Is a key point of consideration for your next smartphone whether or not it has been endorsed by a world-renowned pianist? Great! The all-new ZTE Axon 7 is, in fact, endorsed by world-renowned pianist Lang Lang. This apparently has some sort of value. The Axon 7 also received design input from BMW's Designworks (yes, that BMW, the one that makes cars), audio consulting from a team of music conservatory professors (I am not making this up), and Dolby's Atmos surround sound. This phone is a veritable partnership tour de farce.

Oh, and yes, it's an actual phone, too - I almost forgot about that. The Axon 7's specs, which are quite impressive on paper, are below.

  • 5.5" QHD Super AMOLED display
  • Snapdragon 820 processor
  • 4 or 6GB of RAM (depends on model)
  • 64 or 128GB storage
  • Fingerprint scanner
  • "Force touch" (available only on "premium" model)
  • 20MP rear camera with OIS and f/1.8 aperture
  • 8MP front-facing camera, f/2.2 (no OIS)
  • 3250mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0
  • USB-C
  • Android 6.0 (ZTE's MiFavor UI 4.0 on top)
  • NFC

The phone comes in three flavors: basic, standard, and premium. Premium appears to be the only version with ZTE's "force touch" display, which to be honest is basically useless anyway because no third party apps will ever support it and Android has no native API specifically for this sort of functionality (the proto-form of such a feature was even removed from the N preview). Prices range considerably and are in Chinese Yuan for now (i.e., don't expect this to translate directly to US pricing): 2899 RMB for basic [$442], 3299 RMB for standard [$503], and 4099 RMB for the premium [$625]. Aside from the force touch mode, it's unclear what makes the premium stand apart from the basic and standard models based on ZTE's press release.

No US pricing or availability has yet been announced.

PRESS RELEASE

Source: BusinessWire