ZTE Axon 30 Ultra Review // One Month Later By Sam Beckman

So this is the ZTE axon 30 ultra 5g, and I know what you're thinking. That is a mouthful to say, so, I'm just going to refer to it as the axon 30 throughout the rest of this review to save us, both some hassle now disclaimer early on in the testing process of using this phone, I dropped it not just on carpet, mind you on stone, cold, concrete and since this phone wasn't in a case well, the story didn't have the happiest of endings. Luckily, only the top part of the back of the phone was cracked. Nothing was touched on the front of the phone, which has essentially meant my experience of using the phone was unimpeded, but I apologize now for all the shots that you'll see throughout this video of a cracked phone, but with that out of the way, it's time to unpack my thoughts on a phone that I think has gone somewhat under the radar, but that I also think perhaps shouldn't have. Let's begin now, aside from the crack on the back of this phone in terms of design, I've been pretty damn impressed. I've got minimal bezels on the front, with a center hole punch up the top there, and then we've also got a frosted glass finish on the back, which feels fantastic.

Now, along with that, the phone has this beefy rectangle camera unit on the back and if you haven't already picked up on the similarities, I'll just paint a very clear picture right now. This phone looks and feels a heck of a lot like the Galaxy Note, 20 ultra that was released last year. But that isn't a bad thing and in fact that phone was one of my favorite looking and feeling phones of 2020 and even 2021, but I will say it doesn't feel quite as well-built or as premium as that phone, the power button and volume rockers do feel a little less secure than what I'd like, and the metal rails are also that little sharp in the hand combine that with the overtly curved display, which is definitely more pronounced than the recent flagships from Samsung and OnePlus. For example, and I'd say what you end up with is quite an uncomfortable phone to hold. Without a case.

I actually go as far as to say that it was kind of because of the design that I dropped it. Even since then, I've been super cautious with this phone, and I've still found it to slip a bit in my hands, and I honestly don't quite know what it is, but I'd say, you're definitely best off using this phone in a case now from there. In terms of this display, I think it is the highlight feature on an already impressive phone. It is an AMOLED display, and it gets pretty decently bright, but the key selling point is that it has a refresh rate of up to 144 hertz seriously bonkers and because of that, along with the software with all of these impressive animations, it just feels ridiculously smooth. Now with that said, I have actually noticed some burning issues with this display.

So, for example, every time I unlock the phone, I can see remnants of the always on display clock still there for a good little while or when I've had a timer running. That's taken a while to fade away after exiting the timer app as well as a couple of other instances as well, and whilst it hasn't yet caused long-term issues, thus far fingers crossed it's not an issue later on down the road with this display, but back to the refresh rate for a moment, whilst you can set it to auto in the display settings. I'll be frank, very early on, I set mine to always stay at the max refresh rate of 144 hertz, and the experience of using this phone has been phenomenal. Now you'd have thought that doing so would cause significant issues with battery life, but I was surprised to find that this phone has great performance with battery life I'm easily getting through every single day, and only once was. I notified that I'd gotten below 20 right at the end of the day and that's with battery optimization switched off, and so, if you were to set this phone to you know the auto refresh rate mode or even 60 or 90 hertz, and you had battery optimization switched on I'd, say with light use, you could easily get through two full days without needing to plug it.

In now. Also, on the topic of software, this phone ships, with my OS ZTE's latest software skin and for the most part I actually quite like the software animations, are very fluid which, as I mentioned, helps to further emphasize how nice the 144hz panel is. What's great is that you can actually use a third-party launcher and gestures with very little issue. In fact, I've been using lawn chair 2 since pretty much day 1 and have noticed almost no issues with gestures or lag or anything like that, and so, whilst the stock launcher ain't, my cup of tea, the fact that I can use a third-party launcher with no issues at all is a very big plus for me. Now there are some minor issues.

I have with the software though. Firstly, the implementation of the fingerprint sensor could do with some refining. So, for example, if you double tap to open a notification from the lock screen, the fingerprint sensor disappears, and instead you're greeted with your phone's default security method. You can, of course, then tap the icon down here to bring the fingerprint sensor unlock option back up, but it's very unintuitive ZTE. If you're watching this, please fix this now.

I also had a huge issue with the initial software that shipped with this phone. In that I could not get Google Pay to load in my payment details. Whenever I tried the app would say my phone was rooted or altered in some way which it wasn't, but this meant for a few solid weeks of using this phone, I had to get back in the habit of carrying around my wallet, which I haven't had to do in a long time, but thank goodness in a recent software patch. This was fixed, which has honestly made this phone a much more viable option for me to consider using long term now. Another issue that isn't really software related, but that still impacts the experience of using this phone are the haptics? Not only do the haptics in this phone have that budget feel to them, they're, probably some of the worst I've used in a phone for a very long time.

In fact, it kind of feels like they've, used a budget vibration motor from 2016, and it's such a shame. Now. This was a real put off at the start. But look if you disable pretty much all touch vibration settings you do actually get used to it and then finally, we have the cameras and I have to say I have been very impressed with the images and videos this phone captures. It is a quad camera setup with two main 64 megapixel shooters, one for standard photos, one for 35?mm portrait images, and then you've got a 64 megapixel ultrawide shooter and an 8 megapixel periscope shooter for five times optical zoom shots- and this has been a pretty great camera.

Configuration photos, are sharp with good colors and particularly when the phone switches automatically to that 35?mm portrait lens, you get lots of natural both. So much so that I had to check whether I had portrait mode switched on or not, and then the ultrawide photos look almost just as good images are, as sharp as the main sensor photos. The colors look really natural and pleasing as well, and I can easily switch between the main and ultra-wide lenses without losing any discernible quality at all. I think the only lens not quite playing its part is the periscope lens which does take a hit in regard to image quality when comparing it to the other lenses, but it's still really nice to have it as an option and video seems to be really great as well all right. This is a quick test with the ZTE axon 30 ultra 5g.

Did I get that right anyway? Uh we're only limited to 1080p uh using the selfie camera, but uh aside from that, I wonder how you know the colors look and how dynamic range looks as well looks not bad on the viewfinder, but we'll see once we take it and look at it on the computer all right. This is the ultra-wide camera, then and uh. Look how this looks in comparison. We can obviously shoot now at 4k, 60 and uh. Yeah, is the ultra-wide any good? You know in terms of dynamic range or even just you know, image, sharpness and color, rendering and whatnot.

Who knows you tell me, and so now on to the main sensor, which you know technically, you would have thought would be the best looking lens of the lot. We could do 4k 60. We can never do 8k using the main lens on this phone. So it's you know it's competing amongst the big leagues. I mean I'm never shooting at AK because it takes up too much storage.

But, aside from that, you know it's nice, that we have it at least so, as you can see, pretty impressive results. In fact, the phone that I was using just before switching to the axon 30 was the OnePlus 9 pro, and I've found the cameras on this phone to be just as fun and as pleasing to use, which I think is saying a lot given the price difference and that's what makes this phone so compelling its launch price of 750 us dollars means that it's competing with the likes of the regular OnePlus 9, the galaxy s21 and the pixel 5, and when you compare it to all of those devices this phone holds up. Now you do lose out on wireless charging, which each of those phones does have and there's also no IP rating, but literally in just about every other department. This phone either has the same or better specs. I think the biggest issue ZTE has with this phone, though, is in the name: ZTE, isn't a very familiar phone manufacturer in most corners of the world and the other phones it's competing with are, but if you're willing to take a stab with this phone, then I can assure you'll be very satisfied.

Source : Sam Beckman