ZTE has released quite a few compelling smartphone in the last year or so. The company’s Blade, Nubia and Axon devices are quite popular all over the world, even though some of them have very limited availability, like Nubia for example, which is available only in China. That being said, the company’s Axon devices have been quite popular last year, and the company did release quite a few of them. ZTE has introduced a number of different Axon models, ranging from the very compact Axon Mini, all the way to Axon Elite and Pro, and the company has even released an Axon-branded smartwatch.
That being said, a mysterious ‘ZTE A2017’ handset surfaced on GFXBench back in March, and the listing revealed a high-end spec sheet for this smartphone. We presumed this is the upcoming Axon flagship for 2016, and it seems like we were right, the device has now surfaced once again, but this time around it popped up on TENAA (China’s equivalent to the FCC), which means it got certified in China. This listing revealed not only the device’s specs, but its design as well, and it definitely looks like an Axon phone. The ZTE A2017 features a 5.5-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) OLED display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage (expandable up to 128GB via a microSD card). The device is fueled by a quad-core SoC running at 2GHz, which essentially means we’re looking at the Snapdragon 820 here. The 20-megapixel camera is placed on the back of this smartphone, and an 8-megapixel snapper can be found up front. Andriod 6.0.1 Marshmallow comes pre-installed here, and on top of it, you’ll be able to find ZTE’s very own custom UI. The 3,140mAh battery has also been listed on TENAA, and this is a non-removable unit by the way. The new Axon flagship will be available in Gold color variant only, just like its predecessors, and it will measure 154 x 77 x 9.8mm, and weight 175 grams.
As far as the design is concerned, the new Axon device resembles its predecessors quite a bit, though it seems like its bezels will be considerably thinner this time around. Both the power / lock and volume rocker buttons are placed on the right-hand side of this smartphone, and as you can see, the earpiece / speaker design is back. The fingerprint scanner will be placed on the back of this device, right below the camera and LED sensors. We still don’t know when will ZTE introduce this phone, but considering it just got certified by TENAA, it might be announced in the coming weeks.
