ZTE Axon 20 5G Review (First Phone With Under Display Camera) By GSMDome

Hi guys this is Jason on the coin. I'm here with the phone, which has the selfie camera hidden under the screen, ZTE axon 25g, it's a super high mid-range device which, as I said before, is a bit of a pioneer when it comes to integrating the selfie camera, we don't have any pop-up mechanisms, any sort of notches or punch holes. The camera is placed here below the screen panel and if you look closely, you can probably see it, but more about that later now the phone itself is priced at around the 500. You can probably find it on Amazon and has two versions more about that in the description in the text review now, this smartphone was unveiled in September last year, and it started reaching the global market, especially Europe in December 2020. , it's a huge device, the 6.9-inch screen and let's get straight to the design. Now it may be huge at 6.92 inches, but it's actually pretty comfy to wield and believe it or not. It's not even slippery.

It makes some nifty wave effects on the back side. This is obviously glass that we're dealing with here, and we also have what appears to be a plastic frame. It's actually plastic on top of a metal frame and this frame protrudes, which helps you hold the device a bit better in your hands. So it helps with the grip. It's an odd decision to not have a singular volume buttons.

We have split volume buttons, and you can definitely confuse some of them. Luckily, the power button is ripped in order to be found more easily, now 80 millimeters in thickness and a decent 198 grams. It doesn't go full 200 and plus grams. In spite of the big diagonal, it's got a pretty premium build and since it's so long, the weight is pretty well distributed. Now the camera protrudes a little not by an excessive amount and that's pretty much it well-built at the same time, premium materials and a pretty nice grip.

Now the screen you are seeing right here. Well, we are dealing with an OLED, so that's a plus it's an OLED display with uh 6.92 inch diagonal and a resolution of 2460 over 1080 pixels. It displays 1 billion colors, has a 90 hertz, refresh rate, and I'll admit it pretty big bezels I mean the chin is definitely present here, and the side bezels are also something to notice. This uh screen that you're seeing right here has three core components integrated within it. We have the fingerprint scanner, which is, as you can see, triggered in the lower area.

We have the uh selfie camera here, which I'm pretty sure you can see. There's a square here, flickering its visible, barely and only on whiter backgrounds, and then we have the earpiece replacement. It's a vibrator motor, it's a piezoelectric piece which replaces the earpiece. Now, if enough about that, I don't want to get too technical. If you want to evaluate the screen, you're definitely going to have to watch a video to perform that we no longer have to worry about notches and punch holes, so the experience is immersive and symmetrical, even though, as I said before, the chin is on the big side.

Now the screen is quite bright. The image is crisp. We have very vivid colors, of course, not as vivid as a Samsung, galaxy, s20 or s21 panel, but still quite vivid. The black is deep, and we have wide view angles. Image remains visible, even at extreme angles.

So that's nice. The contrast was also pretty solid in sunlight, and I'm pretty happy with the experience delivered by this OLED. The pixels have a mental matrix arrangement, and now we get to the measurements, because we measured the brightness and achieved a pretty top level here, 586 lux units. This means that we surpassed the galaxy s21, the OnePlus 8 and the Galaxy Note 20 ultra so MPD select company, we're below the Oppo arena, 4 lite and the Huawei Mate 40 pro, as well as the Xiaomi mi 10 lite 5g. Now, if you want to tweak your experience for this gigantic panel, uh you're going to have to let's see, so you go here, the display, you got your brightness level, you got your refresh rate either 60 or 90 hertz.

You can also set up the display optimization, which basically changes the contrast, sharpness and saturation in order to enhance the display and improve visual effects. We have a dark mode. We have a read mode. Furthermore, we have night light and screen effect, which basically sets the color to warm normal or cool. There are the top area settings.

You can actually hide that small square for the selfie camera, with special status bar and font size and display size. I think we've covered everything display wise and I think it's time to go inside the phone where we can find the Qualcomm snapdragon g processor. This is a seven nanometer, cheap outscore, coupled with the Arduino uh 620 GPU, and we also have the device here with eight gigs of ram, there's also a version with six gigs of ram. The storage is available here in 128 gigabytes and there's also a micro SD card slot, which is shared with one of the sim slots. Luckily, there's no trace of lag here, so you can definitely run some games and well open up a lot of apps you'll.

Never experience lag. That's one positive feature here. So gamers will actually be happy with the impulsiveness of the bright screen and the fact they can run basically anything even more intensive shooters like Call of Duty mobile or the RPG Gandhi impact when it comes to benchmarks. Here comes unto 8 with a solid score.330K I mean, I know it's half or something of the galaxy 20 ultra, but here we go, so we were able to beat the one OnePlus word and the Oppo arena 4 pro 5g, which is a bit more expensive. We also beat the Motorola 8, which is pretty pricey, but we scored below the cheaper Huawei p40 light 5g and also below the Xperia 5 and Galaxy S10.

Plus. Now we go to geek bench 5, the multicore subtest. Here we are, we are beating the Motorola motor g5g, while at the same time surpassing Xiaomi, mi, 10, lite, 5g and the Motorola h. We still scored below the Huawei nova, 5t and Galaxy S10, 5g gamers as usual. Have this landmark its 3d mark slingshot extreme BS 3.1 and were able to beat the pricey motor racer 5g, which is a plus as well as the Oppo lino 4 pro 5g. So those are the things to take home here, plus the formerly pricey now decent Nokia, 8.35 g. At the same time, we got beaten by the Huawei p40 light 5g, which seems to always catch us and beat us when it comes to well performance and also got beaten by the older Huawei P30 Pro in general.

It's a typical snapdragon 765g phone with the typical results you'd expect and if you're wondering about the temperature, which is pretty vital if you're going to dim this gaming 4. Here we are in benchmarks, 34.2 degrees Celsius, no overheating in games, 33.2 degrees Celsius, once again, no overheating. And now, let's talk about the battery okay. So for such a huge diagonal, you'd expect a large battery, maybe something even going past five thousand million per hour. Well, actually, it's a more modest presentation: you're getting a 4 20 million per hour battery with a promise of 30 watt charging which, on paper, should get you to 60 battery in 30 minutes.

Let's see what it actually delivered. First, video playback. We achieved 13 hours and 57 minutes, not very impressive. It's just okay! It managed to beat the Samsung Galaxy a51 iPhone 11, even plus the galaxy s20 ultra. If you're counting it stayed below the Huawei p40 lite 5g and the Poco x3 NFC, as well as the Xiaomi mi 20 pro when it comes to PC mark once again, a pretty okay result, 10 hours and 2 minutes, it doesn't break records.

It's just passable, it's good once again above the galaxy s21, if you're, counting and also above the Nokia 9 preview, as well as the galaxy s20 ultra by a small margin, it doesn't exactly beat other snapdragon 765g phones that one I can imagine. Of course, it stays below the Huawei p40 lite 5g, the OnePlus word Nokia, 8.3 5g, and quite a few other phones with the same CPU. I keep mentioning now. The charging is actually pretty okay, a full charge.100 is done in 58 minutes and after 15 minutes you're at 33 after half an hour 57. So it delivers on the promise of what I said before.

So the charging is the start of the show here, but in the end not the most long-lasting battery I'll admit that. Okay, now we have settings for adaptive battery. We have set this for optimization power, saving and ultra power saving. So maybe you can compensate from there when it comes to acoustics, I'm already expecting the lack of an audio jack. We got the bundled adapter which goes from USB to 3.5 millimeters. We only have the singular speaker here for music, the other one should be the earpiece, but there is no earpiece here.

So we have the once again Piero electric mechanism. Now the actual experience uh the audio uh playback one. Let's see how it's doing, okay, so a bunch of conclusions. I have to say that when you're really reaching the high volume, the top volume, the sound may be a bit disturbing, it may be a bit bothered. Some depends very much on the tune you're listening to.

If it's all guitar solo, it may bother you if it's a warmer set of notes. It should be fine. In general, I found the volume to be quite high um and, aside from that, the high notes were okay. The voice is okay, so 70 volume should be your default for this, for otherwise it's too much by the way, not much base here. So there's that this is our acoustic test or acoustic sample test 85.1 decibels. It goes above galaxy, s21, plus uh.

It goes above the Xiaomi mi 10 pro and galaxies s25 edition fan edition 5g. Of course, it stays below. With this value below the Nokia 8.35 g and the lg velvet, plus the Moto G 5g, a better result was achieved in gaming. Actually, gigantic result 106.8 decibels. Fourth placed phone above it are hardcore hitters like Nokia, 8.1 and ASUS ROG phone. Otherwise, we beat hundreds of other phones when it comes to this one.

So when you're gaming you're going to have your mind blown away by this little fellow, perhaps too much volume, as I said before now, I want to talk about the cameras, and I'm going to start with the selfie camera, as I mentioned before, it's hidden here in a square below the screen below actually two panels of the screen, and one of them has a lower resolution and these pixels are disguised in a way which hides it. It's a first generation. It's a first attempt, it's a first commercial product with the selfie camera here and as such, it has its drawbacks. Furthermore, it's a 32, megapixel shooter. Furthermore, it takes the shots in full.32 megapixel resolution doesn't mess around with pixel binding and that's it shoots full HD video and does HDR. We go to the back side where you find the quad camera with led flash here and the module is pretty familiar.

You've seen this design on many Huawei and Xiaomi phones. Here we have a, I would say, typical, combo for a super high, mid-ranger, 64 megapixel main 8 megapixel ultra-wide 2, megapixel macro 2, megapixel both, and you can shoot 4k video, but I was actually shocked. You can shoot 4k video at 60 frames per second, not 30. You can also shoot HDR video, another surprise and even on paper 10 bit video, not bad. There are other useful options, like I would say, there's also movie mode.

We also have a portrait, HDR, vlog and portraits are taken with the studio light and both is separate from portrait, so you can create well portrait photos of objects, there's also a night mode, just in case you're wondering now something I don't see here um. I don't see a dedicated gallery app unless I'm missing it, so you're going to have to rely on Google photos. Okay, so it was a pretty sunny day, actually mixed some clouds and some sun- and this is a beautiful carousel. I would say that using the 64 megapixel camera, which produces 16 megapixel shots, we're getting enough details and quite well calibrated colors. This is the ultra white shot, the details definitely decrease, and it's an odd feature here, even though it's an 8, megapixel camera we're somehow taking 16 megapixel shots, which feels a bit weird to me anyways.

This is the zoom attempt up to 3x, it's okay, but more than that, I think it's actually too much several darker shots and definitely the ultra light camera catches a bit of a darker image. If you ask me, we even played with some color effects here, they're available in the camera. One thing I noticed is that it's able to focus properly, no matter what the distance is, and we have some nice close-ups of a tripped out frog, actually several because it's very amusing, the expression is priceless and once again I want to highlight the color calibration, which is spot on and the focus. This is a macro shot, and it didn't take me. I don't know five or ten attempts, as it usually happens with the two megapixel macro camera.

The first attempt was sufficient to deliver what I wanted, and you finally get to see the sky. It's a bit more light blue compared to the real one which my I perceive, which was a bit darker, but still pretty well managed and regular shot ultra white shot. As you can see this time, it's not darker, it's lighter than the other one. You can also get a lot of texture here. You can tell the way the time has worn these objects, and I'm talking about metal plastic wood.

The way the time has caused them to have dents, for example. Once again the focus is nice, and you can also mess around with the both shots and let's actually go there. Another example of a proper and well taken set of macros, even though it's two megapixels and details will be lacking. The colors are okay, yet again, particularly the blues and the reds, even though the reds may feel a bit too intense at times, and here we are at the core of the experience everybody's asking me. How and what are the selfies? Like? I mean they're a bit poor I'll, admit it.

It's a fourth generation camera. It cannot be avoided, it's a bit of a pioneer, and that usually happens in spite of that. The colors of the clothes are okay. That much I can say, but the problem, the biggest problem is with the background, which feels a bit ghostly behind me. We're also lacking enough traits, captured here enough expression, lines of the face to feel you're, actually expressing something with the selfie.

The face is too smooth that much, I can say: okay, uh, even more selfies, and if you get closer to the camera, you actually like the results. Better. The both shots are a bit better than the regular ones, but there are some weird artifacts around the head, you're trying to separate your head from the background. So there's that once again, the photos are pretty whitewashed out a bit milky and the background is definitely ghostly. Even when you don't have the both activated.

I know that on this screen they may look okay, but if you see them on a bigger screen, definitely going to notice that there's something from three generations ago and still it's a work in progress, some of the best both shots are taken of this Mickey Mouse. It's excellently cut from its background, and it accentuates the texture. You can really see it's true now. These are more vivid colors, one of the most vivid in the gallery on ultra white and regular shots. So I'm pretty happy with these results.

Overall, the colors are the most impressive things here and also the focus, and we also tried out the portrait options, not both portrait because it caught a human face. Even if it's a statue, we even applied some studio effects, not the most accurate in the world, but still we're there. Okay, so that's that the selfie camera is a work in progress. It's a fourth generation and actually the second generation was already announced so looking forward to seeing that this was the daytime gallery. Let's go to the nighttime.

First impression the shots are a bit dark darker than expected, and this one here the pavement looks pitch black with an interesting reflection on account of the rain. Now, if you're activating the night mode, things get a bit too intense, I have two problems here. The regular image is too dark. The night mode image is too bright, so somewhere in between is the real potential of the camera. This is one of the best pictures.

It calibrates everything perfectly and that's that, of course, the ultrawide is a bit of a disappointment. I'm saying, of course, because 99 percent of the full robot cameras fail at night. We also have some missed shots, which are a bit blurry and moved, but this is the most relevant one, regular shot and night mode shot, which is too bright, but at the same time good enough to post on social media. So you have to choose between too bright and too dark, but sometimes you'll just take the right shot and that's about it, not the worst. I've seen to be honest.

It's okay for the super high mid-range segment, and now I think it's time to talk about the videos. Okay, so let's see the videos we took with this handset I'm going to go here, and we have nine of them. Let's check them out one by one. First, we have a stabilization test here which looks something like this. I noticed that the exposure was a bit flickery during this.

As you can see, some areas are darker or others are lighter, but they fluctuate too much. In order for this viewing to be enjoyable, I mean the flicker is not annoying when I'm walking around, but the fluctuating exposure may be a bit bothersome in the end, a modest stabilization- and this theory is enhanced by this video, if you're watching it on a bigger screen, you'll see that there's a bit of shakiness going on here and it is interestingly enough, cannot be played by this player, so I'm going to have to go and play it using a different one. Oddly enough, this is the video. Let's check it out now a lot of shakiness, and in spite of that we have a solid amount of details and the colors are just as satisfying as they were in the photo department. Once again, this camera can shoot 4k, 60 frames per second videos, and the wide angle of this shot makes me think that it may be showed with the ultra camera, although I wouldn't exactly bet on it so happy with the colors and details, but the stabilization definitely could have been better.

So, let's stay here since we're here and let's see other videos, for example this one. The focus is also pretty much on point. I would say that, overall, it feels pretty close to the Oppo RINO 4 pro 5g minus the stabilization. So that's the comparison I'm making and reasonably close to the galaxy a71 filming wise, and we also have a focus test here, which is this one focus on the foreground and on a close-up object. Excuse me a close-up and background alternating and, of course, we also have a selfie video, which is this one definitely shows there's a bit of fogginess going on here now.

You feel the temptation to rub your eyes, it's as if you have the cobweb or spider web on top of your eyes. That's the vibe, I'm getting here room for improvement for sure, but once again it's a generation 1.0, so it was to be expected. The microphone was okay, even though some gusts of wind may definitely affect it negatively, and we also have a video or two shot during the nighttime like this one here by the way forgot to mention that the zoom is actually quite solid, even though we don't have a telephoto camera and the low light. Video is actually not that bad. Compared to my expectations, I mean the image: does tremble a bit and shake, but the colors are pretty on point even though they're a bit warm and tend to be a bit reddish, the clarity is pretty okay and the brightness is also rather satisfying and once again the zoom uh, not exactly bad.

To be honest, so that's it remember by comparison somewhere between the galaxy 71 and the Oppo lino 4 pro 5g. Now, on the connectivity front, this handset is available in a single sim and dual sim version. It provides you with 4g and 5g connectivity, so that's nice. At the same time, it has a Wi-Fi dual-band, plus Bluetooth, 5.01, um, GPS, a GPS, glass, Galileo and BDS, as well as NFC and USB c 3.1 port at the bottom would have been nice if we had an infrared emitter here at the top, but you cannot get everything now. There is no earpiece here.

So there's a piezoelectric mechanism which makes the screen vibrate and emits sounds. Sadly, it doesn't perform as well as an earpiece. Would the sound may seem pretty muffled. At times, we did some tests with the speed test app. These are the results we achieved.

They are huge in the Wi-Fi department we scored as high as 622 mega per second in download and 622 mega per. Second excuse me 625, mega per second in upload. These are crazy results here on Wi-Fi and on 4g 198 mega per second downloads over 57.3 we're actually not doing that bad. The phone handles 5g, but we couldn't catch a connection of this sort. So, there's that now, as far as the software is concerned, this is called the favor 10.5 it's applied on top of android 10. Would have been nice if we actually had a radi11, but not just, yet it's a very minimalistic and bare-bones interface.

It doesn't add anything. I mean there is no extra app in here or extra modes extra settings extra multitasking mechanisms, nothing. So this is how the multitasking happens, this carousel and, of course, giving you the option to provide the split screen swipe down, and you'll, treat it to a pretty old-school approach to the notifications and quick settings, and here we have the actual settings where you can mess about with the notifications, apps battery home screen lock screen and be advised. There are multiples always on options here. You can apply multiple styles, provided that it's actually activated, and they're pretty cool to choose from some of them pretty old-school and nice.

Looking but battery consuming, you can display a pedometer. You have those extra features here, like 5g, smart communication, this one here with adaptive 5g the AI system engine which keeps things up and running with AI. You don't need to tweak anything the system navigation, so you can replace these buttons here. With the swipe gestures, you can have the one-handed mode, you have the record screen option for developers and gamers and location security, digital well-being. Okay.

Now, as far as the security is concerned, we have a fingerprint scanner here, plus the face verification together. They make a good theme, but on its own, the fingerprint scanner isn't exactly fast or accurate. So that's something to remember now. As far as the pre-installed apps go nothing to mention here, we see Facebook is pre-installed, there's a game assist and there's no optimization app. Usually Chinese phone makers provide you with a cleaner, an optimization app.

I see we have WPS Office and something called game assist which could come in handy and uh. They really support my theory, we're dealing here with a bit of a gaming phone, even though it's not promoted as such do not disturb enhancement, optimization, which I mentioned before and general settings. So that's nice. Okay. So I think this is the end of the review.

It's a pretty fluid interface, even though it doesn't exactly add anything to the typical android and if you want to see the widgets they're all stock, now it's time for the verdict and as I tell you the verdict, I think I'm going to play a little game. It's called war friends and let's see what are the pros and cons for this handset. First, I'm going to claim something here: okay, fight. On the pro side, it's a good-looking device. At the same time, it has a pretty solid screen, a large and generous okay performance for a super high mid-ranger, a pretty decent battery to be honest, uh.

At the same time, the charging was okay in my book, the speaker is definitely loud. You can say anything about it, except for the fact. It's not loud. It's definitely loud and generous uh. We have pretty okay colors when it comes to picture taking and video taking so nothing to complain in that regard um.

I would also say that the night mode is satisfying and delivers. So we have a pretty okay, zooming videos and photos, and the Wi-Fi is, as you saw before, pretty, pretty fast. Those are the pros on the cons. Definitely the selfie camera generation 1.0, the inevitable troubles are here, and second generation already looks promising the piezoelectric mechanism for the earpiece, not impressive, and the fingerprint scanner should have been just a bit faster. Okay, so I seem to be losing the battle here, so I should probably focus more on killing those guys.

Okay, so back to the cons which I mentioned, the before selfie camera, piezoelectric fingerprint scanner- and I should probably mention the small battery for such a large screen- I mean at least five thousand million per hour- have been nice uh. Also, the fact that the ear the speaker at the bottom for music may sound a bit annoying at maximum volume, that's something that may happen every once in a while plus the fact that the interface may seem like it doesn't stand out from the crowd, doesn't take risks or deliver any sort of special features or extras. That's a vibe. I called here okay, so we're done with the pros and cons uh. I have to mention that this one is a surprise.

Gaming phone leave everything aside, that's at its core, it's very close to seven inches in diagonal. It's got a high performing CPU. It's got a solid OLED panel here so for gaming. Furthermore, it checks out it's a good gaming device. Furthermore, it's a good multimedia device.

You can watch Netflix on it on YouTube for hours and hours. It takes pictures and videos with well calibrated colors and quite a few details. It's a media phone, a comfy one at that. Furthermore, it's probably the easiest to wield huge phone. I've seen over the past year, easier to will than the Nokia 8.3 Motorola, motor, g9 plus, and the galaxy s20 ultra. So there's that the camera is okay in its own segment.

Super high mid-range, but the selfie camera needs some work which is already in progress. This is from json. com hope you enjoyed this remembers this GTE phone works best as a gaming phone multimedia phone and for some pictures and videos bye, bye,.

Source : GSMDome