[ZTE Axon 7 Guides, News, & Discussion] ALeX850:
It's true that ZTE has nothing to gain from this, I guess it's mainly due to large-scale management issues. ZTE's presence outside China has historically been in the telecom equipment sector and their contact with customers was mainly through white-labelling their devices to local carriers, and when they actually started selling their own-brand products it was low end devices from which you couldn't really expect proper after service/support.

Now they are selling more high end devices targeted at power users like the Axon 7 (considering you just don't stumble upon it in any shop, you certainly searched about it beforehand). It seems that their US community is well organized enough to take care of those customers with talkative people ensuring support where they can and giving actual info about the state of development. Whether it's good enough to win those customers' loyalty is another matter but their nougat release isn't a step in the right direction.

On contrary, the market for the G version which is mostly Europe is in total disarray since there is no cohesion. If they hadn't eventually brought up a community for their german customers it would have stayed in a ghost talking state. The thing is, proper communication involves having dedicated staff to insure support in each country where it's sold in the country's native language and as far as I know their staff is mainly PR and marketing.

For us, an international forum for the G version in english (maybe with localized subforums) is what make the most sense, but ZTE certainly knows (if we take into account the premise that they actually care) that it's not the proper way to do it. Obviously power user buyers don't want to communicate succinctly with PR staff lacking technical info which kinda defeat the purpose of selling this device in the first place.

That's why we're in an uncomfortable position where ZTE germany is the only proper support and kinda informally takes in international users of the G version (and thanks to selfless users who do the intermediary work we also get info here on xda, props to them). I don't know what it is, if it's a lack of vision or management. But they could at least have coordinated all their branches (at least in major european countries) to give a more seamless support. For no reason some countries get OTA and others don't: the only OTA I got until now is B08. You just gotta look at different ZTE website per country: they all have different designs/UX and don't even have a common naming convention. Not forgetting the translation mistakes, I use the the device in french and it feels as if it was automatically translated at times, I can't believe they didn't have a proper french translator. Even amateur work could be better, just blows my mind. It feels very much like a chinese rom translated verbatim by third parties if you already had that experience (as in no syntax adaptation like the date format, wrong spacing, etc.).

It's like all their teams operate in a vacuum. If only they could create a unique framework between them, maybe everything would be better. Like I said, ZTE has nothing to gain in alienating their customers and make them unsatisfied. I guess brand loyalty is still rather important. I admit that with all those hiccups I would think about buying another ZTE product in the future if they still keep selling devices for enthusiasts.