1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:03,470 - The big deal today with the ZTE Axon 30 5G 2 00:00:03,470 --> 00:00:09,410 is that this is gonna be our first look at a 2nd generation under-display camera. 3 00:00:09,410 --> 00:00:13,980 If you guys remember, the 20 5G was actually the first phone 4 00:00:13,980 --> 00:00:17,540 with an under-display camera that actually made it into production. 5 00:00:17,540 --> 00:00:22,590 And this one claims that it has taken everything that they learned from that first attempt 6 00:00:22,590 --> 00:00:28,840 and made it even better. Now, right out of the gate, the specs don't actually sound better. 7 00:00:28,840 --> 00:00:31,920 In fact, we're going from a 32-megapixel front facing camera 8 00:00:31,920 --> 00:00:35,330 to just a 16-megapixel front facing camera, 9 00:00:35,330 --> 00:00:40,810 but ZTE claims that the pixel density of the display in front of the front facing camera, 10 00:00:40,810 --> 00:00:44,330 as well as a special secondary driver 11 00:00:44,330 --> 00:00:48,690 for that portion of the display makes it so that it is far less noticeable 12 00:00:48,690 --> 00:00:52,520 in day-to-day use. Let's do our unboxing experience first, 13 00:00:52,520 --> 00:00:55,710 and then we're gonna dig right into the front facing camera. 14 00:00:55,710 --> 00:01:01,080 So inside the box, ZTE has not followed the industry trend 15 00:01:01,080 --> 00:01:02,833 of not including a power adapter. 16 00:01:04,250 --> 00:01:09,670 Actually, wow, this thing feels robust. 65-watt power adapter. 17 00:01:09,670 --> 00:01:10,520 It's a heavy boy. 18 00:01:13,490 --> 00:01:19,760 Nice thick USB Type-C to Type-C power cable. And of course, oh, look at that, that's adorable. 19 00:01:19,760 --> 00:01:22,930 They still include a Type-C to headphone jack. 20 00:01:22,930 --> 00:01:27,240 SIM removal tool and a pretty basic case. 21 00:01:28,980 --> 00:01:33,410 Basic is the kindest word that I can have for it. Okay, let's put this on and totally 22 00:01:33,410 --> 00:01:37,520 ruin the fantastic, gorgeous finish of this phone. 23 00:01:37,520 --> 00:01:43,540 We're not gonna do that. And, yeah, we're gonna appreciate this for what it is. 24 00:01:43,540 --> 00:01:47,509 Oh, that's weird. Oh, it's a peel. 25 00:01:47,509 --> 00:01:52,118 Okay. It's like that is a really weird color there. 26 00:01:52,118 --> 00:01:56,720 (chuckles) Okay. There we go, that's more like it. 27 00:01:56,720 --> 00:01:57,770 There's one here too. 28 00:02:00,220 --> 00:02:04,120 Here we go. Look at that. 29 00:02:04,120 --> 00:02:08,373 microSD and nano-SIM, dual-SIM if you prefer. 30 00:02:09,670 --> 00:02:13,150 USB Type-C for charging, got a speaker here. 31 00:02:13,150 --> 00:02:19,020 Now that's interesting, our headphone speaker is extremely slim. 32 00:02:19,020 --> 00:02:23,850 I'm gonna have to check later to see if it has stereo sound. On the left side, there's nothing, no buttons. 33 00:02:23,850 --> 00:02:28,020 So you'll never be trying to press the lock button or the volume rocker on the right 34 00:02:28,020 --> 00:02:31,080 and accidentally mash something over on the left-hand side. 35 00:02:31,080 --> 00:02:34,140 At the top, we've just got a secondary microphone there 36 00:02:34,140 --> 00:02:38,060 for noise canceling. I don't see an IR emitter. Sometimes you find those on phones 37 00:02:38,060 --> 00:02:42,530 that are more intended for the Chinese or Indian market. 64-megapixel main shooter. 38 00:02:42,530 --> 00:02:46,750 You've actually got a total of four cameras on the back, uses a Samsung sensor. 39 00:02:46,750 --> 00:02:50,253 And then moving around to the front, okay. 40 00:02:51,889 --> 00:02:56,040 (laughs) That's pretty impressive. Andy, can you see it? 41 00:02:56,040 --> 00:02:59,330 - [Andy] I can't. - Oh, wait, well, that doesn't help. (Andy laughs) 42 00:02:59,330 --> 00:03:02,720 Okay, how about now? Can you see it? 43 00:03:02,720 --> 00:03:05,750 Where is it? Is it on the side? Is it in the middle? Where is it? 44 00:03:05,750 --> 00:03:09,290 - [Andy] I can't really see it at all. - [Linus] Okay, I gotta get the old one out here 45 00:03:09,290 --> 00:03:14,290 because that is hard to spot. 46 00:03:15,010 --> 00:03:18,600 The old one actually, you can see it defaults to having a black bar at the top, 47 00:03:18,600 --> 00:03:24,197 so that it can mask it. It's a lot harder to see it. I'm gonna have to just go ahead and fix that. 48 00:03:24,197 --> 00:03:28,830 Can you make it out? - [Jono] Oh, yeah! - [Linus] Yeah, there it is. 49 00:03:28,830 --> 00:03:31,850 But what about in my left hand? - [Andy] No, nothing. 50 00:03:31,850 --> 00:03:38,920 - Now to my eye, I can see it, but instead of looking like kind of a green spot, 51 00:03:38,920 --> 00:03:45,410 it just looks like there's a series of kinda like banding, right? 52 00:03:45,410 --> 00:03:51,710 If you've got a low bit rate video clip that you're watching and there's some colors that instead of, you know, 53 00:03:51,710 --> 00:03:57,030 blending together nicely, they have kinda these bands, it looks like a really subtle 54 00:03:57,030 --> 00:04:02,070 kind of white banding effect, just in a little rectangle up at the top of the device. 55 00:04:02,070 --> 00:04:06,110 I'm willing to bet that if I give it to you at an angle and you'll be able to see it a bit better. 56 00:04:06,110 --> 00:04:09,850 Oh, it's crazy hard to spot. I'm not expecting it to be easy. 57 00:04:09,850 --> 00:04:13,380 And then here, just for the sake of having a similar comparison shot, 58 00:04:13,380 --> 00:04:18,660 let's get the Fold out here. It's super noticeable. Thanks to Jackery for sponsoring this video, 59 00:04:18,660 --> 00:04:23,220 their Explorer 1500 Portable Power Station has enough juice to keep all your devices 60 00:04:23,220 --> 00:04:28,280 powered and connected. Its enormous 1500-watt-hour capacity 61 00:04:28,280 --> 00:04:31,680 and 1800-watt output rate allows up to seven devices 62 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:36,620 to be plugged in simultaneously. It takes only 4 hours to recharge from 0 to 80%. 63 00:04:36,620 --> 00:04:40,200 And you can get 10% off with code LinusTechTips 64 00:04:40,200 --> 00:04:44,950 at the link down below. What's interesting about this then is that given 65 00:04:44,950 --> 00:04:47,990 that while I'm enjoying fullscreen content, 66 00:04:47,990 --> 00:04:51,678 I didn't find the Fold particularly distracting in day-to-day use. 67 00:04:51,678 --> 00:04:56,510 I'm expecting this to be the kinda thing you forget about. 68 00:04:56,510 --> 00:04:59,940 At least, that is until you open up your camera app. 69 00:04:59,940 --> 00:05:04,280 So let's have a look at what the performance of this front facing camera looks like. 70 00:05:04,280 --> 00:05:08,112 Oh, image quality enhancement, 71 00:05:08,112 --> 00:05:11,640 it is advised to turn it on for better results. 72 00:05:11,640 --> 00:05:15,871 What looks like is mostly a sharpening filter. 73 00:05:15,871 --> 00:05:20,140 (camera shutters) See? There's a processing delay there. 74 00:05:20,140 --> 00:05:26,650 It says, "picture quality is improving." Their sharpening filter is clearly doing 75 00:05:26,650 --> 00:05:30,350 far more than just sharpening. 76 00:05:30,350 --> 00:05:34,250 That is markedly better than what I was expecting 77 00:05:34,250 --> 00:05:40,290 looking at the initial preview here. In the preview, it looks like I've got Vaseline smeared over the lens. 78 00:05:40,290 --> 00:05:45,512 Okay, let's see what happens if I don't turn on the processing here. 79 00:05:45,512 --> 00:05:51,030 (camera shutters) No delay, but it looks super soft. 80 00:05:51,030 --> 00:05:55,140 I gotta try more, like an apples to apples comparison. Okay, I'm gonna take the exact same picture 81 00:05:55,140 --> 00:05:59,494 and stabilize this. (camera shuttering) 82 00:06:02,674 --> 00:06:06,810 That is like a two steamboats processing delay, 83 00:06:06,810 --> 00:06:10,100 but that difference is crazy. 84 00:06:10,100 --> 00:06:14,790 My eye color looks way more natural. My shirt, instead of looking 85 00:06:14,790 --> 00:06:19,910 like it's reflecting off of something, it's true to life. 86 00:06:19,910 --> 00:06:25,780 Now, we can definitely find problems. Look at this, this orange smudge 87 00:06:25,780 --> 00:06:31,870 over on the side of the frame. Oh, that's from this light source on the lamp back there. 88 00:06:31,870 --> 00:06:35,043 Can they see that in the a cam? - [Andy] Yeah. - [Linus] Interesting. 89 00:06:35,043 --> 00:06:40,120 I'm willing to bet that we wouldn't have that same problem if we were using the rear camera. 90 00:06:40,120 --> 00:06:43,799 Let's go ahead and turn it around and I'll take a picture of myself here. 91 00:06:43,799 --> 00:06:47,050 (camera shutters) Okay. Oh yeah, nothing. 92 00:06:47,050 --> 00:06:51,860 Oh, that's stupid face I'm looking. What am I even doing? Let's compare it to last gen here. 93 00:06:51,860 --> 00:06:58,290 This button is the AI button, when you switched to the rear camera, this enhanced one. 94 00:06:58,290 --> 00:07:04,740 So it's probably using the neural processor in the Snapdragon 870 to accelerate that upscaling. 95 00:07:04,740 --> 00:07:09,740 Meanwhile, the Axon 20 5G doesn't have a similar function. 96 00:07:11,660 --> 00:07:14,670 There is simply no way about it. 97 00:07:14,670 --> 00:07:18,460 You can see that ZTE and Samsung are struggling 98 00:07:18,460 --> 00:07:22,900 with the same things here. You can see that same kinda high contrast look 99 00:07:22,900 --> 00:07:26,680 in both of these images, but the difference is that ZTE 100 00:07:28,070 --> 00:07:34,040 has figured out how to fix it and Samsung is just giving you that result 101 00:07:34,040 --> 00:07:38,480 out of the front facing camera. See? You can really see that same kinda dark eyes 102 00:07:38,480 --> 00:07:42,100 kinda haunted look, Andy? Man, that is cool. 103 00:07:42,100 --> 00:07:45,620 Okay, let's talk about some other key specs. It ships in two varieties 104 00:07:45,620 --> 00:07:52,220 with 8 gigs of RAM and 128 gigs of storage or with 12 gigs of RAM and 256 gigs of storage. 105 00:07:52,220 --> 00:07:56,490 So it's 2460 by 1080, it's got a 4200-milliamp-hour battery, 106 00:07:56,490 --> 00:08:01,210 and it supports 65-watt charging. And of course, includes a power adapter 107 00:08:01,210 --> 00:08:05,120 that is capable of delivering that. I don't believe it has any support for wireless charging, 108 00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:09,330 but it is an OLED display and has other traditionally high-end phone features 109 00:08:09,330 --> 00:08:12,830 like support for 128 hertz refresh rate, 110 00:08:12,830 --> 00:08:16,430 not to mention that it samples the actual touch interface 111 00:08:16,430 --> 00:08:21,390 at 360 hertz, so it feels extremely responsive. 112 00:08:21,390 --> 00:08:24,650 And that does pan out in practice. 113 00:08:24,650 --> 00:08:28,930 Now let's go ahead and consume some HDR content here. 114 00:08:28,930 --> 00:08:35,380 It's not blindingly bright, but definitely bright enough to have a solid HDR viewing experience. 115 00:08:35,380 --> 00:08:38,610 Gesture controls, gesture navigation by default, 116 00:08:38,610 --> 00:08:42,820 so if you're into that, then go for it. And if you're not, then you can always change it. 117 00:08:42,820 --> 00:08:45,930 Oh yeah, we should try out the in-display fingerprint reader. I mean, this is so crazy. 118 00:08:45,930 --> 00:08:50,860 This was like holy grail technology, not that long ago, under-screen camera, 119 00:08:50,860 --> 00:08:54,100 under-screen fingerprint reader. So you've got absolutely no interruption 120 00:08:54,100 --> 00:08:57,118 to your content whatsoever. Okay, let's try that out. 121 00:08:58,740 --> 00:09:04,350 Those have gotten really invisible. Let's try and unlock it with my meat mitts now. 122 00:09:04,350 --> 00:09:09,060 Oh, I missed. Right there, okay, reasonably fast. 123 00:09:09,060 --> 00:09:13,680 So you can just have an auxiliary Wi-Fi network 124 00:09:14,580 --> 00:09:17,630 and it'll default to 2.4 full range 125 00:09:17,630 --> 00:09:20,710 and 5 gigahertz for performance. 126 00:09:20,710 --> 00:09:25,370 Huh? I don't know if I've seen that before. 127 00:09:25,370 --> 00:09:28,800 I didn't notice any kind of horrible vivid mode 128 00:09:28,800 --> 00:09:32,200 out of the box and actually looks like they ship in standard mode, 129 00:09:32,200 --> 00:09:38,290 which is really nice to see. Screen refresh rate, yeah, let's switch between 60, 120. 130 00:09:38,290 --> 00:09:43,290 Actually, it looks like it's in 60 right now, 131 00:09:43,470 --> 00:09:49,300 browsing the menu. So if you want maximum smoothness, it looks like you're gonna wanna turn on 120 hertz manually. 132 00:09:49,300 --> 00:09:52,960 I kinda want us to try the selfie camera outside. Can I just go do that and come back real quick? 133 00:09:52,960 --> 00:09:57,680 - [Andy] Sure. - All right, I'm gonna do that. Now on the Fold 3, we noticed a thing 134 00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:03,690 where if there was strong backlighting on the subject, we could see this kind of a rainbow effect. 135 00:10:03,690 --> 00:10:07,580 So maybe if we have something like a white car behind me, 136 00:10:07,580 --> 00:10:09,080 we'll have problems with that. 137 00:10:11,039 --> 00:10:14,370 Oh, there's kind of like a haze around it. 138 00:10:14,370 --> 00:10:20,430 Yeah, that's interesting. It's not to nearly the same degree that we saw with the Fold 3 though. 139 00:10:20,430 --> 00:10:26,000 Let's try taking some pictures here. I'm gonna turn on the processing in our parking lot here. 140 00:10:26,000 --> 00:10:29,410 So you can see this video is definitely on process. Wow, it is bright today. 141 00:10:30,730 --> 00:10:34,410 How does someone manage to close their eyes when they are the one taking the picture? 142 00:10:34,410 --> 00:10:40,290 Okay, but seriously, it was just really bright out. The haze goes away to a very significant degree. 143 00:10:40,290 --> 00:10:44,580 It's like, it's not amazing, but it's serviceable. 144 00:10:44,580 --> 00:10:47,690 And when you consider that you can watch fullscreen content 145 00:10:47,690 --> 00:10:52,870 with absolutely no interruption whatsoever. That is a compelling selling point. 146 00:10:52,870 --> 00:10:56,450 It's freaking awesome. Like, look at this. Even when there's like a bright light, 147 00:10:56,450 --> 00:11:02,470 right where you would notice it, it is way better than the one on the Fold. 148 00:11:02,470 --> 00:11:07,160 Look, I vowed to wait out the notch, all right? 149 00:11:07,160 --> 00:11:13,073 I won. I lasted. Note 9 daily driver, no notch. 150 00:11:13,930 --> 00:11:18,930 I now have multiple, multiple devices to choose from 151 00:11:19,890 --> 00:11:25,660 that I don't have to put up with that ridiculous bullet wound in my screen. 152 00:11:25,660 --> 00:11:30,630 This is fantastic. It's a good time to be a Linus. 153 00:11:30,630 --> 00:11:34,653 I would just watch everything in like widescreen like this, for sure, just cause I can. 154 00:11:36,940 --> 00:11:41,350 I mean, I think it's fair to say, ZTE is a full generation ahead of Samsung on this. 155 00:11:41,350 --> 00:11:44,880 And Lord only knows where Apple is on this technology. We don't know yet. 156 00:11:44,880 --> 00:11:48,140 Did this thing ship with AnTuTu on it? AnTuTu Benchmark. 157 00:11:48,140 --> 00:11:53,080 For those of you wondering, the Snapdragon 870 is basically an 865, but newer. 158 00:11:53,080 --> 00:11:56,670 Here, we'll do a quick Geekbench benchmark. Okay, check this out. 159 00:11:56,670 --> 00:12:00,340 982 single core, 3157 multi-core 160 00:12:00,340 --> 00:12:03,790 that should give you guys some idea of where the Snapdragon 870 falls 161 00:12:03,790 --> 00:12:07,780 compared to the 865 or the 865+. Now I don't wanna pretend 162 00:12:07,780 --> 00:12:12,560 that this is all sunshine and rainbows. Something that I noticed on our review unit, 163 00:12:12,560 --> 00:12:17,190 which tends to be a handpicked one, not to say that it is better, 164 00:12:17,190 --> 00:12:21,940 but it's typically not defective is that I've already got some separation 165 00:12:21,940 --> 00:12:26,320 between the back of the housing and the front. 166 00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:31,913 Maybe that was when I was putting that case on or something. Let me just see if it'll click back into place here. 167 00:12:33,518 --> 00:12:38,470 Oh, there it goes. - [Film Crew Member] There we go. - I guess that's pretty much it. So Riley, go ahead and shoot TechLinked 168 00:12:38,470 --> 00:12:42,250 and don't forget to subscribe and subscribe to TechLinked, it's a good show.