[ZTE Axon 7 Questions & Answers] ChazzMatt:
Yes, Qi wireless means no metal on the back or just partial metal on the back. Which is why I HATE all-metal phones. Even Apple is going to Qi wireless this year. LG is adding it back, Samsung never dropped it. I won't buy a phone without that feature, which is the only reason I didn't buy the excellent ZTE Axon 7.

By "upgraded" do you mean just an iterative update -- faster CPU (Snapdragon 835), maybe default 6GB RAM?

Or do you mean UPGRADED, in that ZTE realizes 2017 is the year of the zero bezel phone and they need a Samsung Galaxy S8/LG V30/Pixel XL2/iPhone X type frame? ;)

Heck, even Apple is going minimal bezels, Qi wireless charging, and 1440p AMOLED display... (Next year, iPhone copycat OnePlus will probably have that, when they could have BEAT Apple and done it THIS year if they had any real vision.)

IF all ZTE was going to do was a mere iterative update (tick tock update), they could have done that already. The last three years, ZTE has released flagship phone to the world with premium specs, between June and August:

2014 ZTE Axon Max,

2015 ZTE Axon Pro,

2016 ZTE Axon 7. (Had the same exact Samsung AMOLED display as the Pixel XL, and award-winning quad DAC)

Where's the 2017 ZTE Axon 8 (or 9, as rumored)? It's already September.

(Yes, there was an iterative ZTE Axon 7S, much like the OnePlus 3 and the 3T, but it was only released in China in early 2017. ZTE is a Chinese company. We are all waiting for the world-wide release of ZTE Axon 7 successor.)

No, here's what is going on. Their ZTE North America President -- the one who authorized bootloader unlock for the U.S. ZTE Axon 7, and whose decision forced global ZTE to make all the other regions also do that -- was promoted several months ago (April 2017) to be head of global ZTE mobile devices. Now, he's in charge of the entire company, at least the part of the company WE care about.

Maybe you weren't here when the ZTE Axon 7 was released in summer of 2016. But it was a BIG deal -- premium specs at a budget price, the reality of what OnePlus PRETENDS to be -- and then when bootloader unlock was first announced for ONE region (North America), but initially not for any other regions people got mad. Why would ZTE make such a distinction? Because global ZTE didn't make that decision. This one man Cheng Lixin was making decisions for HIS region and he couldn't force the other regional presidents to do the same. Eventually, global ZTE managers decided to authorize bootloader unlock across all regions. The ZTE Axon 7 was a worldwide success, in large part due to him, and now THIS man is running global mobile ZTE. Obviously he's gone in and made some corporate changes . He's probably authorized new designs, reallocated resources.

By the time Cheng Lixin was promoted,

everyone knew what the Samsung Galaxy S8/8+ would look like.

everyone knew what the LG G6 would look like.

Everyone already knew what the iPhone X would look like...

About this time was when

Google invested almost $1 billion into LG for another OLED manufacturing line for the 2017 Pixel XL 2, so THAT was also known. (April 10, 2017)

And that LG would be making the 2017 Pixel XL2, so it would probably look a lot like the LG G6 just bigger...

Cheng Lixin was PROMOTED for a reason, and that reason was to make ZTE Mobile a success at a higher level. And he knew all these facts/trends probably even more than we do.

If I were running a company with the resources to do it, I would make sure MY devices would be designed and manufactured to be competitive. If it was me, I would be gunning for Samsung, LG, Google Pixel XL. Heck, last year,

the ZTE Axon 7 had all the specs and more of the Google Pixel XL at about half the price

. Yeah, the Pixel XL had a better camera, but that was it.

There's a reason for the delay, and it's probably because this new head of ZTE mobile forced the designers to go back to the drawing board. He was promoted in April and probably some iterative ZTE Axon flagship update was already in the works and he said "NO, we can do better." So what if the ZTE Axon 7 successor is delayed from June-August to maybe November (but probably "announced" in October)? Do it right, or don't do it.