ZTE’s entry into the smartphone market has so far been focused on the mid-range sector. However, this sector of the market has been constantly dominated by bigger Chinese names like Xiaomi and Huawei, leaving ZTE lost in the shuffle. For ZTE’s next attempt, they’ve forgo the mid-range sector, leaving their comfort zone and opting to duke it out with the big boys in the premium category. The result of this attempt is the ZTE Axon Elite.

Solid Gold

Continuing the trend of Chinese phones looking identical to other phones in the market, the ZTE Axon Elite looks suspiciously almost identical to the HTC One M9+. The unique part of this phone’s design is the triangular patterns spotted at the top and the bottom of the phone, which houses the speakers. Other unique parts of the phone is the stitching pattern and a sunken notch for the fingerprint sensor. Other than that, it is par for the course for premium smartphones, with a solid metal unibody.

Dragon’s Roar

For the components part of the device, the Axon Elite comes with a Snapdragon 810 processor and 3GB of RAM. For the UI, it runs on Android 5.0 with a custom skin on top of it. That said, the custom skin really doesn’t do any drastic modifications to the Android UI, making it look like it is running on a stock Android setup.

I See Where This Is Going

Thus far, my experiences with the Axon has been smooth. The device is responsive, it handles many of my apps well, and no weird or random glitches have popped up so far. One thing that I do note is that the phone does generate noticeable amounts of heat during benchmarking sessions. Seeing as the Axon runs on a Snapdragon 810, I have a feeling that this would be an issue in the near future. For now though, the Axon seems to be a phone that may yet put ZTE on the map as a serious contender.

Byline: Sia Zhen Ning