The Axon 30 with Under Display Camera: Hands-on Mini-Review

Conclusion & End Remarks

The Axon 30 is an interesting device, both in terms of specifications and also in terms of product category. First and foremost, I had to keep reminding myself that this is a $499 phone, and that’s also a quite important aspect of the device for US readers who usually have extremely little options in that price segment.

Design wise, it’s a relatively generic phone that’s more defined by its size than anything else; with a 6.92” display and 77.8mm body with, it’s a large footprint phone even though it manages to keep things quite reasonable at 189g. Build quality is decent but generally below that of the smaller, higher-end Axon 30 Ultra – which is actually not much of a surprise.

Performance of the phone is great, thanks to the still very competent Snapdragon 870 chip. Peak performance isn’t at S888 levels, however this chip is more power efficient and manages to keep the device cooler than the Axon 30 Ultra.

The defining characteristic of the device is the under-display camera and the screen by Visionox which enables it. There are two large conclusions to be made here:

Firstly, the visual implementation of the UDC is amongst the best we’ve seen so far. While not perfect, the phone manages to hide its under-display camera extremely well. If ZTE manages to even out the brightness differences between the UDC area and the regular panel when viewing the phone head-on, I would say that essentially, you’d be hard pressed to see it anymore.

From a camera quality perspective, I had low expectations, but I was actually still surprised at what ZTE managed to achieve thanks to software processing. Essentially, the camera acts as a 4MP unit, which is quite low res, so you should not really expect great details. Dynamic range and textures are also quite below the norm, however compared to the raw output of the camera, you can’t help but respect the image processing that the phone is achieving.

Overall, if you’re the kind that looks to hide away the front camera to achieve the bezel-less look, I think the Axon 30 is a success. If you still value camera quality – we’re not quite there yet.

The second conclusion of the UDC is related to the display panel itself. It’s the first time we’ve tested a Visionox panel, so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I had rather low expectations. In terms of brightness, the panel is extremely competitive, however that’s about it when it comes to the positives. The panel differs quite a lot from the usual OLED contenders – when looking at it from extreme angles you can see the polariser shimmering in viridescent colours, something I haven’t seen in many years. The pixel layout, while not exactly visible to the eye, also does feel somewhat less sharp than the regular diamond pentile we’ve gotten used to from Samsung.

One could live with the aforementioned aspects; however, the large deal-breaker is the unsatisfactory power efficiency of the panel. At 423nits brightness, the phone uses 2.87W of power, which is significantly worse than Samsung Display OLED panels (S20U – 2.4W, S21U, 1.8W) Much like the many phones that got ruined by inefficient displays in the past, it also looks like the Axon 30 is also suffering from a larger battery life hit due to the display.

Given the choice of a UDC with an inefficient screen, or a hole-punch with an efficient screen, I’d always choose the latter.

Overall, I think the Axon 30 is an interesting phone, but I can’t help feel it’s still more of an immature technology showcase rather than a refined product. I think the Ultra sibling is still a much better phone, but at least ZTE is pricing the Axon 30 at a quite reasonable level.