying to hold still quite a few shots suffered from some twitchy shakes activating the software stabilization when shooting 1080p video actually seems to make performance worse though and looking at the zoom happily there's a limit as to how far you can crop to preserve image integrity it's locked down to a round of 4x equivalent but this keeps photos and videos from getting blown up in destroying the shot it's a perfectly respectable balance to play with the fairly resolution dense sensor on this phone and audio performance is better than mid-pack here noise reduction does cut into the sound captured by these mics and sometimes that can deliver some shrill artifacts for busy scenes but it's not completely degraded like some other options around this and some higher price point phones now for transition tests moving from dark to bright and back exposure changes happen in fairly deliberate steps which aren't particularly pleasant especially moving from Bright to dark but happily the camera seems to hold on to focus and white balance relatively well while adjusting to lighting changes this panning though did seem to tax the phone as again we're seeing a few more drop frames than we would like lastly looking at slow-motion it's a really well-executed fun feature we say at 720p but have options to scale up or down the frame rate videos are finished off with the speed adjustment baked in though with no audio there's also quite a bit of sharpening happening as there's a moiré effect on these car grilles but overall this is a solid option for slowing things down so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the camera on the ZTE axon 7 it really is exciting what level of camera performance we've come to expect out of mid-range priced phones the axon 7 joins the oneplus 3 in delivering an incredible bang for buck there certainly are issues here and some frustrations and how much the software might fight you in some shooting conditions but overall I enjoyed my time shooting on this phone and I think we got some nice images out of it there are still reasons why someone would want to pay more for a phone when looking at camera performance maybe faster autofocus raw photo capture or more polished user interface but for folks shopping in this price tear we don't think you're likely to find any serious deal-breakers this phone is a treat as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for our full axon 7 coverage and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for PocketNow i'm juan carlos bag now some gadget guy on twitter and instagram and i will catch you all on the next review you