[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] joesee:
OK, so this is interesting. I am so tired of when it comes time for me to buy a phone that I only have the time in the store or reading reviews to decide what I want to buy. Now that I'm older and can afford the hit on my credit card, I went out and bought both the Honor 8 and Axon 7 to have side by side for a week to see what I'd like more. I'll return the one I don't like.

Background - I travel for a living.. usually 4-6 hops (flights) a week. Always on the go. My biggest frustrations are: bad sound quality, bad camera quality and bad performance. Up until early last year I always had those problems. The LG V10 came out and solved all that. Absolutely amazing camera (see below), unbelievable sound quality (again see below) and performance was the best you could get (at that time).

Sound - I'm using my LG V10 as a benchmark to compare. I carry two sets of headphones. Westone W4r's (4 driver IEM's) and a pair of B&O H6 over ears. As everyone knows, the V10 has two DACs. One is the SOC DAC (Snapdragon 808) that's just average. Then there's the ESS DAC (that you can switch on the fly). But one real neat feature that no phone has ever had (other than the V20) is gain adjustment. Actual hardware gain. Meaning, if you use a short pigtail (male 3.5mm to female 3.5mm) and plug that in first, then plug your headphones in, you get a significant boost in gain to support higher impedance headphones. That being said, I will be using only the ESS DAC audio out for this section. The Honor 8 does a respectable job. I'm impressed with the volume, but nowhere near the high impedance mode of the V10. I would need to always carry my Fiio E6 headphone amp for traveling in flight. The ZTE Axon 7 seemed to have a lot of crosstalk.. meaning the sound stage seemed narrow. The volume output as nominal, but nothing to write home about. Again, I'd have to carry the Fiio E6. If you ask me why I don't talk about equalization or bass/treble response of the phones, is because this is subjective. Anyone can install an app like Neutron, PowerAmp or even a root app like Viper4Android to modify that. My last comment will be on the noise floor. It's breathtakingly low on the ESS of the V10. It's very low on the Honor 8, and it's a little higher with the AKG DAC on the Axon 7. Particularly with high dynamic tracks coming from artists like Orbital, Bob Moses, Autchre and the likes. I just wasn't as impressed with the noise floor as I was on the V10. Most reviews like you'll see in gsmarena state what I just said with numbers, and it shows.

Camera - There's simply nothing I can complain about on the V10. All cameras were tested hand held in auto mode (because.. 90% of the time you take these photos while you're moving, not with a 4' tripod and a chair to capture the perfect moment). I sit at my desk and took a photo across a dim lit room of my wife's desk chair. You can see the stitching in the leather edges. Camera did a great job of keeping noise to a minimum. With the Honor 8, the stitching is nearly gone. The ZTE, it's not even visible. In daylight pictures, the Honor 8 rivals the V10's camera as far as sharpness goes. The ZTE did an ok job as well, and sharpness was right up there. Maybe a touch more crisp. Color reproduction, the V10 seems dull and I find myself using Adobe Photoshop Express in Android correcting this. I never had an issue on the Honor 8. The ZTE, things were actually too vivid and over saturated. Response time (for shutter) is only average for the V10. The Honor 8 was a bit more speedy, and the ZTE was VERY quick. Night shots turned that around 180 degrees. The V10 takes AMAZING PHOTOS at night. (This is probably why they put the same sensor in the LG G5). It's quick to focus and just astounding in the detail it can pick up. The Honor 8 was more of an 'average' smartphone experience when it comes to night shot shutter speeds. The ZTE always had problems focusing on whatever you'd select. Therefore, the time to take a photo was much longer with this phone.

Performance - No one actually ever says anything about the day to day use of your phone. How often they have to clear their apps, how long they can go before things start bogging down, or for guys like me that juggle a lot of apps while on the go, while always checking for my bulging wallet that carries my spare battery for my V10. I usually have these apps open on a normal travel day: Hangouts, Delta, IHG, National Car, Google Keep, Google Maps (With location on, wifi off), music player (typically stock - I used to use Shuttle+, but it has issues with the latest update) (with Bluetooth on - to connect to my rental), Viper4Android, Chrome with 4-10 tabs open, the stock Camera and mobile hotspot (with the limit turned off so it's always on - if you turn the beacon feature off so the SSID is hidden, the power draw while it stays on is negligible when you consider the fact that as soon as you open your laptop it connects instantly). Those are my go to apps and the ones I switch back and forth to hundreds of times per day. With the V10, there are times when the navigation buttons literally get 'stuck' on the screen and I have to do this shuffle of power cycling the screen and fingerprint scans before the phone comes to life, which ultimately forces me to do a battery pull. The Honor 8 was snappy. Never had those issues at all in the week I had it. In fact, it seemed like app switching was just as fast as any other flagship you'd expect. If you don't do any gaming (and I don't) then the GPU 'rating' on Antutu and any other benchmark means absolutely nothing to this phone. On the ZTE, everything was stellar. Simply an unbeatable combination of top notch cpu performance and gpu (no lag with the gui - not even a stutter that you could visually see). I've done two factory resets with the V10 and the facts remain.. if I put those core apps back on and use them, I eventually have these problems again in a matter of days.

Battery Life - With the V10, I use my phone a lot. Wifi is always off, GPS always on, BT always on, Screen usually around 50-75% and I only clear my apps 1-2 times per day. With the same core apps installed, my V10 gets me through about 6 hours before it's dead. I usually charge 2-3 times per day. Once a week I'll swap with the battery in my wallet to keep both of them equally charged. With the Honor 8 I was blown away by the ability of this phone's multitasking, background battery drain and how well it made it. With the ZTE I was also impressed, but it sure wasn't twice the battery life than the Honor 8. I tell you what, I looked like a damn fool carrying around all three phones always doing the same thing on all three, but honestly, it's the only way to tell. With that being said, the V10 and it's 3,000mah battery lasted me 6 hours, the Honor 8's 3000mah battery was just shy of 8 hours (how ironic) and the ZTE's 3250mah lasted me about 9 hours.

With ALL this being said, you can clearly see why I'm trying to upgrade. Most of you would probably say "well if you like your V10 so much, why don't you just go get a V20??".... and you'd be right. But I HATE the size of the V10. Way too big for a phone and I have large hands (I can palm a basketball). I LOVE the size of the Honor 8. It's all about personal preference. I'm also being forced to upgrade because the Snapdragon 808 in the V10 can't keep up with me anymore.

Pricing - Right now you can buy a LG V10 around $250 as a benchmark. As of this posting, Best Buy has the Honor 8 on sale for $299, which is $100 off the normal price. Plus, they give you a case for free made direct by Huawei, and the case is actually very nice because you can still see the beautiful blue back and buttons work great. The ZTE Axon 7 is on sale at Fry's Electronics for $349 which is $50 off the normal asking price of $399. The LG V20 is $749 at places that even stock the phone, and it's so ridiculously priced that I can't justify it. I am honestly torn and have no idea what I should do. I spent all this time writing this post and I just get more frustrated each time. I eventually returned both the Honor 8 and ZTE thinking that I'd give the Oneplus 3T a shot, but after all the horrible reviews of their customer service and how they've been out of stock for over a month now, I've completely written them off. It's not a flagship killer if you can't even buy the damn thing. Why can't they make a phone with the same or better camera than the V10 (particularly in low light performance), as good or better audio gain as the V10's high impedance mode (because seriously, why limit the voltage out so much????), and have great performance in line with flagships? There is always a catch - if you look hard enough. My opinion the Achilles heel for the V10 is performance, the Honor 8 is volume gain and the ZTE's is low light camera performance. You need to decide what you can live without, aside from the physical dimensions.

My review here didn't help me, but I'm hoping it helps you. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I'll do my best.