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We will no doubt look back at the spring of 2018 as an era of intense ZTE drama. Following an enforcement action by the US Commerce Department, ZTE was cut off from all its US suppliers. The company partially shut down and put all projects on hold until it could work out a deal with the US government. One of those delayed projects was the Axon 9 Pro, which was finally unveiled at IFA 2018. The debut (probably coming much later than ZTE would have liked) is a bit of a letdown for anyone hoping ZTE would come out swinging after its near-death experience. Instead, the Axon 9 Pro looks like a very generic iPhone clone.
ZTE is now back in business, and today at IFA it revealed its latest Axon flagship phone — which won't be coming to the US. With no Axon 8, ZTE has jumped straight up to the Axon 9 (with a superfluous "Pro" suffix). In its short keynote, the company was adamant that it was striving "once again to improve the impressive sound of Axon," and apparently the best way to do that was by removing the Axon 7's high-end analog audio/headphone jack experience. Coupled with a strangely high €649 price tag, ZTE seems to have forgotten why people liked the Axon series in the first place.