 A little over two months ago, ZTE sponsored my trip to Beijing, China to attend the launch party for the Axon 7. Some stuff about their new flagship impressed me, with the hands-on feel of the device and the jaw-dropping specs relative to the price being among them, but other things didn't. The speakers in my engineering sample couldn't go full volume without significant distortion, and the camera was a generation or two behind other top-tier flagships, making it tough to call it a legitimate flagship killer, regardless of the price. But since that time, the software has been tweaked, the hardware has even been tweaked, and perhaps, just perhaps, my own opinion has been tweaked. Let's see by just how much. TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet. To try TunnelBear for free, check out the link in the video description. So I feel like I have a responsibility to open with this. The Axon 7 is not going to win every battle today, but it's $400 carrier unlocked with no contracts or other obligations attached to it, with almost every other device that I'm going to compare it against coming in at $300 to $400 more than that for a 64-gig variant, which is the Axon 7's base model. So then, with that aside, like pretty much every other flagship, it packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU, 4 gigs of LPDDR4 RAM, and an Adreno 530 GPU. The 3250 mAh battery is decidedly average given its 5.5-inch screen size, but Quick Charge 3.0 over a Type-C USB port is very welcome, as is the satisfying tactile lock and volume rocker button arrangement, noise-canceling microphone, and an elongated SIM tray that can hold either a second SIM or a microSD card for additional storage. None of the obvious cost-cutting measures are here, really. The outer chassis is an all-aluminum affair that makes wireless charging impossible, but looks and feels good, albeit more slippery than I'd like, in the hand. NFC and dual-band AC wireless are accounted for, and the rear groove under the 20-megapixel rear camera and dual-LED flash is a fingerprint reader that, while not in my preferred position on the front of the phone where I can reach it lying flat on a desk, is lightening fast and very accurate. Around front, under the aggressively noise-reduced 8-megapixel selfie camera, is the meat and potatoes of the Axon 7's standout features, including one that wasn't present when they gave me a pre-production device 10 weeks ago. The 5.5-inch screen is a fantastic-looking Corning Gorilla Glass 4 topped 2560 x 1440 AMOLED that looks awesome from any angle, in any conditions, and may or may not contribute to the outstanding battery life that I experienced using this device as a daily driver, which I'll discuss a little bit more later. It's flanked on both sides, then, by some of the loudest and best-positioned cell phone speakers that I have ever encountered. The last thing here, then, something that took me a couple of days to get used to, then I absolutely loved, is the capacitive buttons that replaced the on-screen buttons in the early sample. I mean, yes, yes, capacitive buttons have definitely been done before, but what makes these ones better than others is actually something quite subtle. Look what happens with another capacitive button-equipped smartphone. There's almost nowhere to hold it in landscape, and others are even worse. ZTE gets around this, maybe accidentally, because they were trying to shoehorn the buttons in in the last month of product development, by fitting them into a slimmer-than-usual strip that makes the chin bar a perfect size for comfortable typing, in spite of that speaker placement, and by squeezing them in towards the middle of the phone, making accidental button presses much less likely while typing and holding the phone in landscape mode. It's a minor tweak, but it makes a huge difference in the day-to-day use. Well done. On that note, it's been a long time since I've rocked a 1M7 or a 1M8, and it's easy to forget how much you miss nice, loud, front-facing speakers. Sitting on a desk next to me playing music, it actually doesn't make much of a difference, but when watching video, the Axon 7 holds its own against pretty much anything as a content consumption device. I'm a little disappointed that the last few volume levels are basically the same when listening to music, due to some dynamic range-reducing tricks that help with distortion, but at least they solved the distortion problem in some way. As for headphones, ZTE makes a lot of claims about the phenomenal 3.5mm output of the Axon 7, but I guess the S7 must be pretty good as well, since aside from being able to push volume levels further past comfortable, I really couldn't hear the difference, even with a pair of Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro 240 Ohm headphones. Moving on then, this is my first experience with my favorite, ZTE's Android skin, so I've got some comments on that. Overall, I give it a B+. There's good stuff, like right-hand left-handed modes for the nav buttons, the ability to uninstall apps directly from the home screen, the default setting configurator for PC USB connections, so I don't need to be prompted every time, and the stellar default power management profile that managed to make the battery feel about 20% bigger in day-to-day use without affecting the way the device worked for me. And then there's mediocre stuff, like the functional but slow auto-call gesture and the clunky folder creation system for the home screen, followed by some stuff that I would like to see addressed. The stock launcher is limited to a 4x4 grid size on the home screen. Please let me put more stuff on here, thanks. The lock screen doesn't show notification details until you press a little bell way up in the top left corner, something that isn't more secure, I'm not hiding my notification details, it's just more inconvenient because it's another button to press. Notification scrolling and landscape is kind of derp sometimes, and then finally there's no fast launch camera gesture or configurable shortcuts at all for that matter. I don't care what the gesture is, wiggle, double press, long press, let me do something that doesn't require me to reach the lock screen and then press something in order to launch the camera, which I guess leads us pretty well into the camera. Other reviewers are giving pretty mixed reports here, and I think there are a few reasons for that. The specs are great, a 20 megapixel sensor behind F1.8 sapphire glass with optical image stabilization, 4K video capture, etc. etc. And still pictures under certain conditions are actually competitive with the Galaxy S7, I mean it is easy to get some really nice comparative pictures out of this thing, especially with the manual mode fine tuning. They just have some work to do when it comes to clear capture of moving subjects. These shots are from the Galaxy S7 and the Axon 7 in auto mode in the same lighting conditions. One of them is somewhat usable in a this is kind of crappy looking but at least I captured the moment kind of way. And the other one is just kind of crappy looking. Not ideal if you're an avid shutter bug and most of your subjects, oh I don't know say kids and pets, are fast moving objects. Which leads us then I guess to the bottom line. In a world where ZTE was the only Chinese brand targeting a similar experience at half the price of the Samsungs, HTCs, and Apples of the world, my conclusion would be very simple. Sure it lacks water resistance, which is a key feature for me, but it carries a two year warranty, and it's an unbelievable piece of hardware for the price, as long as you're willing to compromise on the camera a little. What makes things more complicated is the existence of the OnePlus 3. So what will be up to you then? Slimmer sexier form factor with more polished software and from my experience more usable camera, or higher resolution, better screen, bigger sound, SD expansion, and phenomenal out of the box battery management. That's not an easy decision for me, and I suspect it won't be for you either, so I wish you the best of luck. Gee Linus, what was that great looking vinyl skin you had on the Axon 7 and some of the B-roll? Great question, you must be new. It's a dbrand skin, dbrand is your source for awesome vinyl skins. They're available for laptops, phones, tablets, consoles, game controllers, and more. The and more is like not a lot more, that's like most of what they do. And they use high quality authentic true textured 3M vinyl on every product. They feature unrivaled precision, great guides for how to put them on, and most importantly for people like me who have kind of a, you know, style flare, you know, we like to play around with different color combinations and see how great or how horribly they go together. Best thing is the dbrand configurator, you head over to the site, that's dbrand.com, we've got it linked in the video description, and you just try out different skins and color combinations, you turn your device around, you look at what it's going to look like, and boom, they ship worldwide, it's affordable, and once it's applied, it doesn't come off until you want it to, and when it does, it doesn't leave any residue, and it protects your phone from accidental dings and scratches while looking great, or terrible, the choice is yours. So check them out at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching guys, if this video sucked, you know what to do, but if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit that like button, or check out the link to where to buy the Axon 7 in the video description. Also linked in the description is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one in our community forum, which you should totally join. Now that you're done doing all that stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next, click that little button in the top right corner to check out our latest video over on channel Superfun.