This phone's for you, bright eyes
Chinese firm ZTE scores highly with its first offering in Thailand, the powerful, ultra-hi-tech Axon
ZTE has a great new smartphone out called the Axon, with top-notch construction and plenty of power, plus an innovative locking mechanism – using the irises of your eyes.
This is first model the Chinese manufacturer has marketed in Thailand, but ZTE is well positioned as a mainstream smartphone brand.
The Axon’s rugged build is thanks to the same aluminium-magnesium alloy used on a Boeing 787. It offers 80 per cent more strength than conventional phone materials, but also 30 per cent less weight. For a touch of elegance there’s leatherette trim at the top and bottom of the back cover. It feels quite thick at 9.3mm but overall the look is still sleek in glimmering ion gold.
Hefty power comes from a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with an Adreno 430 GPU. The octa-core processor runs at 1.56GHz and there’s ample working memory – three gigabytes of DDR4 RAM – plus 32GB of internal storage easily boosted with a microSD card up to 128GB.
The screen is a 5.5-inch CGS (Continuous Grain Silicon) TFT LCD with 1920x1080-pixel resolution at a pixel depth of 401 PPI. It’s protected with Corning’s bacteria-shielding Gorilla Glass.
The Google Android 5.0.2 operating system is topped up with a MiFavor 3.2 user-interface that, among other things, jazzes up the look with a choice of background colour combinations, wallpapers, icons and transition effects. Select your favourite with a couple of quick taps and you end up with a desktop unlike anyone else’s. There are 10 sets each of icons and wallpapers, adding up to 100 possible combinations.
A floating icon called Mi-Pop has multiple uses, such as jumping back one screen, bringing up the Home button and powering down.
ZTE says its Axon is the world’s first smartphone to offer three different biometric authentication options: fingerprint, Smart Voice and the brand-new EyePrint ID. The fingerprint scanner is at the back below the camera lens and the phone can store five separate print records.
Before using these locking options, you have to draw a pattern on all or any of the nine dots displayed for this purpose. This will be needed if the authentication methods fail for any reason, but when I was testing the phone, all three worked fine – and they’re also fun to use, especially EyePrint ID.
For the eye scan, you have to be in a well-lit environment so the front camera can get a good look at your irises. The next time I wanted to unlock the phone, I was offered a choice between using the drawn pattern or another eye scan. Of course I chose the latter, and a pane appeared against which I had to align my eyes.
To use Smart Voice, you have to record yourself in a quiet environment saying at least two different words, which become your password.
The Axon’s rear camera uses dual-cam technology – two HD lenses (13 and two megapixels) and a large f/1.8 aperture that can be expanded to a “virtual” f/1.0 with software for better-quality images in low light. It can record 4K high-definition resolution video at 30fps. You have fast auto-focusing and a shutter speed that ZTE claims can reach 1/90,000 of a second.
The front camera is eight megapixels with 84-degree wide-angle capability and can also take 1,080P HD video.
In my test the Axon captured good-quality shots in most lighting situations, including indoors. In low light you see a slider for increasing or decreasing the brightness. Apart from auto mode, there are Panorama, Multi-Exposure, Manual, Sport and Interval modes. Multi-Exposure grabs two shots and combines the best elements of each into one.
The rear camera also has bokeh mode, allowing for refocusing and adjustment of the blur level after shooting. Bokeh is the soft out-of-focus background effect you get when shooting with a fast lens at the widest aperture.
The Axon can double as a high-quality, high-resolution audio player. It uses two dedicated audio chipsets to create hi-fi sound quality.
One of them is the AKM 4961 from Asahi Kasei Microdevices, which combines the latest AKM technologies, including high sound fidelity for high-resolution audio, advanced recording features during video recording and industry-proven, hands-free processing. The AKM 4961 achieves top-level performance of THD+N (-99dB) and a 110dB dynamic range with the newly developed 32-bit advanced audio DAC and cap-less Class G headphone amplifier.
The sound feels like the real thing, recreating the atmosphere where the music was originally played, including the depth and balance in the harmonics. You can also record hi-fi music, voice and any other sounds to enhance every form of content you create.
Using my Sony MDR-1ABT hi-res headphones, I was impressed by the fidelity in the reproduction of the highest-resolution audio tracks, complete with excellent detail and powerful bass.
The phone also uses dual microphones and advanced technology to reduce wind noise, and you have auto-level controls as well.
You can have 4G LTE connections with twin nano-SIM slots, though one is shared with the microSD card. Testing this capability on the TrueMove H LTE network, the connection, downloading and app installations were quite fast, as was posting snapshots online and backing them up to my Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage. The Ookla speedtest app measured download speed at 48.02Mbps and uploads at 21.22.
The battery is 3,000mAh, so a full charge lasts all day even with extensive use, and Quick Charge 2.0 technology puts enough juice in the phone in 10 minutes to make a 160-minute call.
With ZTE entering the Thai market, it’s opening 20 shops here and aims to have more than 1,500 outlets by next year. The ZTE Axon retails for Bt17,900.
Key Specs
- Network: GSM 850/900/1800/1900; WCDMA: Band 1/2/5/8; TD-LTE: Band 38/40/41; FDD-LTE: Band 1/3/7/8/12/17/20
- CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor with Adreno 430 GPU
- OS: Android OS 5.0.2 with MiFavor 3.2
- Screen: 5.5-inch Continuous Grain Silicon TFT LCD, 2.5D curved display with 1920x1080 FHD pixels, PPI 401, protected by Corning Antibacterial Gorilla Glass
- Cameras: Rear-facing – dual lens 13MP, 2MP, dual LED flash, 4K HD resolution; Front-facing – 8MP, 84 degree wide-angle, 1080p HD resolution
- Video capture: |4K HD resolution at 30fps
- Audio: Hi-fi Audio Chipset AKM 4961
- Microphone: Dual- microphone |for noise suppression
- Security: Fingerprint scanner, |EyePrint ID, Voice Unlocking
- Battery: 3000mAh, Quick Charge
- Memory: 3GB LP DDR4 RAM
- Storage: 32GB eMMC expandable up to 128GB
- Interface: 3.5mm earphone port, micro USB, dual nano-SIM slots
- Connectivity: GPS/Glonass/BT |4.0/Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n /ac
- Dimensions: 154x75x9.3mm
- Weight: 170g
