ZTE has announced its latest smartphone in the Axon M. It’s not quite a foldable display smartphone like many had expected, and the leaks had pointed too. It actually looks more like two 5.2-inch smartphones that were connected together. While it is essentially two 5.2-inch displays, the Axon M, when folded out, brings you a 6.75-inch display in a pretty pocketable form-factor. It’s a full HD display, meaning it sports a 1920×1080 resolution display and it is using a LCD panel instead of an OLED or IPS. Inside, you’ll find the Snapdragon 821 with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. There is a micro SD card slot available for expanding storage. ZTE has a 3180mAh battery inside, which does support Quick Charge 3.0. Lastly, it sports Android 7.1.2 Nougat, and currently there is no word on if it’ll get Android Oreo, but it likely will.
ZTE is touting a few different modes that you can use with the Axon M. Which includes dual mode, extended mode, mirror mode and traditional. With Dual Mode, you’ll can use one screen for watching a video, and the other for browsing through Twitter, or even ordering pizza. Extended Mode allows you to use that full 6.75-inch full HD display for a single app. Which gives you more space to watch YouTube. Mirror Mode will allow the user to have the same thing play on both screens, so you can set it up in “tent mode” and have your friends watching a video on one side, and you watch the same video on the other. And of course traditional mode allows you to do everything you would normally on a smartphone, with the Axon M’s 5.2-inch display.
When it comes to the cameras, ZTE has kept the Axon M to just one rear-facing camera, like the new Pixels from Google. There is a 20-megapixel camera on the back, which sports a f/1.8 aperture, with phase detection autofocus and dual image stabilization for both photos and video. Interestingly enough, there is no front-facing camera. The idea here is that ZTE believes you should just flip the phone and use that 20-megapixel rear-facing shooter, since it will be located above the second display. So instead of putting in a mediocre (compared to the rear sensor) camera on the front, you can use the rear camera and still see the viewfinder. This camera does record in 4K at 30fps. If you want slow-motion, you have to drop down to 720p which is available at both 120 and 240fps. There is a USB-C port for charging, and a headphone jack as well.
According to ZTE, the Axon M will be available “in the next month” at AT&T. The Axon M will be exclusive to AT&T in the US, and there was no mention of it going anywhere besides the US at this point. It’ll be available for on AT&T Next for $24.17 per month for 30 months, which works out to about $725.
