ZTE Axon 30 Ultra Review: Do NOT Underestimate This Phone! By Mark Spurrell

You know how some phones come out, and they don't really look all that interesting, or you don't really hear much about them. So you kind of just move on with your life and completely forget about them. Yeah, don't do that with this phone. This is the ZTE axon 30 ultra a phone. I've been testing out for the past three weeks and I have been thoroughly enjoying it. This is kind of a sleeper phone.

It looks pretty unassuming and even a little plain, if I'm honest, but it's got a lot under the hood. Let me just read out the spec sheet: real quick snapdragon 888 between 8 and 16 gigs of ram 144 hertz OLED display with a 300 hertz touch sampling rate, four rear cameras, including a 5x periscope lens and a 4600 William hour battery with 65 watt fast charging, so yeah pretty impressive list of specs. It's pretty obvious that they took a lot of design. Inspiration from last year's Samsung note 20 ultra. But while I do like the clean look of that camera bump with the glossy rainbow finish, I think they could have done a little better.

It's solidly built, and the glass back feels very nice in the hand, but this gray color is a little too drab for my liking. I wish they did something a little more bold with the look of this phone, but the back of this phone is whatever right. Most of you, guys are probably going to put a case on this thing anyway. The most important part of this phone is what's on the front and in that regard, the ZTE axon 30 ultra does not disappoint the display on this device looks fantastic, it's nice and colorful, and it's got a little of curvature to the side. Edges that I know a lot of you enjoy.

There is a tiny hole punch for the front-facing camera, but that's the biggest distraction on the front side of this phone. The bezels on the top and bottom are tiny and unobtrusive. It's also got an under display fingerprint reader. It's not the fastest I've seen, but it's no slouch either. There have been very few times when the phone didn't register my thumb properly.

So it seems pretty accurate. I'm going to be honest here, I'll, be a little sad when I have to send this device back to ZTE. This is the first phone that I've used with a 144hz refresh rate display, and I can absolutely tell the difference between the 120 hertz on my s21 ultra and the 144 hertz on this display. Now, not everyone will I'm very attuned to it, because I have high refresh rate monitors at home for gaming, but either way this display is super, super fluid, especially with that 300hz touch sampling rate, giving it even more responsiveness. It's also one of the best displays out there for color accuracy.

It's a 10 bit panel that covers 100 of the p3 color gamut, so everything looks very true to life. The one downside to this display is that it's only a 1080p panel, so it's not quite as sharp as my s21 ultra now. Don't get me wrong. It's still plenty sharp, but it's just not the sharpest. My only real complaint about the front side of this phone has to do with the speakers.

They're stereo, and they do get nice and loud, but after about 50 or 60 on the volume level they start to distort, and it makes for a somewhat uncomfortable or unpleasant listening experience, I highly recommend headphones or earbuds. If you watch a lot of media content on your phone, the phone does come with an USB to 3.5 mil dongle. If you want to go that route, the ZTE axon 30 ultra runs on ZTE's my OS, and I actually like this skin a lot. It's very similar in design to the android 12 beta that was just released. The animations are fluid and all the buttons in the drop-down menu are nice and big for good accessibility.

Mos adds a few interesting features too, like this side menu that you can drag out similar to Samsung's edge panels. They also let you do things like change. How sensitive the edges of the display are to prevent accidental touches, and they, let you see which parts of the hardware draw the most power which I find very interesting. There have been a couple of bugs that I ran into here and there, but I mean this is a brand-new phone with brand-new software. So that's not really much of a surprise to me.

Performance is solid and that also shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. In fact, the performance is so good. This phone might be one of the best options out there for someone who wants a gaming phone but doesn't want to have to deal with the weird gamer, aesthetic of most gaming phones. Again, it's kind of a sleeper. It looks like a regular smartphone, but it's a 144hz gaming monster, especially when paired up with a racer, fish or some other smartphone controller to keep up with the high-end specs ZTE threw a pretty big 4 600 William hour battery into the phone, and yes, if you're playing games for hours at a time, you can definitely kill the battery in a single day.

But I mean you could do that on any phone. If you're, not a hardcore gamer, the phone will easily last you all day and maybe even part of another one. Once the battery is dead, you can plug it in with the included 65 watt, USB fast charger and watch the numbers increase rapidly. I plugged my phone in at 40 once and timed it, and it took about 20ish minutes to charge all the way up to 100 40 to 100 20 minutes not bad at all. Unfortunately, it does not have any wireless charging or any form of water resistance.

Certification, though, but once I tell you how much this phone costs that's going to make a lot more sense to you. The axon 30 ultra is 749 us dollars, making it cheaper than almost every single snapdragon 888 phones on the market. I think the only exception is the Nubia red magic 6. , either way it's undercutting a lot of phones. The Samsung s21 starts at 800 bucks right now and gets significantly more expensive as you go up the line, but before you run out and buy this, we need to talk about the camera situation.

The cameras on this phone are very versatile. There's an ultra-wide, a standard, a 2x telephoto, as well as a 5x, periscope zoom. The thing is they're: just not that amazing sure the pictures coming out of most of the cameras are sharp, since three out of the four cameras are 64 megapixel shooters, but I find that the cameras have a difficult time deciding on how to handle color balance. Some pictures end up too warm and some end up too cold. It also doesn't do the best with portrait mode photos.

The background blur looks really artificial and there's a good amount of haloing around the edges of faces. Still the phone is capable of taking some pretty fantastic photos. It's just a little inconsistent. The cameras are the biggest negative with this phone, and it's not even really a true negative. It's just mediocre.

If you don't care all that much about camera performance, this phone could be a real winner for you. I, like this phone ZTE's, been a little off the radar for a while, at least here in North America, and I'm glad to see them come out swinging with the axon 30 ultra there's a couple of small areas that definitely could be improved, but overall, I think they made the right cuts in the right places to keep this phone as affordable as possible, without sacrificing too much of what's important, I mean look, it's got a fantastic display, top-tier specs and performance, great battery life and superfast charging, and it's more affordable than most snapdragon 888 phones out there. It's still definitely not what I'd call cheap, but it's a reasonably priced device. I'll leave links to where you can find this phone in the description down below thanks for watching and as always have a great day.

Source : Mark Spurrell