ZTE Axon 30 Ultra Puts its 4 Cameras to Good Use

ZTE has launched the Axon 30 Ultra 5G smartphone, which it indicates removes any indecision out of which camera to use when taking a photo, as it has a “take photos first and zoom later” feature. The company says the phone will take full-focus long, medium, and close-up photos with one tap of the shutter button, unlike most other smartphone cameras which require you to take each photo separately.

The advantage, presumably, is in editing. You can zoom in and out of the photo to find exactly the right look for you, without sacrificing quality. It’s a little bit like Portrait modes where you can alter the focal point after you’ve taken the shot. It’ll be interesting to see how the software performs, and whether the feature is useful or not.

The Axon 30 Ultra does this with three 64-megapixel main cameras and an 8MP telephoto camera. We know the main 64MP camera is a Sony IMX686 sensor with optical image stabilization and an f/1.6 aperture, but we don’t know the sensor used for the other two 64MP cameras. If they’re different, we can forget about the camera matching the Oppo Find X3 Pro’s wonderful consistency across all its cameras.

Aside from the three main cameras, the 8MP telephoto takes 5x optical zoom shots and 10x hybrid photos, while the phone can also record 8K video. ZTE has added in a video guidance mode showing you how to best frame scenes, along with some artificial intelligence (A.I.) driven modes to make your movies look even more creative. Finally, there are various A.I. scene recognition modes, optical and electronic image stabilization, a Night mode, and a Super Moon mode too.

ZTE faces considerable competition in high-end camera phones. This year the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has seriously impressed, as has the Oppo Find X3 Pro, and the Hasselblad-tuned OnePlus 9 Pro. The Apple iPhone 12 Pro may have been released last year, but it still out-performs most rivals. It seems the Axon 30 Ultra has plenty of features, but it needs to back them up with serious ability to impress in 2021.

What else? On the front is a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen with a 144Hz refresh rate, and the phone uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor with 5G connectivity, plus either 8GB or 12GB of RAM. The glass body weighs 188 grams, is 8mm thick, and has Axon branding etched into the back. A 4,600mAh battery provides energy and is recharged using a 66W fast charging system. ZTE’s own MyOS11 user interface is placed over the Android 11 operating system.

While the ZTE Axon 30 Ultra 5G has so far only been announced for China, it will be released globally at a later date, and that includes the U.S. and Canada where it’ll be sold online. It will be released on April 19 in China, but the price has not yet been confirmed.

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