Review ZTE Axon 40 Ultra: a new look

Content

  1. Video review
  2. Equipment and design
  3. Software
  4. Camera
  5. Performance and Benchmarks
  6. findings

The line of flagship smartphones ZTE Axon thundered in2015-2016, and then went on vacation: in 2017 the company focused on the strange Axon M project, and the next year it fell under US sanctions and de facto could not continue the line (only Axon 9 Pro came out, which is impossible to look at without tears ). Then ZTE began to release as part of a series of mid-range cameras with 5G, and in 2020 became the pioneer of under-screen cameras. We've been ignoring the Axon all this time, but last year ZTE made a surprise comeback with a full flagship, the Axon 30 Ultra. Well, the Axon 40 Ultra released this spring turned out to be so interesting that we could not resist and ordered it from China. Let's see what he can do.

Specifications ZTE Axon 40 Ultra
Network 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G
Firmware Android 12 with MyOS 12
Screen 6.8″, 20:9, 2480×1116 pixels, 400 ppi, 10 bit, 120 Hz, touch 360 Hz, PWM 1440 Hz, AMOLED
Chipset Snapdragon 8 Gen1, 4 nm
CPU: 8 cores, 1 x X2 x 3GHz, 3 x A710 x 2.5GHz, 4 x A510 x 1.8GHz
GPU: Adreno 730
Ram 8 GB
LPDDR5
12 GB
LPDDR5
16 GB
LPDDR5
ROM 128 GB
256 GB

UVS 3.1
256 GB
512 GB

UVS 3.1
1 TB
UVS 3.1
SIM and memory card Two nanoSIMs
Camera Triple, video recording 4320p@30fps / 2160p@120fps on all modules
Main: 64 MP, IMX787, f/1.6, 35mm, autofocus, 7 lenses, OIS
wide angle: 64 MP, IMX787, f/2.35, 16mm, autofocus
Periscope: 64 MP, OV64B, f/3.5, 91mm, autofocus, OIS
Selfie Under the screen (center), 16 MP, 1.12 µm
Battery 5000 mAh
Charging USB Type-C, 80 W
Wireless interfaces WiFi 6E
Bluetooth 5.2
A-GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou
Infrared (Chinese version only)
NFC there is
Biometrics Fingerprint scanner (on screen)
Sound Stereo speakers
Water protection Not declared
Dimensions and weight 163.28 x 73.56 x 8.41mm
204 g

Video review 

Equipment and design 

The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra comes in a simple butexpensive-looking cardboard box, clearly designed to be placed horizontally. It is curious that in several places the name of the company is written in hieroglyphs (a bit like the letters FJ) - it seems that no other Chinese do this anymore. The flagship is equipped as a budget phone, and this, of course, is a compliment: the box contains a case, a USB cable, and a charger (80 W, 174 g). Please note that the plug is Chinese, so you will need an adapter. Unless, of course, you buy a globalka, which I do not advise you to do - I'll tell you why a little later.

ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is available in two colors:light and dark. On the renders they look glossy, but in fact the back is made of frosted glass, processed in a very interesting way. It is literally silky to the touch, gleams interestingly in the light and does not collect fingerprints at all. Expensive-looking and practical material is a rarity, but ZTE was able to find the right glass processing methods. Well done.

In addition, ZTE was able to find a way to provideexcellent ergonomics for a large and rather thick smartphone. The side faces are almost exact half-cylinders, with roundings at the back and front. On the front side, this forced ZTE to use a rounded display, but I, the eternal hater of such panels, never pissed off. Which does not eliminate the problems with gluing films, of course. But this is not a "waterfall", fortunately, so that the elements rolling on the edges are perceived painlessly. False touches? The wheelbarrow has a blind zone on the sides, the width of which is adjustable in the settings; I have never had a single case like this. At the same time, properly selected roundings allowed ZTE to ensure that the thin ends do not stick into the hand, and the grip is carried out for the entire curved sidewall.

There are a minimum of elements at the ends, from interesting things I cannote only the infrared port on the top side of the case. By the way, in the globalka there is a stub instead of it, so you can only control home appliances using the Chinese version of the smartphone. I can't imagine how ZTE came up with the idea of ​​saving on the infrared port, to be honest. There is also an additional speaker output on top; it enhances the stereo effect, but still the sound here is “one and a half” and not of the highest quality. However, for games and YouTube, such speakers are beyond the eyes, and even an undemanding music listener will be satisfied. Vibro is good, provides realistic tactile feedback.

Screen ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is made by technologyAMOLED and has a rather strange resolution of 2480x1116 pixels (20:9). Simply put, this is Full HD + with 18 extra pixels on each side, which was added, apparently, so that the flat area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe display was exactly 1080 pixels wide. Good practice, I agree. The screen is juicy and bright, the frequency is 120 Hz, the frequency of the touch is 240 Hz in the interface and 360 Hz in games. When autohertzing, the phone often goes into 60 Hz, so set it to constant 120 and don't worry. The PWM frequency is 1440 Hz, which makes it completely harmless; and besides, the ripple level measured by the radex does not exceed 25% (however, at such a high frequency, the radex can produce inadequate data).

But you are probably not interested in this, butunderscreen camera. ZTE was the first in this business and moved much further than its competitors, so the front camera is really not visible here. Looking closely, you can notice an area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe screen with a color reproduction that is not the same as everywhere else; against a black background in bright light, even the optics of the camera are visible. But in normal use, neither is completely unnoticeable. The only thing is, once I had a glitch, and the area above the camera began to strongly distort colors - that's when it was noticeable. But reboot helped. Well, and so - especially in combination with the practically non-rounded corners of the screen, the sub-screen makes it possible to use the entire display, which we have lacked in smartphones in recent years.



Here you can see the camera

Software 

ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is built on Android 12 withproprietary shell MyOS 12. Despite the fact that we have a Chinese version on the test, there are no problems using it in our realities: install the Google Play apk, all the necessary applications, and use it as usual. There is Play Protect certification, although for Russians this is no longer so important. There are few Chinese services and they are not at all sticky, I didn’t even delete anything. As for the Russian language, it is not out of the box. More precisely, it cannot be selected, but there is localization, albeit not of very high quality. You can enable it like this:

1. Download the Set Edit app (from Google Play or anywhere else).
2. Open it and scroll down to the “system_locales” item.
3. Click on this item, and then on Edit Value.
4. Enter ru-RU and click Save Changes.
5. Restart your phone.

Localization is incomplete and, to be honest,disgusting. I suffered a couple of days, and then changed back to en-US, which is much better. As for the firmware itself, it seemed to me a hodgepodge of everything that various Chinese software offers. There is a manual control of the background work of each application, there is an alternative launcher in the style of OriginOS, there is a call recording function, there is a shutter opening with a swipe down, there are detailed customization settings and cool Digital Balance statistics. However, not everything works well - for example, in an alternative launcher, you can remove beautiful default icons, but you can not put them back.

Well, in general, it seems to me that this is ZTE's approach tosoftware areas: take quantity, not quality. In principle, this is also possible - as a result, it turns out that there are a lot of interesting things in MyOS 12. And how great it is that it has finally been renamed from Mifavor UI to something normal; however, now the name is very similar to Motorola's My UX.

Cameras 

ZTE Axon 40 Ultra received a very unusual tripletcameras. It consists of three 64-megapixel modules (a pair of IMX787 plus OV64B in the periscope). The main camera has a very unusual 35mm EGF - in other words, it shoots with a zoom of about 1.4x relative to conventional smartphone cameras. This is convenient for portrait scenes (and in general such cameras are called “standard”, but the usual 23-26 mm are already “widths” by the standards of the photo world). The width here is also not as wide-angle as that of other flagships (16 mm), but this is logical: given that the main camera is a little telephoto, you will shoot wider more often, so it’s not the transcendental viewing angle that is more important, but the ability to get an adequate frame without distortion. Finally, the 91mm periscope provides 2.7x zoom relative to the main camera and ~3.5x relative to conventional smartphone cameras.

Let's start with the main camera. 35mm is cool.Shooting portraits, close-ups, small objects is great. Throw in a large sensor and a crazy f/1.9 aperture, and you get awesome natural bokeh without any portrait modes, giving shots a very professional look. Of course, in some cases, not everything fits on a 35mm camera, but in this case, ZTE made an excellent width, which is almost as good as the base. The only thing it is weaker in is the lack of OIS, which makes it impossible to take long exposure night shots. So in conditions of lack of light, the width turns out to be noticeably weaker than the main camera. Both cameras can be commended for accurate color reproduction (no embellishment of reality!), excellent detail and good dynamic range.

Well, the top three is completed by an excellent periscopea camera that allows you to take great close-up shots. It has the same sensor that plays the role of the main camera in many mid-range smartphones - for example, in POCO F4. And removes accordingly. Of course, the periscope was not deprived of OIS; in addition, all three cameras have autofocus. And here we turn to the disadvantages. Focusing on the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is unstable, sometimes entire series of shots are taken in total out of focus. And this despite the fact that in addition to PDAF on all three cameras, ZTE brought a laser here! In addition, the minimum focusing distance is more or less normal only wide (4 cm), you can shoot macro on it. The main camera clings to objects only from 25 cm, telephoto - from 1 m!

Video. Here the situation is twofold.On the one hand - 4320p@30fps and 2160p@120fps, which can be recorded on all three cameras (!!!), luxurious detail and lightning-fast autofocus. As well as excellent bokeh, soft stabilization - in general, you can’t dig into the picture. On the other hand, the sound recording is disgusting, which is inferior even to the younger Redmi Note. If you want to record concerts or matinees, then the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra will not do it. If you want to shoot nature videos or something like that, you won't find anything better than this. I note that you cannot switch between cameras during shooting in the normal mode, there is a separate Multi-Camera mode for this, but in it the recording quality is limited to 1080p@30fps.

By the way, in addition to Multi-Camera, the application has a handful of very strange modes that ZTE implemented purely on a “because we can” basis. Among them:

– Star Trail and Starry Sky, inherited astrophotography modes from Nubia;
– Light Draw, a mode for freezelight (Huawei once had this);
– Multi-Exposure: you take two photographs, which are then superimposed on each other with transparency;
– Clone: ​​you shoot the background first, and then additional photos, parts of which can be superimposed on this background;
– Zoom blur: two effects to choose from, either several pictures on top of each other, or “tunnel vision”;
– Hitchcock: a video mode in which you smoothly move the camera away from the subject, and the digital zoom compensates for this - as a result, the subject remains the same size, but the perspective of the frame changes;
– Art camera: turns photos into paintings in different styles (hello, Prisma).

How does the front camera shoot?Of course, worse than regular front-facing cameras, but much better than you might expect. It is worth realizing that photos and videos of her are “pulled out” not the structure of the screen, not the optics or the sensor, but the algorithms. Everything in the viewfinder is just terrible, and that's how the camera sees you - and everything else is figured out after the photo is taken. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse. The signature feature is grids in place of light sources. Looks cool. Well, you can see the rest for yourself. The video is recorded only in 1080p@30fps, it looks good. By the way, in Multi-Camera mode you can also shoot on the front camera; Apparently, it is precisely because of this that a general restriction on resolution was introduced for this mode.

Performance and tests 

ZTE Axon 40 Ultra was released in the first half of the year,therefore, its hardware basis is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, and not its plus version. There are many different modifications from memory: in China it is 8+256, 12+256, 12+512 and 16+1024, in the global market - 8+128 and 12+256. Yes, ZTE for the global camera not only cut out the infrared port, but also developed a special modification from memory; nothing useful to do. So we will do something useful, namely, we will look at throttling tests:

As you can see, we have no screenshots this time.a bit, and they are all obtained with different settings in the game mode. The fact is that 3DMark on this phone crashes due to overheating, and without a game mode, there is no point in testing benchmarks - the phone reduces the performance level when it does not detect touches. Huawei likes to arrange this behavior, but in its smartphones, the high frequency lasts for some time without touching, but here it drops immediately. In game mode, this behavior is disabled, which allows you to drive benchmarks. By the way, the global version does not have a game mode, so everything is quite sad there.

You were probably scared by the words about the flight due tooverheating. It's no secret, of course, that Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is not the coldest chipset, but ZTE really implemented it in a strange way. There is minimal throttling and a very slight decrease in screen brightness under load, but if all these measures do not help, the phone turns into a dialer, turning off mobile Internet, Wi-Fi, GPS and the camera. However, the Axon 40 Ultra's cooling system is quite efficient, and we only encountered this when we left the phone on the table for demanding tasks (benchmarks, Genshin Impact, 2160p@60fps video recording) on ​​the table. If you hold the phone in your hands, there is a lot of air around it, the heat dissipation is more efficient, and it doesn’t come to this.

Talk in detail about gaming opportunities,probably, it makes no sense, with such hardware and such settings, its behavior cannot be very bad. Even Genshin Impact runs well in long sessions at max settings, albeit at the cost of heating up the phone. Not always the ideal 60 fps, but close to it. A snappy 360Hz touch, stereo speakers and cool haptic feedback (in games that support it) make the gaming experience on the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra quite enjoyable.

The battery capacity of the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra isstandard for our times 5000 mAh. The autonomy of the phone pleased me - judging by synthetic measurements, it can last up to 5 hours in games and up to 14 hours in YouTube video mode. At the same time, when idle with a SIM card inserted, it discharges quite quickly, so I couldn’t squeeze more than the same 5 hours in a day and a half or two days. But even this sounds like a good result by the standards of modern flagships.

The bundled 80W charging is really fast:from zero to hundreds in 45 minutes. In 15 minutes, the phone charges almost half, in half an hour - by 82%. Not as fast as the BBK, of course, but it's still a single-cell battery, and this imposes its limitations. And besides, 50% of the battery in 16 minutes means that forgetting to charge the phone at night, you can replenish it with energy for the whole day while you have breakfast. Isn't that the point of fast charging?

Conclusions 

The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is a pleasantly surprising smartphone.He really was able to offer something unusual: a "full screen design" without any cutouts and bangs and, without exaggeration, a new look at things with a 35mm main camera. A good sub-screen, excellent add-ons and OIS on two cameras complete the design, making it the most thoughtful triple camera on the market. At the same time, there are very few weaknesses in the smartphone, they include only the work of microphones when recording video and some roughness in the software. The pluses, in addition to cameras, include fast charging, good autonomy, high performance, chic design, a complete set and a high-quality low-noise display.

And there are only two factors that canstop you from buying the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra. Firstly, its limited availability (even on AliExpress there are not many sellers selling it); secondly, its price. ZTE Axon 40 Ultra was created as an uncompromising flagship, and it turned out exactly like that, but at the same time it turned out to be one of the most expensive Chinese smartphones. At the time of writing, prices on AliExpress start at 53,000 rubles - this is by no means an overpriced price for such characteristics, but still I'm not sure that many are ready to spend that kind of money on a smartphone from China.

Discounts and Promotions in Telegram

© Oleg Lazarev.