The ZTE Axon 9, and Axon 9 Pro are reportedly going to be announced at IFA next week, when the trade show kicks off in Berlin. And now ZTE has begun teasing the new devices. Though these teasers were shared on Weibo – China’s version of Twitter – and the teasers are also in Chinese, it does show both devices. Surprisingly, only one has a notch. The ZTE Axon 9 Pro is shown in a teaser with a notch. And it’s a longer notch like what you’d find on the iPhone X. Which may not be all that surprising to many people.
ZTE’s Axon lineup hasn’t seen a new flagship model in about two years now. The last model was the Axon 7 which was a pretty popular device for ZTE, even in the US. It sported a great build, with a QHD AMOLED display and stereo speakers, at a relatively low price. Now ZTE is looking to up the ante a bit with the Axon 9. It’s rumored to sport the Snapdragon 845 chipset, 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The typical specs you’d expect to see in 2018. ZTE has also cleaned out its Android skin, and made it closer to stock Android, which should make this phone fly on those internals.
IFA is the last big tech trade show of the year. It’s where many companies announce their flagships that they want to sell for the holiday season. So the majority of these phones will go on sale in September or early October – depending on the market. It used to be headlined by the Galaxy Note, but now that Samsung has started announcing the Galaxy Note earlier in August (to beat the iPhone launch), it has allowed other smartphones to take the spotlight, which includes ZTE. Both the Axon 9 and Axon 9 Pro should be announced at IFA next week.