ZTE Axon M

The ZTE Axon M is a smartphone with a futuristic twist. Following the competent, flagship-for-less ZTE Axon 7, its new Axon M is the wildest of curveballs in today’s somewhat stagnant mobile market. It’s a smartphone with a second display that folds out.

At its very best, the Axon M is a phone that helps you never miss a beat.  Whether it’s fun or work you want to double, it’s the only modern phone out right now that can show two apps in native full-screen mode. Naturally, the possibilities are deep. Let’s rattle off a few.

On a drive? Leave Google Maps running on one of the screens and let the passenger be the DJ, flicking through your music library on the other screen without missing a turn. If you’re into Dungeons & Dragons, you can simultaneously host a video chat with friends on one screen and keep tabs on your character in the Roll20 app on the other. Heck, you can also just extend the experience with a tap to watch a video stretched across the Axon M’s two screens for a more tablet-like effect. And on, and on.

Novelty comes at a cost, of course, and a few Axon M’s greatest weaknesses are its somewhat high cost and carrier exclusivity with AT&T in the US. That, and compared to the similarly priced Samsung Galaxy S8 and Google Pixel 2, its software and camera are currently rough around the edges. By those low points alone, this phone is tough to recommend for its $725 asking price.

The Axon M is obviously a niche device, and to that niche it delivers something special in a surprisingly polished manner. Even when flipped shut, it feels high-end in its build quality and across the board, it’s packed with specs that help it deliver a good Android experience. But even at its best, it’s just not good enough for most people.

Design

Compared to the streamlined design found on many of today’s smartphones, even some affordable ones, the ZTE Axon M is bulky. Depending on who you ask, they’ll either hate it or be alright with it. I’m actually in the latter group, finding the sharp edges and broad strokes of the phone’s look and feel endearing in a year in which too many phones look the same.

Folded closed, the Axon M is almost as thick as a deck of cards and weighs more than the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. Oddly enough, its second screen doesn’t seem to add all that much to the weight – it’s a hearty phone even without it. But that doesn’t mean it’s all bad.

On its front, which nearly mirrors the back to the degree that it’s error-prone, ZTE employs an Gorilla Glass 5 cover over each of the 5.2-inch 1080p displays. The glass rocks a subtle 2.5D effect, making its soft curves a stark contrast to the sharp metal edges that wrap around the phone.

As far as visual indicators go, only on the front of this all-black phone will you find a camera, a flash, an ear speaker and the occasionally-blinking LED. That’s all you have to go off of. So, imagine if you’re picking up this phone in the dark, well, you have a 50/50 chance of picking up the correct side that shows you information. Those aren’t great odds, especially when you’ve paid so much on the phone, not on a gamble.

There are a few other hardware features sprinkled around the phone, like a 3.5mm headphone jack. Given the Axon M’s potential as an entertainment device, the versatility to go wired without the need for dongles is appreciated, as are the included earbuds. 

Moving on, you’ll find a satisfyingly clicky volume rocker on the phone’s left-hand side and next to it, a power button with a fingerprint sensor built-in a la the Razer Phone, and Sony Xperia smartphones (outside of the US). ZTE’s foldable phone also houses a programmable Quick Launch button. There’s an option to launch the camera by tapping it twice, and also a setting to choose what a long press does. You can choose which app to boot from the ones you have installed, which indeed is a neat feature that you won’t commonly find in a phone.

Lastly, the phone’s bottom is where you’ll find two downward-firing speaker grilles and a USB-C charging port.

Perhaps the most useful hardware feature for a two-screened phone is its hinge, and the one built into the Axon M works as intended and seems built to last (ZTE’s two-year warranty backs it up). Pulling the second display away by its slightly raised lip and blossoming the Axon M into its full form is effortless and satisfying even, thanks to the hinge’s telling click that assures you that you’re into position. In that moment, the extra screen pops on and you can select between a few different display options to extend the work or fun.

Software and reliability

When viewed in single-display mode, the ZTE Axon M operates like 99% of all other Android smartphones. Promised to receive Android Oreo in the near future, for now, it’s loaded with Android Nougat 7.1.2. As such, you’ll find stock features like split-window multitasking with ZTE’s own layer over top of it. It’s reminiscent of stock Android, but unique in a few ways.

First of all, ZTE’s software treats the app drawer in a similar manner to the Google Pixel, asking users to slide up from the bottom to access what’s hidden offscreen. Next, it wedges in an extra button to the right of the nav bar, its “M” button. This is where you can select from the different display options. You can extend the display to spill across both for a widescreen look, mirror the screens, show something different on each screen, or simply turn on the second display.  It’s a bit weird to have such a fundamental part of Android messed with, and unfortunately, only the adaptable will adapt. 

The possibilities are nearly as endless as your imagination takes the concept, though there are some unexpected limitations. Some of the apps that come preinstalled on the Axon M, of which there are many thanks to its AT&T partnership, don’t support all of the viewing modes. During our testing, we noticed that lot of modern games aren’t optimized to be stretched across two screens, but the other modes worked to the Axon M’s dual-screened benefit.

While the second screen can work well, the software lacks visual polish, and the fast, clean interface is just boring to look at. We would have also liked to have seen more customization options for the Quick Launch button. It seems like an oversight to not allow it to snap a photo, as it’s in the perfect position to act as a shutter button, much like Sony employs on all of its phones to great effect.

Music, movies and games

A device that has two screens sounds like an automatic win for multimedia use cases, but is it? In some cases, it’s better than anything out there, but while using just a single screen, it falls short of what many other flagship phones (and some cheaper ones) out there can do. 

The Axon M has a leg-up on some of the flagship competition with its support for wired audio via the 3.5mm headphone jack. But despite its two screens, there’s only one of these precious audio jacks, meaning you’ll either need a splitter to share the sound with someone watching on the other screen, or you’ll need two sets of Bluetooth headphones. Both configurations worked well enough, though mixing the two technologies together (a seemingly common scenario, given that not everyone has two sets of Bluetooth headphones) doesn’t. 

Watching movies and gaming are the big highlights here, and it’s where the Axon M really sings. Whether you’re watching alone or with a pal, it’s super handy at times to be able to either extend your content across two screens or keep your work and play seperated. I, for one, quite enjoy watching some gameplay footage while playing a game at the same time, both in Dolby Atmos. In that way, it’s like the Nintendo 3DS, but on steroids.

In case you were wondering, no, the Axon M doesn’t play the audio from both screen simultaneously. Instead, there’s a small on-screen button that you can move from screen to screen to shift the mix depending on which you want to hear.

The Axon M’s many display modes make it a versatile option for personal use, but it’s also a good social device. Popped into a tent of sorts and set to mirror the main display, ZTE’s flippable phone is probably the best device out there to entertain people who are sitting across each other. Each gets perfect viewing angles and their own set of headphones. Better yet, both can control the shared or respective app experience thanks to the touch controls on the second screen.

The same rules apply for games. Alto’s Adventure, a really fun single-player game, turned into a fresh-feeling co-op game with my buddy and me taking turns making Alto jump. By design, the Axon M can turn single-player games into collaborative multiplayer adventures.

ZTE’s phone has unique perks that others don’t, but it loses out with its LCD screen technology. Not that it’s particularly bad – the picture is clean and viewing angles are satisfactory. For most people, 1080p is more than enough. It’s a strange move, given the Axon 7 had an OLED running at 2K resolution, but putting just one of those coveted OLED displays into the Axon M, let alone two, would have sent the price up even higher, possibly into the $1,000 range.

The split between the two displays is also worth bringing up. While the two LCD panels sit almost seamlessly next to each other, there’s a gap of a few millimeters that sounds small, but is very noticeable. ZTE does a good job of minimizing the loss between the fold, but in some cases, the screen gap distorts the bigger picture. Like, looking at my wife or one of my cats with Google Photos spread across both screens makes them look nothing like they do in reality. The humor isn’t lost on me, but it’s an unfortunate side effect of the current dual screen technology that’s ahead of its time.

Specs and performance benchmark

From a technical standpoint, the ZTE Axon M is a small step up from the company’s last smartphone, the ZTE Axon 7. It has similar specs to the Google Pixel from 2016, complete with 4GB of RAM and the Snapdragon 821 powering the experience.

This is to say, it’s a bit behind with many of today’s pricier flagship Android smartphones packing in the Snapdragon 835. You’re getting less for your money here, but you’re also getting more with its two screens. We were quite surprised how admirably last year’s tech handles two displays, even when running two different applications concurrently. And the built-in 64GB of storage with support for microSD cards up to 256GB in capacity is a good measure to make sure the fun never ends.

Indeed, the Axon M is no slouch when it comes to running basically any app or game out there. We were impressed that, even when streaming 1080p YouTube videos and playing Dead Trigger 2 at the same time, there was nary a drop in frames. However, the battery goes quickly with all the cylinders firing at once. We’ll get into that in the next section.

The ZTE Axon M features a 3,180mAh non-removable battery that’s packed into the thicker side of the phone, also sharing the space with the other components.

In terms of its general performance, judging it depends completely on how many screens you plan to use. Just going to use it in single-screen mode? You’ll get a good bit more than a day of constant use – that includes gaming, social media and watching, say, a feature-length film or two. What you’re getting here is, by and large, a bit better than the results shown by many other flagship smartphones that cost above $700. Most of this is due to the fact that the Axon M powers a 1080p display, which taxes the battery less than a 2K display would. 

Flipping into dual-display mode tells a different story, as you might imagine. No matter the “M” mode you choose, it’s going to drain the battery faster. However, some modes take sips while others gulp from it. For instance, the mode that lets you run two data and battery-intensive apps zeroed out the battery from the 43% mark in about two hours. 

Watching a film in single-screen mode reduced a 100% charge by just 10%, which is among the better results we’ve seen. Flipping open the screen to play the movie on two screens yields good results, too, with the battery dipping down to 83% from a full charge after 90 minutes of continuous play.

Once the Axon M has run out of charge, it takes a bit less than 90 minutes to recharge it fully. During our testing, around 50 minutes brought it up to 80%, while just 20 minutes on the charger raised it to 30% – more than enough to start or finish your day. 

Camera

While the ZTE Axon M’s design makes for some unique, and often times fun experiences, the camera suffers majorly because of it. This phone is stocked with just one lens, not two like you are used to on just about every other phone in use today.

The 20MP lens is pleasantly capable, but only in near-perfect circumstances. Photos are filled with detail and accurate color, but only if you’re standing still. More often than not, my creations are blurry due to the lens’ slow capture speed – an unacceptable reality for today’s snap, go and share lifestyle. 

Low-light performance is so-so, but it should be so much better with the camera’s f/1.8 aperture value. There appears to be no help on the software side of things to even out the lighting and color balance, as night-time photography doesn’t look as well-lit as, say, the original Google Pixel with its lesser f/2.0 aperture lens.

Using the Axon M’s camera is about as unintuitive as they come, requiring sleight of hand, patience and again, a hearty dose of needless gambling with the chance of picking it up incorrectly being higher than it should be. Thankfully, you can assign booting up the camera to double-tapping the Quick Launch button, but most people will try to launch it from the lockscreen, where it forces you to flip the phone over to use the second display as a viewfinder. 

If you’re taking a selfie, you’ll have to go through the above steps, then tap the button to switch the camera and rotate the entire phone back around. At its worst, it’s multiple steps too many.

We’ve included some samples that show off the Axon M’s high and low points in photography.

With most phones, the line that divides what to like and dislike about a phone is usually clearly defined. But ZTE’s Axon M makes things complicated. The things done right by the company’s dual-screened phone have me over the moon and frankly, pretty excited about the future of foldable device. Consider me surprised that today’s technology, not some far-off magical engineering techniques, could whip up such a novel smartphone experience, even if it doesn’t get a lot right.

At $725, the Axon M sits in the same price bracket as many popular smartphones that offer far better raw performance, battery life and camera results. And while its two-screened gimmick will make it stick out for some looking for novelty over refinement, it’s so, so easy to find a phone for that price that doesn’t slack on power or screen quality. That, and between Android Nougat’s split-window feature and Android Oreo’s picture-in-picture mode, multitasking on single-screened Android phones isn’t all that bad anymore.

Who's this for?

The ZTE Axon M is for someone who chugs video and gaming content, which its two screens lend to perfectly. Whether if you’re watching alone or with a friend, this phone lets you do more at once, empowering you with the freedom to enjoy something together, or use two different apps at once in full-screen mode. No other phone lets you do that.

If you’re a constant traveler or are someone who’s constantly digging into documents or taking notes, two screens are far better than one for never missing a beat, and never getting bored during your travels.

Should you buy it?

The novelty is strong with the ZTE Axon M and thankfully, its hardware gimmick is executed just well enough to push it into “recommended” territory for those who need to entertain or be entertained more than one mere screen can provide. 

For everyone else, it’s hard to overlook the vast amount of single-screened smartphones that undercut it in price and practical design. Not just that, I found it oddly tough to find justifiable reasons to use a second screen in practice, given that I’m so deep into my ways of getting around with just one screen. At the end of the day, your mileage will vary with this concept. 

ZTE gets props for not releasing just another homogenous, clean-looking smartphone. And if you have the cash and are tied to AT&T, it’s the best dual-screened phone out there. But that’s not saying all that much at the moment.