ZTE Axon 7 first impressions

ZTE have been kind enough to send me their brand spanking new ZTE Axon 7 to test, but as it’s still early days here are my first impressions.

ZTE’s Axon brand have sent me their Axon 7 flagship to test, and over the past few days I’ve been getting to grips with the new golden phone. The full review is still a ways off, but to get you all going here are my first impressions.

The Axon 7 arrived with me on Saturday afternoon and it just so happened that my brother and family friends were at me home at the same time. Upon opening the Axon 7 there was a lot of praise flung around.

Everyone who held the phone commented on how well it is made, how nice the machining was, how incredible audio is and the vibrancy of the screen. They weren’t wrong either as I fully agree with all their praise.

Sure the Axon 7 isn’t the most unique looking handset and from the front it looks a hell of a lot like a flagship HTC device due to the dual front facing speakers. The rear of the Axon 7 reminds me of a mix between a Meizu and a Huawei, which sounds like a mish mash of styles, but it works and looks a whole lot better than then fake leather on older Axon phones.

Like other flagship devices, Axon have opted for a 5.5-inch AMOLED display protected by a 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 4 panel. As I had been using a OnePlus 3 before the Axon arrived, the difference in screen quality was obvious and the ZTE is simply more vibrant and more enjoyable to look at.

Above the display is a 8 mega-pixel camera and RGB notification light, below are 3 none back-lit navigation buttons and at the very top and bottom of the phone are HIFI speakers which can benefit from Dolby Atmos surround sound if you wish to turn the feature on.

The whole body of the Axon 7 is made of metal with a slightly brushed finish on the front and anodised finish to the rear. My version of the phone is the Ion Gold model but a Quartz Gray version will also go on sale.

The back of the Axon 7 is where you will find a 20 mega-pixel dual OIS rear camera, dual LED flash and fingerprint scanner. The fingerprint scanner is a decent piece of kit, better than the the OP3, but not as fast or accurate as any Vivo that has launched to date.

As for the camera, well it has the ability to take fantastic photos, and the camera app is really feature packed, but there seems to be an issue with focus and often a decent photo can be impaired due to blurred details.

I’m hoping this issue will be fixed and I also hope that the issue I had with the set up wizard will be rectified too. Setting up the Axon 7 from my settings on the OP3 was a hassle and I had to begin again with a factory reset, but then the set up wizard constantly crashed after each step forcing the phone to either restart of simply freeze. I finally did get the phone up and running and so far the issue hasn’t appeared again.

Being a flagship the Axon 7 has 4GB RAM, Snapdragon 820, 3250mAh battery, and 64GB memory. Performance has been quite good, but I do feel a little lag here and there compared to the OnePlus 3.

I intend to post a few photos samples, and a comparison with the OP3 later this week so watch out for this. If you have any questions about the ZTE Axon 7 let me know in the comments below.