ZTE Axon Pro review: Ready and willing

Telephony and messaging

ZTE Axon Pro features a stock Android contacts' manager, which displays all contacts and favorites. You can sync with multiple accounts including Google and Exchange. A button to add a new contact is constantly present in the bottom right corner - you can choose which account to sync the new addition with.

The contacts' manager

The phone app is also stock and comes with tabbed interface for speed dial, recent calls and all contacts. The dialer is invoked by taping on its dedicated key and supports smart dialing.

Stock Android dialer

Phone calls on the ZTE Axon Pro sound loud and clear. The sole loudspeaker of smartphone is sufficiently powerful for all but the most extreme daily use scenarios.

Messaging is pretty much as straightforward an affair as on every other droid out there. ZTE has added its own email app, though you, as you probably know by now, Gmail for Android handles the most commonly used account types, so you are not likely to need it.

ZTE has implemented its own messaging app, which mirrors Google Messenger in appearance and functionality. We prefer the search giant's solution for the faster updates from Google Play.

Messaging ZTE style

As expected, the default Google keyboard is on board as well. It offers two sleek-looking, brand new skins - Material Dark and Material Light. The duo matches the new look of Android Lollipop.

Stock Android keyboard

Multimedia

ZTE ships the Axon Pro with a proprietary gallery application. The latter organizes images by album, location, time, and tags.

ZTE gallery

The app has powerful editor built-in as well. It even allows users to create collages and GIF images.

Google Photos is onboard as well with unlimited backup of your images. Upon opening the app you'll see two tabs - one for all photos and another one for highlights.

Google Photos

Viewing a single photo gives you a number of options. You can share it, set it as wallpaper or contact photo, or edit it. The built-in Photos editor is incredibly powerful too.

The preloaded video player in the ZTE Axon Pro has intuitive controls and will play all major file formats. Picture-in-picture view is also supported.

The video player

Users can trim their videos if they so desire. A dedicated button for capturing screenshots of the video footage is available too.

ZTE has included its own music player with the Axon Pro, which supports playback of high-resolution FLAC riles. A couple of such tracks come preloaded on the device in order to showcase its audio chops.

The music player

Interface of the audio player basic and intuitive. In case you don't like it, you can always opt for Google Play Music, which is also preloaded.

Google Play Music

Equalizer settings are handled by a system-wide Dolby Audio application. The latter includes presets for music, movies, gaming, and voice. Two slots for custom settings are also available.

Dolby Audio app

Finally, ZTE Axon Pro features FM radio as well. As always, it requires a wired headset to act as an antenna.

FM radio at your service

Audio quality is impressive for the most part

The ZTE Axon Pro aced the first part of our audio quality test. When connected to an active external amplifier the smartphone posted excellent scores top to bottom and garnished them with nicely loud output for a properly impressive performance.

Plugging in our standard headphones caused a rather large hike in stereo crosstalk, meaning you aren't getting as good stereo quality as with other flagships. The other readings remained excellent though and the volume level was unchanged, so it's still a very good showing by the Axon Pro.

Anyway, here go the results so you can do your comparisons.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
ZTE Axon Pro	+0.04, -0.86	-94.0	93.9	0.0011	0.0066	-95.5
ZTE Axon Pro (headphones)	+0.05, -0.86	-94.1	94.0	0.0018	0.0063	-47.2
Samsung Galaxy S6 active	+0.05, -0.20	-95.8	93.0	0.0028	0.0083	-95.1
Samsung Galaxy S6 active (headphones)	+0.02, -0.04	-92.7	93.1	0.0052	0.030	-60.5
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge	+0.03, -0.01	-95.6	92.8	0.0023	0.0078	-95.7
Samsung Galaxy S6 edge (headphones)	+0.05, -0.02	-92.6	92.5	0.0028	0.044	-76.9
Samsung Galaxy S6	+0.01, -0.04	-95.6	92.8	0.0024	0.0094	-94.5
Samsung Galaxy S6 (headphones)	+0.02, -0.05	-92.6	91.9	0.0025	0.042	-83.4
LG G4	+0.04, -0.07	-93.4	93.3	0.0021	0.050	-92.6
LG G4 (headphones)	+0.93, -0.13	- 91.4	91.9	0.013	0.244	-50.4
HTC One M9	+0.02, -0.06	-94.8	93.0	0.0049	0.026	-93.7
HTC One M9 (headphones)	+0.03, - 0.05	-93.7	92.7	0.0082	0.030	-91.6
Apple iPhone 6	+0.06, -0.02	-94.0	93.9	0.0012	0.0065	-73.4
Apple iPhone 6 (headphones)	+0.11, -0.06	-93.8	93.8	0.0022	0.099	-65.1

ZTE Axon Pro frequency response frequency response

You can learn more about the tested parameters and the whole testing process here.