ZTE’s latest flagship phone features a 6.8 inch AMOLED display and an under-display camera so that there’s no need for a notch, hole, or large top bezel.
With a resolution of 2480 x 1116 pixels, the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra packs 400 pixels per inch, and the screen has a 120 Hz refresh rate, 360 touch sampling rate, 10-bit color depth, 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, up to 1500 nits peak brightness, and 1,440 Hz high frequency PWM dimming.
While under-display cameras (UDCs) can certainly give phones a striking appearance, they’re not exactly known for snapping great photos. ZTE says the Axon 40 Ultra uses the company’s third-gen UDC technology, which helps the camera section of the display blend in better with the rest of the screen, while also capturing better photographs thanks to a new 16MP image sensor, 2.24μm pixel size and improved software algorithms for applying noise reduction, anti-glare, defogging, and other effects to help improve image quality.
The phone’s fingerprint reader is also under the display, but that’s not as unusual in modern smartphones as under-display cameras.
Other features include a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, three 64MP rear cameras (including a primary camera, an ultra wide-angle camera, and a 5.7X telephoto camera), LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.1 storage, and a 5,000 mAh battery and support for 65W fast charging (wired).
The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is now available in China with prices starting at 4,998 CNY (about $740) for a model with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. The company is also expected to offer higher-priced configurations with up to 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage, and a global version of the Axon 40 Ultra should launch in June.
ZTE is also introducing a more affordable ZTE Axon 40 Pro, which has a 6.67 inch, 2400 x 1080 pixel AMOLED display with a 144 Hz refresh rate and under-display fingerprint reader, but this model has a hole-punch cut-out for the 16MP selfie camera and the Axon 40 Pro is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 processor.
This model has a 100MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide camera, and 2MP macro and depth cameras.
The ZTE Axon 40 Pro goes on sale in China May 25th with prices ranging from 2,988 CNY (~$450) for an 8GB/128GB model to 3,798 CNY (~$565) for a 12GB/512GB configuration.