A Galaxy S21 Rival: ZTE Axon 30 Ultra Review! By Thao Huynh

This video is sponsored by surf shark hi. Everyone thank you here, alright, so priced at 749. The axon 30 ultra is packing some really nice flagship hardware, unlike other Chinese brands. This one's launching in both the US and Canada, places where apple and Samsung dominate the question is: should you choose this over something like the galaxy s21 or the iPhone 12? I mean that's. Tough competition, and they've got their work cut out for them, but I do like what ZTE is offering here. First, I have to give them credit for actually including a charger in the box, and they didn't cheap on the charger.

Either you get the max 65 watt charger that the phone's capable of it charges the phone up really fast. I'm talking 38 minutes from a dead battery to 100. It doesn't support wireless charging, though, but honestly I didn't even miss it since it charges so fast plugged in battery life has been pretty decent. Over the past few weeks, I've been averaging around 6 hours of screen on time daily easily gets me through a full day with no problem. Standby time is also amazing.

It drains like two to three percent overnight. The design is clearly galaxy. Note 20 inspired, which is fine, since that's a great looking phone I mean, even the camera bump sticks out just as much too. What I don't love is just how narrow the sides of the phone are. The curves make the phone look real fancy, but it just feels almost sharp when holding it on the bright side.

They bundle a surprisingly nice case that helps with that other things to know in terms of build. There's no expandable storage, but it is a dual sim, no headphone jack, but they do bundle an USB, dongle, there's no official water resistance rating, I mean I'm sure it can handle the occasional splash, but probably best to keep it away from water and last thing the vibration motor yeah. It could be better on the front. You've got a curved AMOLED display that maxes out at 1080p and can refresh up to 144 hertz. You can go in and manually select, the refresh rate, but out the box it's set to auto, which is what I've left it on for my testing.

It seems to sit at 90 hertz most of the time, but will dip to 60 on something like the lock screen. I don't think I saw it switch to 144hz once during my testing. I did force it to run at 144 hertz for a single day, but the battery got absolutely demolished so yeah leave it on auto using it outdoors. It's not the brightest I've used, but still more than good enough. It's AMOLED and hdr10 certified, so content looks great as you'd expect.

There are dual speakers tuned by DTS, one at the bottom and one through the earpiece. The speakers sound pretty good, but at max volume, music sounded a bit harsh and distorted. The good news is that you can go into the DTS setting and switch it to music mode, which will help fix the issue. It sounds way better to unlock there's an optical fingerprint scanner built into the screen. It's placed in a good natural position for my thumb and this one works really well I'd, say: 99.

Accurate you've also got some customization options when it comes to the animations, because you know why not the phone's running android 11 with ZTE's my OS 11 skin. On top, you know how, with most android skins, they usually install their own phone messaging email and gallery apps. Well, surprisingly, that's not the case here. My OS comes pre-installed with the Google versions. Gmail calendar, google, dialer android messages, and even google photos is the default photo gallery app.

So, basically you're not getting duplicate. Apps like you would on something like Samsung devices, where both google and Samsung installed their apps. There really isn't very much pre-installed also, which is nice to see performance, is perfect. It hasn't given me any problems at all, no stutters delays or anything like that. As you'd expect split-screen multitasking is silky smooth.

I especially like having the option to set it up through the notification shade, there's also a lot of little additions to the software experience that you might appreciate. You can add a pedometer to your lock screen to keep track of your daily steps. Don't like how the pages scroll on your home screen. You can change that in the recent menu swiping down on an app is a quick way to lock it, and the z-pop feature is like a floating shortcut that you can map to different functions like taking a screenshot. The software design, though, could use a little of polish.

For example, the title's immediate notifications are cut off awkwardly unless you expand them. Also, some icons aren't the same shape. As you can see. I mean those are minor complaints, but it's still a high-end device right. Like most phones these days, the marketing focuses a lot on the cameras.

The hardware is impressive: we're talking three 64 megapixel lenses, plus an 8 megapixel telephoto and 16 megapixel selfie camera selfies are nice and sharp colors are a little more muted, but I actually don't mind that I've been very lukewarm about the pictures taken with the back cameras. They do the job, it's definitely above average, and sometimes they capture really nice bright, punchy photos, but other times the processing feels a little underwhelming highlights are clipped and shadows tend to be crushed. This combination leads to a lot of wonky photos. If there's one word to describe the cameras, it would be inconsistent. You've got five times: optical zoom, that's fun to use, but the color difference is really noticeable.

It also goes all the way to 60 times digital zoom, but I don't think those photos are very usable when it comes to video. The thing that stands out to me is the stabilization. Everything is really smooth check out. Some of this handheld footage I captured for the most part. Videos look good, colors are nice, but with challenging lighting, the auto exposure can get a little wonky and jarring at times.

So there's a couple of cool camera modes that I want to show you guys the first one is called multi-camera, so you hit the shutter button once you hit the shutter button once this lets, you take three different photos from the different cameras. You'll get a regular shot, an ultra-wide and a five time zoom photo. So let me take this really quick for you guys, that's pretty cool right. The next one is called vlog. It's basically a bunch of pre-made video styles that stitches clips together to make things a little more cinematic, alright.

So this one, for example, requires four different clips, so to begin record for three seconds now, once you're done, move to the next scene and repeat three times: okay, so even if you suck at filming videos, you can actually create something relatively nice using this feature, so I'm actually filming with the front-facing camera right now and while you guys check out the video quality, let me tell you about today's video sponsor surf shark. So what search track does is that it encrypts all your data before it goes over the internet, so people you don't want having access to your information, won't have access to it, especially relevant on sketchy public, Wi-Fi being Canadian. One of my favorite uses for search shark is to access content from other countries with one click I can discover content from anywhere, including the US UK. Even Japan. What's great is that they don't limit the number of devices you can connect at a time.

That means your mom dad brother sister, everyone in the family is secured. If that all sounds good check out, search right now by clicking the link below and using my promo code, towel you'll get 83 off and three months completely free, so yeah, that's a summary of my experience with the ZTE axon 30 ultra 5g, it's priced to undercut the base iPhone 12 and the galaxy s21 just slightly now. Is that slight price difference enough to make me buy this over those two yeah, I'm not so sure, but don't get me wrong. I think this gives those phones a run for the money. ZTE just isn't a brand that many people know much about it's a good-looking device super solid, build with relatively clean software.

The cameras just fall short for me, though software updates will probably improve things a lot, but like many other android brands, how often and timely those updates will be is anyone's guess. I have to give them props for bringing this to the US and Canadian market. Competition is always good. They've got the makings for a great smartphone. Hopefully they stick around as usual.

Thank you all so much for watching until the next one, I'm out of here.

Source : Thao Huynh