ZTE Axon 40 Ultra review

35mm primary, 64MP sensors for all three rear cameras

It's the camera that is the Axon 40 Ultra's... focal point, and it's one unique setup indeed. A trio of 64MP modules on the back offers a trio of focal lengths, but it's the primary one that is the most unusual - with a 35mm focal length, it offers a noticeably different perspective on the world compared to pretty much any other contemporary smartphone's main unit.

That's not the first time ZTE has included such a camera - in fact, last year's Axon 30 Ultra featured one as well, but it was called the Portrait camera, and it wasn't meant for general picture-taking at its native focal length. This time it's the star of the show and is named the 'Humanity' camera. It may be a poor use of English, seeing how it's meant to be used for taking photographs of people, but that doesn't take away any of its character.

Behind that name is an IMX787 sensor Sony makes specifically for ZTE. Information on it is sparse on the internet, but best as we can tell, it's an iteration on the IMX686 - even the number almost makes sense. From what we managed to scrape, it's the same 1/1.7" optical format with a Quad Bayer filter array and 0.8µm pixels, and it produces 16MP images after the usual 4-to-1 binning.

The all-important 35mm-equivalent lens has a bright f/1.6 aperture and is stabilized. Also, the combination of a large-ish sensor, long-ish focal length and wide aperture promises a shallow depth of field and plenty of natural background blur, and we're all suckers for defocused backgrounds, aren't we?

The same sensor is used on the ultrawide camera, where it teams up with a 16mm-equivalent lens - it's narrower than what we got on last year's Axon Ultra, which we find easy to explain. On the one hand, it's a larger sensor now, so making an extreme ultrawide lens for it could have been impractical. On top of that, with the main camera at 35mm, a more conservative ultrawide makes sense so that you're not left with too wide a gap in coverage between the two. And 16mm isn't too shabby, if not quite as dramatic as the 13mm on the old one.

This lens can do autofocus too, and it doubles as a closeup camera.

On to the telephoto, where the 64MP sensor is a different one. The OV64B40 is a 4-cell (OmniVision's naming for what Sony calls Quad Bayer) imager with a 1/2" optical format and 0.7µm pixels. Its periscope style lens has a focal length equivalent to 91mm - or so say the specs; the EXIF data reads 90mm. That gives you a 5.7x zoom ratio if you count from the ultrawide (which ZTE does, but no one else seems to) or 2.6x if you start at the main camera (which is sort of the norm, but ZTE's unorthodox main camera makes it sound like too little compared to rivals) - so we went ahead and normalized it to 3.5x from your average 26mm smartphone camera. That's not bad zooming power either. Unfortunately, the lens isn't particularly fast - its aperture is mere f/3.5, but it's stabilized.

Flipping the phone over, you already know not to look for a selfie camera cutout since the sensor is behind the display. Through some careful arrangement of the display pixels and the image sensor pixels, you get just enough light to make it to the imager so that you can end up with something resembling a photo. The UDC (under-display camera) uses a 16MP OV16E1Q sensor and an f/2.4 aperture lens with a fixed focus.

Camera app

The camera app on the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra is a royal mess. While it's no different in key functionality from any other camera app out there, it's got a ton of kinks to be ironed out.

One welcome change from previous efforts is the rethinking of the zoom selector, which now stays close to the shutter release, so it's always within reach when operating the phone single-handedly - it used to be on the right of the viewfinder when in portrait orientation, so way far if you're using your left hand, only to move to the bottom of the viewfinder when you're in landscape, where you either had to use both hands or do some complex finger gymnastics to reach it. No more - it's always next to your thumb now.

Well, sort of. The above only applies to the regular photo mode, while in any other mode where you get a zoom selector (Night, Pro, Full size), it's on the left of the viewfinder in portrait and on the bottom or top in landscape, depending on which direction you turn the phone in. Complete madness.

And it's not just about its positioning. Get this, in Photo mode, the zoom options are '1x', 'Wide', and 'Tele' - not '1x', '0.4x' and '2.6x' (or another numerical representation of their choosing), and not 'Main', 'Wide', and 'Tele' (or another verbal representation of their choosing). But in the other modes, your options change to a camera icon for the main camera, one tree for the tele, and multiple trees for the ultrawide.

The 'Camera-family' tab (with the hyphen), where your secondary modes live, has two screens of modes, and the main one is the right one, with leftover modes on the left. That is, if you're in landscape - if you're in portrait, the leftover modes are below, which sort of makes sense. It's just that the transition between portrait and landscape doesn't.

A step in the wrong direction is the inability to switch modes more than one at a time - you could do it on the Axon 30 Ultra if you slide on the mode labels. You can still directly access a mode if its label is visible by tapping on it, so at least there's that.

Perhaps we're needlessly fixated on small things, but operating these aspects of the app never got to feel natural, despite numerous outings for samples.

Camera UI

Those complaints aside, the app is generally like all other apps. At the far end, there are HDR and flash mode switches, an AI toggle and a filter selector button. The arrow opens up a couple more options (composition assistant, and self timer) plus the settings cogwheel.

There's a Pro mode available for all three cameras. You can control shutter speed (1/10000s to 60s), ISO (100 to 25600), exposure compensation (-3 to +3EV in 1/4EV increments), and white balance (temperature slider with pop-up labels for common light sources). A metering mode selector shows up in the shutter speed setting, you can choose between three different histogram visualizations and focus peaking is also available in settings.

There's even an intervalometer letting you take a photo every 1 to 60 seconds, seemingly indefinitely. White balance, exposure and focus lock toggles are also at your disposal. Overall, a very capable Pro mode.

Camera UI, Pro mode