ZTE Axon 40 Ultra – Unboxing & Review!

But, of course, with one major imperfection the hole punch cut out for the selfie camera, but heres a question. What, if the hole, punch, wasnt a necessary concession? What if you were able to have a phone front that was almost completely screen? There have been attempts at this in a couple interesting ways, one notable being the motorized selfie camera pop up like on the oneplus 7 pro, but obviously thats still not ideal. So what can we do? This is the 800 us dollar axon, 40 ultra from zte or zte for my american friends, a chinese smartphone manufacturer who will be selling this phone internationally with pre orders already started and the official launch set for june 21st. As you can see, it looks like the modern android, with its huge beautiful display, but theres no selfie camera cut out anywhere to be seen because theyve managed to stick it under the display itself: hey hows it going im josh from 91 tech and the axon 40 Ultra is one of the most beautiful premium smartphones ive ever laid my hands on from the matte glass backing to the seamless 120hz amoled front panel. The phone puts to shame much of its competition in screen to body ratio, and, while practically this might not make a huge difference for real life use to be at the point where we can finally do away with the notch is a place. A lot of us would very much like to be so today were going to be unboxing and reviewing the axon 40 ultra to see just what exactly this phone is all about.

So obviously, you have seen the phone outside of the box in the intro here, but well go ahead and show the unboxing anyways if youd like to skip ahead. Timestamps are in the description below id, also like to make mention that this phone was sent to me by zte or zte, so big thanks to them im not sponsored not making any money. You can find their link in the description. I was also told theres some kind of pre order discount, but now for the unboxing, so here we have the accent 40 ultra box. We can remove the plastic and lift off the top of the box, and there we have the phone already. We can see those waterfall edges its curving over and theres a little plastic tab. We can pull to get the phone up. This plastic cover here goes over to the back of the phone and right away. We can see how nice this phone looks: the matte glass backing. There is almost kind of textured, but its not its just really nice, so we can peel off the plastic and ill pull off the sticker here yeah. This is a really nice looking phone. My first impressions were not only does it look nice, but it feels really good in the hand. Turning the phone on we get the logo powered by android. We got my os here, its a pretty basic skin, nothing crazy. It is android 12 here which is awesome.

We start looking through the rest of the box. We have the paperwork and sim tool, as well as the clear phone case that it comes with in this little box. Here we have the usbc fast charger, i believe its 65 watts. We also get a usb c to headphone jack dongle. I wasnt expecting that. I really dont see this a whole lot anymore, so thats, actually nice im glad they included that and then, of course we have the usbc cord for charging. Nothing too surprising there so thats. The unboxing experience charging stuff a dongle a case and, of course, the phone itself and man does that phone ever look good setting it up is simple, got ta, choose my language and then its a basic android stuff. You got ta set up the under display fingerprint sensor, and it did recommend that i use face unlock as well to speed things up and with all that done, we get to go ahead and start our my os journey. It introduces us to the app drawer and thats it here. We are ios android 12., pretty darn simple, very little, bloat theres a little bit booking.com facebook. These are things you can delete, so not a huge deal on all so far so good with the software experience, though we will talk about that a bit later and about the update situation as well. My initial impressions, though, are extremely positive. This is a gorgeous phone, so now that weve got the phone in our hands, we can start the review portion of this video.

This wont be my most in depth. Review as ive only been able to use the phone for just over a week before the embargo date lifts. But i think its enough time for me to have gotten a good feel for the device and its quality were gon na start with the design in that display. Then move into the camera and the massive triple lens setup on the back and well finish it all off with the hardware and software and my concluding thoughts on the value and overall experience and starting with the design. What do i even say this is a beautiful smartphone, absolutely stunning, with that huge 6.8 inch, full hd amoled panel, that runs at 120 hertz, as you would hope, and a really premium build to back it up. The phone is glass, but its got a matte kind of textured feel to it, making it grippy and its also just like this matte black, which i love its just a nice looking phone theres minimal branding, which i like just the zte word mark logo on the Bottom corner and some text on the camera module concerning their specs now were going to be talking about the cameras and all that a bit later, but i will say, design wise. This camera pump is absolutely massive. I think i would use a case with this phone. Just because of how ridiculous it looks when you lay it flat on a table, i mean you should use a case with a glass phone anyways, but still, and despite this phone being glass, we actually dont get wireless charging.

We do, however, get extremely fast fast charging. With the 65 watt, adapter included, you wont be struggling for juice, with a battery size at 5000 milliamp hours it charges extremely quickly and ive had no issue going multiple days with decent usage, but going back to the front of the phone we do need. To briefly talk about how this tech works, how are they able to hide the selfie camera under the display it makes for this near frameless front that is so visually appealing and although theres a bit of a thicker chin versus the top, the bezels are so darn Thin regardless, i really cant complain im, not always a fan of waterfall edges, but theyve felt pretty good. So far i havent had any accidental touches and they only add to the immersion. The selfie camera is actually faintly visible, but only in the right circumstances. At the right angles, i gave this phone to a good few people before this asking them to find the selfie camera. The only one who did was my dad, who was right enough to touch the screen with his thumb right away until he figured out where it was because he covered the camera on the viewfinder and youd have to imagine the 16 megapixel selfie cam. Looking through that display must have some sort of quality drawback either on the camera or the screen itself, and that did appear to be an issue with ztes previous attempts at doing this.

But this time around the 400 pixel per inch screen uses what they call a udc chip. Basically, each pixel can be independently controlled, and this is supposed to rectify the jagged edges that were on previous displays and ill say it. The screen is gorgeous. This is a great screen and theyve done really well in not compromising its integrity to fit in the invisible camera and its worth mentioning that, while the galaxy zed fold 3 does have an under the display selfie camera, its actually visible, i mean its maybe better than A cutout what theyve done here with the axon 40 ultra is really impressive and so props to them. I think this is probably the best implementation. Thats ever been done with this sort of style, so nows as good a time as ever to start discussing the cameras and we might as well begin with the front facing one. The quality here is lackluster, to put it frankly, its 16 megapixels, but its really bad. Both with beauty mode on and off it just didnt do a good job. Yes, im wearing a dirty hat. This is my work hat im, not quite sure why i was wearing this, but i was please dont. Judge me too harshly also turning up the beauty mode to max trying out some video is uh atrocious. I look like im in a dream world or something the saturation and how soft everything is its kind of hilarious, but enough of that uh.

Something neat that i noticed just while i had the phone out carrying it around on the viewfinder. The leaves above me and the tree looked really weird, and so i snapped a couple photos and it turns out if you zoom in you can really clearly see the pixels above the camera. Thats actually so cool – and i know its like – i guess its detracting, but its just really cool that you can see that and again it just emphasizes how neat this technology really is and id be willing to live with this if it meant, i didnt have any Kind of notch, but thats me looking at the rear cameras. This is something zte has been hyping up with their triple 64 megapixel setup, thats right. Each of these lenses are 64 megapixels and, yes, that is insane its the standard setup with a wide ultra wide and telephoto lens, and that telephoto specifically is a periscope camera and look. I use iphone so im not super familiar with how exactly all this works, but you can see it there, its the one where the camera is further away from the glass and its rectangular, and this periscope camera gives us an optical zoom of 3.5 times and the Cameras here are pretty okay, i would say the camera app isnt, helping anything. Any kind of motion really gave it a lot of trouble just pulling out the camera tapping to focus and snapping photos. Didnt work super well for me, though.

The photos that did turn out turned out pretty well. This portrait photo of my dog is pretty nice. Actually, i got a few good portrait ones of her and basic photos when i was still – and everything was pretty still looked, quite good – the pro mode, i found a little bit better and i found that all three cameras were serviceable. I think, if you put the time into it, you could get some really nice results, but for me, its not going to match the flagship smartphones and that selfie camera is pretty darn awful, but overall youre not buying it for the camera, probably because the display is Amazing – and the hardware here is pretty darn good too. The technical specs are as impressive as you would expect. We have the snapdragon 8 gen 1, which is top of the line for storage. You have 128 gigabytes at the 800 model. This comes with the 8 gigabytes of ram and then for 900. You get 12 gigabytes of ram and 256 gigabytes of storage, no micro sd card slot, which is a bit of a pity overall, here its hard to beat the tech, specs and big numbers. The axon 40 ultra boasts, and it really is top of the line where things often dont, look as good with a phone like this is in the software and the updates that come with it or a lot of the time. The lack of updates i actually reached out to zte asking about updates, because i know phones like this often dont get any further than where they already are.

This phone right now is on android 12, which is great thats, the most recent version and specifically its running my os 12, which is a very bare boned skin. I was told that software and security patches are updated every three months. I was not told for how long exactly that lasts. Overall, though, if youre buying a phone like this, you probably know thats the case going in youre, not getting a lot of support from the brand itself. Youre, getting really good pure raw horsepower that you can work with android is very customizable, and, while i dont know anything about the bootloader or anything like that and im not going to go into it even without rooting, your device, you still have a lot of freedom With what you can do and how you can use it and not having a notch here is honestly just cool: is it really necessary, probably not its a cool party trick, try to find the selfie camera its neat right and theres, not a lot of phones like This right now so youre paying a little bit, maybe for that kind of experience, but its a good phone on its own and thats important. Ultimately, i do really like this phone pretty much thank ze for sending this out to me and by the way yes, ive been saying, zte to bug everyone, because theres, a lot of americans who watch me and every time i say, zed it freaks everybody out.

Youre! Welcome, i actually said zte a good few times and had to correct myself as a canadian. I seem to use both for some reason. It doesnt matter so yeah big thanks to zte. Again, i do have their links in the description and i believe pre orders should be live now with sales officially starting on june 21st. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think of the phone make sure you leave a comment, maybe hit that like button and consider subscribing for more content.