yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] jellmoo:
From my limited experience with the device (about 1 week, coming from a Galaxy S7 edge).

1) Sounds has been great for me. Both the speakers and headphone sound are louder and clearer that the S7 edge.

2) Screen is really, really good. Sunlight visibility may be a smidge less than the S7 edge, but I like the way the colours pop a lot more on the A7.

3) Not a big photog to be honest. S7 edge had the better camera, for sure. The A7 camera seems pretty good in good lightning, and pretty bad in low lighting.

4) Definitely not backlit, but I honestly have no issue with them. Your muscle memory kicks in pretty much straight away.

5) Definitely not bloated (especially if you come from Touchwiz). Haven't noticed any large scale bugs yet, but need more time.

6) It could be better. I'd say it's accurate about 80% of the time. It seems to work best with a double tap for me.

7) Can't really compare to those devices, but it's about on par with the S7 edge.

8) Gaming has been as good or better than the S7 edge for me (mine is the Exynos variant though).

9) Hard to say since I turn off most notifications. SMS and Slack are my primaries, and they seem to work fine.

10) WiFi has been fine. Haven't tested GPS much. LTE is definitely weak though. I seem to hover around 2-3 bars most of the time. My house, which for whatever reason is a weak spot for my carrier, poses a particular problem.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] Cyrus D.:
1- The sound output from headphones is perfectly fine, as good as you can expect from a phone really. The speakers didn't come close to living up to the hype and reviews if you ask me. The only problem with sound is that you'd have to use their stock music app for the Hi-Fi DAC to work, and that app is beyond trash. Super laggy, super buggy, with less than bare-bones functionality. That and the phone apparently only outputs 16 bit sound despite having a 32 bit DAC.

2- Almost no phone is visible in direct sunlight, this phone's brightness is absolutely fine and very bright. Only phones like the Galaxy S7 with super contrast modes can be more visible.

3- The Camera is indeed utterly useless in low light, but in good lighting conditions is okay-ish. It's not in the same league as expensive flagship phone cameras, this is where they really cut costs (aside from the software).

4- Yes, they are not back lit, and yes it's easy to get used to, but super annoying in the dark.

5- The software is abysmal, by far the worst I've ever used. The empty promises and months of not delivering make me completely regret my purchase. If I was within the return period I'd refund the phone and get a OP3T.

6- The fingerprint sensor is very fast and works 95%+ of the time for me. Anyone who's having issues likely didn't register their finger prints from all angles as the phone explicitly tells you to do in its instructions.

7- There's nothing about multi-tasking that has annoyed me yet aside from the occasional bug where a program just closes, but I don't do side by side comparisons so I don't know if it's outperformed by other SD820 phones.

8- I haven't gamed all that much on it, but its gaming performance should be pretty much the same as any other SD820/1440p phone, or slightly better than some of the earlier SD820 phones. I've ran emulated PSP games at 1440p with all settings maxed out without frame drops. If you want a 1080p phone for better performance buy a OP3T.

9- I've had no issues with notifications aside from the lock screen being garbage (even if you disable the stupid bell, which took them forever to update to allow).

10- It's an aluminium unibody phone, of course it's not going to have the same reception as a glass or plastic phone. In my experience it's only slightly worse and hasn't affected me much.

Most your concerns are nothing to worry about, it's the software/non-existent support that would make me turn around, run away, and never look back.

No, this is actually a major problem with pentile. The resolution has to be rendered as normal, they have no magical trick that renders based on subpixels, it's per "pixel", so all these pseudo-1440p phones actually are rendering the software at 1440p if set to full resolution.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] puremind:
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I don't think it is accurate.

IPS 1440P screen has 11M lighting elements whereas

Pentile 1440p oled only has 7.3M lighting elements - only marginally more than the 6,220,800 Lighting Elements of 1080p IPS LCD display

I bought the phone just before B08 came out so I really wasn't troubled by the software at all, especially since I always install HTC Blinkfeed launcher from HTC, which replaces clock, weather and gallery.

I had no trouble using the HiFi DAC on other apps so far, which app didn't work for you?
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] Cyrus D.:
It's correct that pentile has 1/3rd less subpixels than a standard RGB array. "1080p" on an AMOLED would have the same number of subpixels as a real 720p panel. But that wouldn't matter for software, it's still coded per pseudo-pixel as far as I know. Resolution output isn't coded by subpixels.

As for the DAC, every program I've tried sounds different than the stock music player. That includes PowerAmp's latest alpha (called a beta in the app store). The difference is most apparent in instruments, they sound noticeably sharper on the stock music player. I don't know for sure if this is some sort of equalizer or software tricks in the stock player that can't be disabled (the stock player has squat for options) or if it's indeed due to the DAC.

As for the the claims it outputs only 16 bit sound, I haven't ever found out exactly what that means. Whether it's just the stock music app that is limiting it, or if it's coded in the ROM to work like that.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] puremind:
Could you try MX Player?

For pentile displays there is a formula that calculates the subpixel intensities for each subpixel based on the desired "theoretical" pixels, so there are fewer operations being computed. Those operations are only marginally more complex than on an RGB display so the added complexity is offset by the much lower number of operations being conducted. From experience with calculation engines, it is usually more efficient to reduce the number of operations than to reduce the complexity of computations in terms of processing time.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] tolymatev:
Camera is the only major con for me.

The buttons on the bottom of the screen are ****ty too. Cant see them at night but i can deal with that.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] Cyrus D.:
Well I tried to use it and compare the same song side by side to PowerAmp and the stock music player and I couldn't do it because that software is rage inducing. It's not designed at all to be a music player, so even if it could use the Hi-Fi DAC I wouldn't use it.

And that's interesting, I've looked into it and never found any info or article about the resolution output being optimized for pentile displays. Would you happen to have a link so I can read more about it?
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] puremind:
Have you tried MX player? Did you find a difference? What is your go-to app? Which software version do you use? Have you made sure the dolby module was activated when comparing? It could be some apps somehow switch it off and you have to manually switch it on again.

If you don't compute values for each subpixel you have no means of producing the right colors on each theoretical pixel, this is true for both RGB and Pentile OLED. From a colorimetry standpoint there is no other way to control intensity and saturations, you have to drive each subpixel individuallly.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] Cyrus D.:
Yes, MX Player was what I was describing. It was too annoying for me to even properly conduct tests and it was lagging like the stock player. So I said screw it, even if it could use the Hi-Fi DAC, I wouldn't use that program. My favourite music app is PowerAmp, I have the latest alpha which is very old. I had Dolby Atmos disabled at all times, is it necessary to use the Hi-Fi DAC?

Yeah I don't know what I was thinking. I thought it was poorly programmed to just sloppily treat each pentile diamond as a pixel, meaning there would be overlap in the rendering. But just thinking about it for a second, it would make no sense to do that and it wouldn't work without other adjustments, it wouldn't even save any time. For whatever reason I had heard (I don't remember the source) that pentile devices aren't optimally programmed, but again, that would make no sense. Thanks for correcting me.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] puremind:
I am not sure but you could just try to activate dolby and use a flat custom profile instead of the presets if you don't like them. It should sound the same through any app.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] Cyrus D.:
Well I just did a few tests. First off, Dolby Atmos can't even be enabled if PowerAmp is open and set to use whatever the default setting is, Atmos just won't turn on. If PowerAmp is set to 24 bit mode which it recognizes as a generic "Snapdragon 24-bit PCM" in the settings, then Atmos can turn on, and that's the setting I always had on. I have no idea if it's actually using the 24 bit DAC built into the Snapdragon 820 SoC, or if it's actually using the Hi-Fi DAC and it's just pulling the name based on the SoC.

With that said I just tested them back to back with Atmos on, and the result is the same as before, the stock music player makes instruments sound sharper. It's also very hard to compare because the volume levels between the two apps are different no matter what I do. With default settings all other music apps are way louder than PowerAmp, with Direct Volume control enabled PowerAmp becomes louder than all other apps. One thing is universal with my Beyerdynamic DT 990 headphones though, enabling Atmos dramatically drops the volume. Different headphones in different apps seem to give different results, some become actually louder.

Regardless, I'm positive instruments sound sharper and more separated in the stock music player, with and without Atmos enabled. This is again with Beyerdynamic DT 990 (250 Ohm) headphones that I'm using for testing, and with the headphones I usually use on my phone, Philips Fidelio L1s.

So either there's some software trickery going on in the stock player (equalizer settings that can't be accessed or changed?), or PowerAmp can't use the Hi-Fi DAC because I'm sure they're giving different results. I also made sure anything in PowerAmp that could affect sound output, such as the equalizer and noise shaping, are disabled.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] LTE-X:
Main cons I found were the sound, camera and the reception. The headphone output is significantly better on my V10 while the speakers are the axon is best in the market. Reception-wise, this is an unlocked phone so it might not fully support all the feature the carrier has to offer but the signal drops are common while using this phone. Camera, in my opinion, is not the best. The camera doesn't seem to know which object to focus on so I have to constantly use manual focus. The color reproduction is better than the Oneplus 3T.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] bundy1244:
The Phone is great so far after 24 hours or so. One thing that should be noted is that rooting and getting custom recovery on this phone is a long arduous process that should have been much easier. Also once you add TWRP you have to flash a custom rom as the phone refused to boot in the stock rom it came with for some reason. Right now I'm using CM 13 without any major problems, the best thing about this rom is you can display proper navigation keys and disable the crap stock ones it came with.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] wizzuh:
Just to add my two cents...

Phone is decent, battery life is mediocre.

Reception is also mediocre.

Software is garbage, hot garbage at that.

Android pay doesn't work properly, cannot add new contacts via text message, using the hi-fi audio is hit or miss, auto reboot doesn't work properly, and a few other things.

For $350 it's a decent deal though. Hopefully the update to Android 7 fixes most of these issues. And if you use Amex and purchase from Newegg, they had a $25 off special.

Sell the included headphones for 70$ and the phone is down to $270 or so.

Good luck.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] canezila:
The speakers play mid-highs and highs very well. They don't reproduce lows and mid-lows because it's a phone and not designed for the full sonic range. But what it does play it does better than other phones I have heard.

Playing high resolution audio with a cord through an amplifier sounds great.

I am extremely happy with my phone. Unlike most, I am fine with the phone ui. As long as I can root, twrp and block ads and run xposed then I am pretty cool with it all.

Looking forward to running nought in the following months. Price is great. Performance is great. Sound quality is perfect for me.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] LeKeiser:
I've got a perfect cell reception with my A7, 4G almost everywhere, and when I'm down to 3G it's only because of my carrier. Otherwise, phonecalls are perfect, no matter where I am, even in my company where people have troubles getting a good signal with their phone.

---------- Post added at 08:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:49 PM ----------

Decent?? It's a great phone with great hardware. Great and fast CPU, superb display and awesome sound, what else do you need??

Battery life mediocre?? I use my phone all day, SMS/FB/Hangouts/Youtube/Emails (lots)/... I start the morning with 80% battery, at 7pm I have about 40% left, I slow charge the phone when it's at 30% till it reaches 80% and put it down for night. Next morning, 80%, and....

Mediocre? Really??

And if I'm in real need, then QC3.0 is here.

Like I said earlier, my reception is perfect, no matter where I am. Except in some rooms at home, but I'm deep in concreet, so...

you're talking about MiFavor? I personally like it. It's not stock Android but it's not as bad as on some other phone. There are some stuffs that I really like when using it...

not using Android pay so I wouldn't know

I didn't try to add new contacts via text message, this is not the way I do it anyway, so...

As for the audio, I really don't understand what you mean, hit or miss. All the audio apps I use work flawlessly, sound is huge, with the internal speakers or my Sony speakers or... Really huge sound when I'm watching a movie also...

you can sell the box while you're at it :D
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] puremind:
Interesting, not sure if this is a Poweramp particularity. The different volume reaction to each app may be because of the DAC being used. Which version of the software do you use? Any apps sound similar to stock app?

To remedy the volume you can increase gains in Dolby Atmos.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] wizzuh:
Thanx for the reply.

The axon 7 when all things are considered is decent. Hardware is tits, spec sheet is great, but in practice it is decent, at a value to price ratio its good.

I'll attach my battery stat info from today to show my experience with battery life. I start @ 100% 6am and its 8:40pm and I'm @ 14% with 3.5hrs sot.

My previous phone Sony Z3, would make it to 10pm without hitting the 15% warning.

Speakers are tits, only thing I can even say is close is my girlfriends Alcatel Idol 3 (who did a much better job on software).

Screen is also pretty good, and those two reasons are what keep my Z3 in the drawer.

If one were to take a browse on zte's own forums, it's fairly evident that the software (Mifavor) is causing many people grief. If it's working for you, that's awesome.

And to the reception issue, I can just go off of my experience with the phone. A few days ago I was at work sitting next to a coworker who was setting up his metro pcs LG phone and when we went to call each other to exchange contact information, he could make a call while I had no reception.

So, it's a decent value @ $350, a good value @ $270. If the software update to nougat fixes these issues, it'll be a pretty great deal.

Not to mention the lack of WiFi calling with tmo.

And in the 20 or so minutes I've been typing this post, my battery is now @ 8%.

Good battery life eh?
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] rjt378:
The only thing that really bugs me is the capacitive buttons not being backlit. The outlines are done with some high quality reflective inserts that can be seen if any light whatsoever hits them, but in a room without light, obviously you are left to go on feel.

The software/settings template is basically the same thing Honor/Huawei uses. I dont know who developed it in China but they either let it go open source or license it because it has been on other Chinese phones, too. But there are some things in the Honor settings specifically, that do not exist here. Like app lock, etc. Useful stuff if anyone were to pick up your phone if it were unlocked. However, the Honor experience was far more buggy when it came to these things. I could not have the Lastpass app filler running in the background and continually had to set it up. Lots of issues with advanced permissions that simply would not stay the way you set them. I couldn't take it anymore. No problem here.

Considering I got it for less than half what a base model S7 costs, and $100 less than the 3T which was the next option - Im very happy.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] LeKeiser:
hello :)

Thanx for your feedback also :)

I've attached my battery stats as well so we can compare. This morning I started at 30% but slow charged it to 69% before leaving for work then fast charged it up to 81%. Got a few emails, FB, SMS, stuffs... Showed a video to some colleagues. Down to 76% now.

I do think the hardware is more than decent. A SnapDragon 820 is not the latest beast but it still has more power than we really need IMOO, and it can be found in so many higher priced phones, so...

Yep I'm quite happy with MiFavor. And I might be the only one, but I use a lot Mi-Pop :D It allows me to turn off my display with one click, take a screenshot, ... I like it a lot :)

As for reception, I don't know. I have 4G at work, and I'm in an Eco building with special windows that interfere with reception, normally. When someone calls me, their voices are great, no hashes, everything is peachy. So I can't complain. At work... At home, different matter but I had the same problem with my 1+, so it's not the A7.

If I had to do it again, the A7 would still be my first choice. I mean, I do like the 1+3T but it takes ages to receive it, and well, if I have a problem with the A7, I can go back to the store and see what can be done right there. The french offices of ZTE are in my town, so I'm lucky in a way :D
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] Cyrus D.:
At this point I'm pretty convinced PowerAmp is actually accessing the SD820's 24 bit DAC. I spent a few hours listening to music on stock app and everything sounds better, universally clearer. The SD820's DAC must be trash if the difference is that noticeable on any of my headphones. As for other apps, I went through just about everything out there, and functionality-wise they were all pretty bad IMO so I didn't want to use them. I honestly don't remember if any sounded similar. I didn't run extensive tests since all the apps had issues, many of them limiting their functionality severely unless you buy the full version. I wasn't about to buy a ton of apps at $3-$10 a piece to just pick one. But now that I'm almost sure that PowerAmp can't use the Hi-Fi DAC, I guess I'll get back to my search.

As for Atmos, it's super buggy, it gives different volume results if anything is different. The app, the headphones, the song, anything. For some things it jacks up the volume to hearing damage levels, for most things it muffles the volume and sound in general. It's pretty useless for me to use it to try to raise the volume, it just don't work. No matter how I try to use it, it makes songs sound worse. It's only any good for the speakers IMO, and on that it severely limits speaker volume.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] puremind:
You can get immediate refund if an app doesn't suit your needs. It seems like a shame to relinquish the better sound quality an entire year for a couple of hours trying out apps.
[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] TheLastSidekick:
I don't have any serious problems with performance in any regard. My only concern is the quality of the camera which seems cannot take a clear picture ever, it's always grainy. But it's a small price to pay for what this phone offers in IMHO and I'm willing to sacrifice it if I have to.
[Honor 8 Questions & Answers] mucoromycotina:
The lowest volume setting when using headphones is just slightly too loud for me. I am using Vsonic VSD5S headphones which have an impedance of 45 Ohm. Is there anyway to lower the minimum volume? If possible, I would like to avoid rooting or installing any apps.
[Honor 8 Questions & Answers] CronaMell:
Unfortunately, there's not a way without root or installing apps, maybe the next OTA will solve the issue.
[Honor 8 Questions & Answers] Neil6684:
You have to root the device to do anything about it.
[Honor 8 Questions & Answers] DarkGuyver:
Have you tried going into the settings of the supplied music player to see if you could alter the audio settings.
[Honor 8 Questions & Answers] macbuggo:
Most music apps have preamp of replay gain settings to help this some what, but so far I found all of them suffer from terrible snr at low volume (aside from stock music player). I get around this with an external amp like the fiio e5 which had it's own volume control.

With power amp alpha you can also change the volume steps to 100, that may allow you to go lower than the default volume step can
[Moto Z Questions & Answers] blahdc:
Hi - So I slowly figured out that we can not unlock the bootloader and root these Verizon phones. Any recommendations on how to detox/debloat this phone without root?

Edit: Looks like upgrading to Nougat makes it even more difficult to debloat.
[Moto Z Questions & Answers] squallz506:
Disable and remove permissions worked for me.
[Moto Z Questions & Answers] wolfu11:
Go to settings/Apps/Tap 3dots upper right hand corner/ Tap show system/ from there you can disable pretty much everything debloater does with a few exceptions.

Use care though there are a couple things that will lag your phone especially Disabling (print spooler).

Also if you want wifi calling to work don't disable Verizon Login .
[Galaxy Note II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] hclassic:
1.	I started with fully working Samsung Galaxy Note 2 GT-N7100 (Rooted)

2.	I'm a newbie to flashing ROM, and read numerous articles to build awareness (and have never used a forum before - so please be gentle!)

3.	Installed ClockworkMod Recovery using "ROM Manager"

4.	Flashed Slim6 (Slim-6.0.1.alpha.0.1-UNOFFICIAL-20160522-1030) ROM, then Gapps, then re-booted and all OK (Note2 seemed to work fine)

5.	Kernel is now3.0.101-Haxynox

6.	Spotted (and surprised) that Note 2 no longer rooted (and in particular, want to use Titanium Backup)

7.	So, flashed CWM6-root-note2.tar using ODIN, resulting in "Pass"

8.	Note2 still not Rooted, and suspect that I should have flashed SuperSu after Slim6 ROM and before Gapps

9.	So, tried to reboot to ClockworkMod reccovery using "ROM Manager" but hangs. Tried using VOL+ and HOME and POWER (many times, and for different intervals) but see Samsung logo followed by some "stripes" on the screen (rather like the horizontal hold needs to be adjusted for those that are old enough to remember such things!), but it will not boot into recovery mode.

10.	In addition, Odin no longer appears to see the Note2

11.	Note2 will boot conventionally, but I'm extremely keen not to have to live without rooting and flashing capability

12.	I've searched hard for hints for this particular issue, but would really appreciate some advice, at least so that I don't make my beautiful Note2 any worse (and hope I've not missed any posts that I should have spotted!).

13. Please let me know if I've missed any key information.

Thanks in advance.