- Jono, it also does the selfie camera!
- [Jono] Oh, cool.
- Look at this. - [Jono] What?
Look at this, there's six screens
on this right now. - [Jono] Whoa.
I'm back.
We saw this and we were interested enough
had to get it in to try it.
The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra.
I have actually not touched a ZTE phone in a long time.
They're actually using the Sony IMX787
which is a sensor that
as far as I know isn't in
a phone that I've actually tried out at all.
Remember when phone boxes were this big, still?
The phone that we just did in our previous video,
the Xperia, it was just, just the phone in the box.
This looks like
there's actually an unboxing experience.
So why don't we take a look?
Packaging is nice.
Oh yeah, there's our SIM tool.
Oh, hey!
(host laughing)
I find it funny that like
all Chinese manufacturers' phones
just include this kind of like
cheapo plastic TPU case
with their phones because they know
no one is really gonna be making cases for their phones.
Like, yeah they'll be certain places.
This is, I believe a 65 watt charger.
It's actually... - [David] Wow!
It's a heavy brick.
Yep, 65 watts, cool!
That's actually pretty awesome.
And I mean it's, you...
Ugh! (charger falling onto table)
It's a hefty boy.
Look at the shape of this.
- [Jono] Are they just like Apple rejects?
- This literally looks like
corded AirPod.
- [Jono] It's a headphone jack!
- Yeah, it's a headph...
Oh yeah so that's...
I've completely forgot
that headphone jacks are just not a...
Yeah, this phone uh...
Wait, hang on.
I don't think this has a headphone Jack on it.
- [Jono] What?
- There's a Type-C to headphone adapter.
What? (Jono laughing)
Are you serious? (Jono laughing)
You took the headphone jack off your phone
but you included a set of wired earphones
with an adapter?
That's just silly.
Okay, the last thing in the box is a pretty standard
but nice looking Type-C to C cable.
Okay, let's take a look at the phone physically.
This is a very large camera bump.
We will get back to this.
David, do you notice anything?
There's no selfie hole punch.
- [David] Oh, buddy.
- On the display, and there's no
raise from the top of the phone selfie camera.
This is apparently a third generation
in-screen selfie camera on this display.
If you guys wanna know how the first two generations
of the selfie camera performed
you can check out Linus's coverage of those videos here.
I could get used to that, right?
Like, this looks really good.
So this is a 6.8 inch 2480x1116 display.
No notch, very impressive.
It is curved so,
some of you might like that.
Some of you might hate it.
- [Jono] Boo.
But physically, the phone feels very flagship.
Very premium, nice soft touch metal
and it's got kind of like a
glistening metal finish
that looks pretty anti-scratch like it,
and it doesn't even pick up fingerprints which is,
really nice actually.
Like, ah. (rough scratching)
Nothin'!
Yes. Glossy phones look great in marketing images
and they feel good in the hand.
But then you look at the back
and you feel disgusted with yourself.
But, not on this phone.
On the left of the phone
we have absolutely nothing but antennas.
Which is nice, I actually don't mind that at all.
It feels good.
And on the right of the phone
we have your standard volume...
Can you even see, look how thin that is!
We have your standard volume rocker and power button.
Let's see if this is already a programmed shortcut.
If I double press the power button does it...
Oh, it locks the phone.
But there's no double tap for open camera,
at least not by default.
I'm not sure.
I'm sure you could also just customize that.
Top of the phone there's a sensor
and a speaker on here with also two antenna bands.
On the bottom we've got your SIM tray
and your Type-C connector with another speaker.
I mean, that's kind of it physically.
This camera bump is gigantic, as I mentioned.
So I'm about to play a couple videos
and try some sound on this phone.
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This display looks really good!
I'm not looking at it side-by-side to anything
but just right off the bat it looks good.
- [Jono] Ah, those high are crispy!
("Crab Rave")
- [Jono] Yeah!
- Side-by-side to the iPhone
it's obviously not really living up to it.
But on its own, it doesn't sound bad.
I'm not an audio expert by any stretch
but this is just my assessment of it.
The mid range sounds pretty good.
I would not be upset that this is
what my phone speakers sound like.
Totally adequate, you wouldn't miss anything.
I don't think I have a final price on this phone yet
but it is around $799 USD
which actually, is not bad.
It's really nice these days,
that flagship phones especially don't skimp on battery
'Cause this phone has a whopping 5,000 milliamp hours.
This thing's running a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1.
So we saw this in the most recent Xperia phone as well.
I wanna talk about this.
This camera bump, this massive,
like look at this thick boy, camera bump
is 64 megapixels on each one of these cameras
and then they also have this periscopic?
But it's a periscope design
which is actually really interesting
and it's a 91 millimeter focal length
so it's your telephoto.
Higher resolution on a phone, in my experience
has not led to better photos.
Ya don't necessarily want a lot of pixels
in a sensor that is this size.
'Cause this is still a smartphone
mobile sensor sized camera on this phone.
It's not a one inch sensor.
It's not like a 2/3 inch sensor.
So you're really packing in
a lot of resolution and potential noise
using such a high resolution sensor on a phone.
Anyways, let's, let's take a...
We got, we got a pro mode
We got a street mode.
What's camera friendly?
The slow motion mode on this phone,
it's got 240 FPS, 480 FPS, 960 FPS-
- [David] Wow.
- and 1920 FPS!
I'm trying the 1920.
And, going. (plastic balls hitting jar)
(phone beeps)
When you hit record, it only actually
rolls for about five seconds
and then it just processes the video.
So let's take a look there.
Oh. (muffled pouring)
Okay, so the 720p 1920 FPS
is kind of garbage tier.
The 240 FPS is not amazing, but respectable.
The detail is not crazy but it's not awful.
I've seen worse.
Three, four years ago we couldn't even say
that most phones have slow motion and now they do.
I can't test this right now, but if you pointed this thing
at the Big Dipper, it would show you that like
spoon outline that is the Big Dipper.
So that's kind of cool.
Wow there's two pages, guys.
Look at this!
So there's all of these ones (Jono laughing)
but then you go over and there's more!
Panorama, vlog, art camera, Hitchcock.
Hitchcock got his own mode, good for him!
- [Jono] What does that mean?
- What does this mean? (group laughing)
- [David] Is it the Vertigo thing?
- What, what?
- [Jono] Is there gonna be
birds everywhere? (phone dings)
- [Host] Oh, it is the vertigo thing!
Wait, is it, is it? (Jono laughing)
It is, it totally is.
Oh, that's so funny.
Oh, and it's using like, digital zoom to compensate
(phone dings)
When you're the ca...
Hitchcock did this thing, it's like the Dolly Zoom
where you dolly in on the camera,
but you zoom in at the same time
and it gives it this like, surreal effect
where the background only moves
but the subject stays in the same place.
(Jono laughing)
It does feel like, a little gimmicky
but they're fun.
Let's see what the pro mode is like.
It seems okay.
You got raw, histogram, focus, okay.
Everything I'd expect from a manual camera.
I'm pretty basic though.
So yeah, this is one of the modes I wanna check out
multi-camera, let's see.
Whoa.
In the corner of my display
there is both the wide
and telephoto images of the cameras
and the primary camera
that I'm looking at is the main one.
So, let me just take this photo of David.
(camera snaps)
Yeah, okay so I have all three images.
That's kinda cool.
It didn't expose the wide angle particularly well.
Okay, I know you guys can see my display.
Jono, it also does the selfie camera.
- [Jono] Oh cool.
- Look at this. - [Jono] What?
- Look at this, there's six screens.
On this right now. - [Jono] Whoa.
I mean, I could imagine if you like
like you're pranking somebody
and you're walking up to them, "Ah!"
and then you wanna see your reaction
for whatever reason, you have that.
Select, oh select at least two cameras.
Okay, so you have to select...
I'm gonna do selfie and the primary.
You can only use three at the same time,
which is totally reasonable.
So I'm gonna do primary, let's do selfie, and ultra wide.
I wasn't recording. (phone dings)
I, you saw it in the screen cap
but I was not technically recording.
Now I'm recording.
So this is what the selfie camera looks like,
and then this subsequently is also what my
rear and ultra wide are seeing at the exact same time
as I'm looking at the selfie camera.
This is a good time
to get into the selfie camera (phone dings)
because, guys...
ZTE, I can completely appreciate
how hard it might be to put a half decent camera
through multiple layers of display and glass.
That challenge is incredibly apparent
because here's me taking a selfie,
(camera snaps)
and it is a bloomy mess.
Oh man, it is blurry, it is washed out.
I think it's also applying like, a softening filter
or maybe that's literally just
the softening that you'd get.
You know what, Jono, I'm gonna hand you this phone.
So Jono's gonna take a selfie.
- Oh my God it's so bad!
- And then Dave is also gonna take selfie
and I wanna look at the skin tone
because this...
the facial recognition AI on this phone
is supposed to really do a good job
not making the skin tones look awful.
Oh Jono, you don't look this pale.
Oh my God, (Jono laughing)
look at the right of this photo.
You can see the stand is fringing like crazy.
So this doesn't handle reflections very well
because obviously when you're using a camera
through another piece of glass
that isn't just the lens
it's a tough thing to do.
It's not an easy thing to do.
David, I don't think you're this white.
You're actually, you have more warmth
in your face than this photo.
It doesn't even look like you're in focus.
Just to give the selfie camera a full chance,
I've turned the beauty mode off.
If I smile.
(camera snapping)
Hey, that's kind of interesting.
What does it classify as a smile?
Oh, okay. (camera snaps)
(camera rapidly snapping)
If I hold my smile, it just keeps taking photos.
I've never, that's hilarious.
(camera snapping) (Jono laughing)
Okay, I'm turning that setting off.
Stop taking photos. (camera snaps)
There we go. (group laughing)
(camera snapping)
Oh my God, okay. (camera snaps)
Stop taking photos, ah!
Okay, I'm smiling too much. (camera snaps)
No stop. (camera snaps)
I can't turn it off. (camera snapping)
I warn you not to turn the smile setting on for your phone.
It'll just take a million photos if you're
(host chuckles)
if you're a person that smiles a lot.
It still doesn't look that good.
I can conclude that the selfie camera
on this phone is not amazing.
- [Jono] So it's been my almost like, gone.
- It is. Yeah, it's gone.
I mean, I can see it with my eyes.
So when you look, when you're looking for it
and you hold the phone at a certain angle,
you can see it but it's very minor.
You generally won't be able to see it.
But we also have 8K video
and I believe we have 8K video
on every single one of these
because they're all 64 megapixels.
4K 120 FPS, 4K 60 FPS,
normal 4K and 8K.
So I'm gonna go to 8K.
Oh cool, oh you can even shoot HDR!
You wanna do HDR on your phone, you can.
There's a gentleman (machinery running)
cleaning his Mustang over there.
Oh, there's also zoom?
That's kind of a nice touch.
I can't tell at all how this looks on the phone.
It would be...
Stabilization though is surprisingly decent.
Like I'm not really trying to
walk that steady
but it's not doing a bad job.
So I'm just testing my macro mode.
It's 2:1 apparently, and I'm pretty impressed.
Oh, there's a little bit of a flare.
How close I can get.
I mean, and that looks not bad, actually.
Make sure to turn off the watermark
'cause I've got a watermark of the phone
on every single one of these photos.
So this is an overcast, just photo in our parking lot
and it's actually not bad.
The detail is pretty good, respectable.
It's like a little bit crunchy
in certain parts in the contrast.
The overall exposure
the auto-exposure did a pretty good job
and when you're not like, pixel peeping
it's actually a pretty sharp photo.
Going over to the next one.
Honestly, also pretty good.
You zoom in and you start to see like,
a little bit of noise and the detail is
maybe not good in every spot.
Like, the Volkswagen logo here is a little bit mushy.
On the widest part, this is the wide angle.
This is the ultra-wide, pretty respectable.
Here's the primary camera also pretty sharp.
Decent performance.
I mean again, this is broad daylight
but there are cameras that don't perform well
in this setting either.
So, quick photo of a leaf from outside.
Let's see how it handles this color.
It looks okay.
It's a little bit processed looking
in the center leaf here.
It's a little bit more yellow
than I think it actually was in person.
Let's check out this macro mode.
I think this is maybe one of our better examples.
In focus.
You actually get quite a like, dramatic bokeh
just 'cause you're so close in this macro mode.
So it actually is, it's a pretty good shot.
Sharpness is not bad.
Not a lot of cameras can focus this close.
The Sony IMX787 sensor in this phone is pretty good,
and the processing on the rear cameras,
not overly aggressive.
Some maybe minor issues with the color
in terms of like, plants
and it seems hit and miss with humans.
For $799 US, if you're in the Chinese market
or you're the type of person who likes importing phones,
I can't say that this is a bad pick.
It actually feels like a pretty decent value.
If you can get over how big this camera bump is
I don't think you'd be disappointed with the cameras.
Honestly, I actually like these cameras
better than my OnePlus cameras
and the experience, and the processing
is less egregious than my current phone.
Good job ZTE.
This is not a terrible phone.
I mean, this is not a review.
This is a first impressions.
But my first impression is this is not bad.
So, good job.
Thank you guys for watching.
If there are any other phones
that we haven't covered that you really
you feel like the camera especially on them
is really interesting
let us know in the comments down below.
Have a great day!