ZTE Axon M Preview – One phone, two screens
“All smartphones look the same these days”. It is a comment we often hear today. Where you used to have different form factors with normal mobile phones , the diversity with smartphones that mainly consist of a screen is a bit off. That’s why we were pleasantly surprised when we came across ZTE’s Axon M at CES. This device was recently released in the United States and has not one, but two 5.2″ screens. They are connected with a hinge so that you can choose whether you use the second screen. It is certainly original, but does it also work a little tasty?
ZTE has come up with a total of four different ways in which you can use the Axon M. To start with, of course, as a normal smartphone; you then fold the screens back to back, the second screen then goes black. Apart from the fact that the hinge protrudes on the side, you hardly notice that you are holding such a special phone. Except perhaps the fact that it is rather large, with a thickness of 1.2 cm and a weight of 230 grams.
It becomes more interesting if you fold out the second screen, after which it forms a large surface together with the main screen. With the hinge in the middle, unfortunately it is. That immediately means that the mode in which you merge both screens in the software into a large whole does not come out very well. Android and the apps can handle the larger 6.75″ surface well, but because a hinge runs right through the middle, there is actually no usage scenario in which this is useful. Whether text, photo or video; there’s always something in the way and that proved irritating even with the short time we spent on the phone.
That leaves the mirror mode, where both screens display the same, and the dual mode, where the screens can be used individually. According to ZTE, the former can be useful if, for example, you are sitting across from someone and giving a presentation on the phone; both parties can then see the same thing. However, that doesn’t sound like a common scenario.
More useful is the mode where you can display something different on each screen. Consider, for example, YouTube and WhatsApp, or a web page and a note app. You can send apps to the other screen by swiping across the screen with three fingers. Such a three-finger gesture is a bit cramped on a 5.2″ screen and therefore it does not always work smoothly. Some ZTE apps are smart enough to use both screens at the same time: for example, if you open the calendar, you can see on the left screen the monthly overview and the right the daily schedule.
What is not so handy is the keyboard. If you have opened the screen and call up the keyboard on one of the screens, there is always one hand that has to bridge too great a distance. So you’re always at the mercy of one-handed tapping.
Although the Axon M is already for sale in the US, the software still felt like a beta. When switching between the different modes, which you do via a button on the navigation bar, the device regularly hung briefly and sometimes faltered for a long time afterwards. At one point the toggle became completely unresponsive and we had to reset the phone to get everything working again. That should not happen with a product that is simply on the shelves.
The delays may be because the GPU is under a lot of pressure. After all, with two full-HD screens, quite a few pixels have to be calculated and the Snapdragon 821-soc used is already of an older generation. This is in itself capable of driving the collective resolution of 3840×2160 pixels, but is pushed to the limit of its capabilities.
The rest of the hardware is fine: 4GB of ram, 64GB of storage memory, a micro-sd slot, fingerprint scanner on the side in the power button, a physical shutter button, usb-c, a 3.5mm jack and a 3180mAh -battery. Knowing that the screen is one of the biggest power consumers in a phone, we’re very curious to see how long the phone will last when both screens are in use.
A design like this brings with it some peculiarities. Because the screens fold back to back, it is not possible to place a camera there. The Axon M therefore only has a front camera. At least that’s the position, but the size is more that of a camera that we normally find on the back of a phone. It’s a Sony IMX350, a 1/2.8″ sensor with 1.0 micrometer pixels. It has a resolution of 20 megapixels, an LED flash and an f/1.8 aperture lens. Switching between a selfie and a normal You take a photo by choosing this in the app – the camera image is then moved to the other screen – and physically turning the phone.
With the Axon M, ZTE has really designed a unique smartphone and that it technically works as well as it does, is worthy of praise. That does not immediately make it a good phone. Nice to see, but we are not worried that it is not for sale in the Netherlands.