ZTE Axon 7 Mini

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini takes a lot of what we liked about the shockingly good ZTE Axon 7 and shrinks everything down to a - slightly - more compact size without compromising too much on the great spec.

It's a little easier to hold in one hand if you don't have meaty paws and it's slightly easier on your wallet too, thanks to its more affordable price point.

It still packs an AMOLED display, fingerprint scanner and high-end front facing speakers. But is it worth going for the ZTE Axon 7 Mini and losing the extra size and power of the high-end phone we gave 4.5 stars to last year? And does the 7 Mini stand up to affordable rivals like the Honor 6X?

ZTE Axon 7 Mini price and release date 

• Came out in the US and UK in September
• No word on when Australia will get it, but it will eventually come
• Costs $299 or £249 (about AU$400)

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini is out now in the US and UK. You’ll be able to buy it for $299 or £249 from a variety of different retailers, including ZTE itself.

ZTE has announced the Axon 7 Mini will be making its way to Australia in the future, but it’s not currently on sale there from any major retailers.

Design and display

• Full metal unibody design which is easy to hold in one hand
• Fingerprint sensor on the rear is easy to tap when holding the phone
• 5.2-inch Full HD display offers great picture quality

It's becoming easier to find a mid-range Android phone that's made of something other than plastic in 2017, and the ZTE Axon 7 Mini adds another suitable option to the growing list.

It’s an all-metal phone sold at an affordable price, that competes with much higher-priced handsets from the likes of Samsung, LG, HTC and Apple. The design could fool anyone into thinking this costs more than it does, and helps it make a stronger first impression than similarly priced phones like the Moto G4 Plus.

Although made of metal, the ZTE Axon 7 Mini is only 153g and still feels light and easy to hold in one hand. That was a gripe with the original ZTE Axon 7, and this phone is certainly a lot easier to handle.

The metal back can feel a little slippery when gripping the phone, but because the Axon 7 Mini is smaller it’s easier to wrap your entire hand around the phone and hold it tight.

A big part of the design is the speakers on the front of the ZTE Axon 7 Mini – you won’t be able to miss them, but the grilles at the top and bottom of the screen aren't ugly.

It's not a look everyone will like, but it makes the phone stand out compared to some boring looking mid-range handsets we've seen in recent years.

The fingerprint scanner is on the back of the phone, just below the camera sensor, which makes it easy to tap your finger onto it when you want to unlock the handset.

On the front of the phone there's a 5.2-inch Full HD AMOLED display, which is quite a downgrade compared to the 5.5-inch 1440 x 2560 AMOLED screen on the ZTE Axon 7.

Despite that, it looks gorgeous and the slight decrease in size allows the phone itself to be slightly smaller. Though given the name some will likely be a little disappointed the Axon 7 Mini doesn't feature an even smaller screen - it's only 0.3-inches smaller than the original phone, and far from compact.

Screen brightness is great on the Axon 7 Mini and it looks good when playing games or streaming video.

The phone isn’t ready to work with Google Daydream, so having a higher resolution screen, especially at this size, isn’t really necessary. Sticking to a 1080p display offers up 423 pixels-per-inch but won’t drain the battery as fast as the display on the Axon 7 - though battery life is a problem here, as we'll discuss later.

Viewing angles are also strong on the Axon 7 Mini – we found it worked well from most viewing points, so you’ll be able to place this down in front of you on your commute to watch videos with ease.

Interface and reliability 

• Running Android 6 software with ZTE's overlay on top
• Apps have a strange redesign that doesn't always look good
• Lack of app drawer may be a problem for some Android fans

Much like the ZTE Axon 7, the Axon 7 Mini comes with MiFavor UI 4.0 on top of Android 6 Marshmallow software.

That’s last year’s software from Google, and ZTE has then put its own interface over the top.

As with many phones from Chinese manufacturers, it can be quite an overwhelming look for those who are used to stock Android. App icons will all look different and there are a lot of added features compared to your usual Android device.

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini has a good looking interface though. It's also not complicated to use and everything is clearly signposted, so it's easy to find things on the phone.

Perhaps the strangest part of ZTE's software is the lack of an app drawer. This means your apps will be organized over pages on your phone, rather than in a separate area, much like when you use an iPhone.

The biggest gripe we have with the interface is the redesigned app icons. The ZTE owned apps, like the camera or phone book, look great, but the icons for third-party services suffer from being boxed in.

In the screenshot above you’ll see a few examples – for example, Messenger, Spotify and Wunderlist are all surrounded by a big white box. Even Google’s Play Store has this problem, and that should be an integral app.

If you like a uniform look to the apps on your phone, you may struggle to get along with the design on the ZTE Axon 7 Mini. If not, you’ll be able to handle this minor gripe easily.

On the plus side, the ZTE Axon 7 Mini does come with all the Android 6 Marshmallow features. ZTE has yet to confirm whether the phone would be upgraded to Android 7 in the near future though.

Music, movies and gaming 

• The speakers on the Axon 7 Mini make for a great listening experience
• There's 22GB of room left over after software to fill with videos and games
• Should be able to play the latest games, but may struggle with some

If you want a phone that can play music, the ZTE Axon 7 Mini is going to be a great choice for you.

It comes with 3D stereo sound that is made possible through a dual-loudspeaker at both ends of the phone and Dolby Atmos technology packed in as well.

This tech allows you to play music with less distortion and powerful bass. Put this next to almost any other phone and you’ll notice a difference in the music quality.

It rivals, and may even beat, HTC's BoomSound tech. You can take this phone around with you and watch a film or listen to music on it without headphones and still experience great sound.

There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the phone that will allow you to used wired headsets. That’s something disappearing from a lot of high-end phones at the moment, so it’s good to see it’s sticking around for the Axon 7 Mini.

You’ll also be able to use Bluetooth headsets on the Axon 7 Mini – we found they connected quickly and easily in our testing. Sound quality was good, but relative to other handsets it was nothing like as impressive as the speakers on the front of the phone.

For movies, you’ll likely want to install your own apps such as Netflix or Amazon Instant Video. 

There’s a Videos app on the Axon 7 Mini that works well and will make full use of the stereo speakers, but it’s only for files you upload directly to the phone. 

The screen is a good size and a great resolution to watch films. You won’t be able to watch 4K content on the ZTE Axon 7 Mini, but that’s only available on the Xperia Z5 Premium at present.

There's theoretically 32GB of storage to play around with, but pre-installed software takes up almost 10GB of that space, so you’re going to be restricted to only 22GB of usable space, which will soon disappear as you download your own apps.

There’s also microSD support for cards of up to 256GB though, so you may want to invest in a large card to ensure you can fill your phone with as much media as possible.

As for gaming, there aren’t any good titles pre-installed on the Axon 7 Mini – you’ll need to get what you want to play from the Google Play Store.

Some load times on the Axon 7 Mini were very long, but each game we tried on the phone did eventually load and was playable. 

Pokemon Go especially took a long time to load on the Axon 7 Mini, and there was sometimes a slight stutter in some graphically intensive titles, but you'd expect that at this price point.

The size of the phone also makes this a remarkably comfortable gaming experience, especially if you're using the powerful speakers.

Specs and benchmark performance 

• Packs the Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core chipset
• Includes 3GB of RAM, but didn't do well in benchmarking scores

The chipset may be the biggest downgrade on the ZTE Axon 7 Mini compared to its larger and more capable sibling.

The Axon 7 Mini comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 617 octa-core system on a chip. That's the same SoC as we saw on the HTC One A9 and it worked OK on that phone. It also packs an Adreno 405 GPU, plus there's 3GB of RAM to play with.

It’s not as powerful as the Snapdragon 820 chipset and 4GB of RAM on the ZTE Axon 7, but it still manages to hold its own and a drop in speed was always to be expected.

Through our time using the phone, we always found it to be reliable and able to handle almost any apps you throw at it, but it was notably slow with some programs.

Intensive tasks took a little longer than you’d hope for, but that’s mostly the nature of using a cheaper phone.

When you look at Geekbench scores the ZTE Axon 7 Mini doesn’t come across very well though.

The ZTE Axon 7 scored 5,393, while this phone scored 2,106. That’s embarrassingly low compared to the similarly priced Honor 6X, which scored 3,275, or even the lower priced Moto G4 which scored 3,104.

If you need a phone that’s capable of running the latest apps, the ZTE Axon 7 Mini will be OK. If you want a phone that will be able to load them as quickly as possible, this won't be the best choice.

Battery life

• A 2,705mAh battery and fast-charging but no wireless option
• Pretty bad battery life that won't last you a full day
• Did well in our video test, but not well day-to-day

Battery life on the ZTE Axon 7 Mini isn’t up to scratch. We were disappointed with the life we could get out of its 2,705mAh juice pack and found ourselves having to put the phone on charge during the day.

Regularly we had to put it on charge at around 5PM on days when we tried to really put the phone through its paces. Some evenings it would last until 9PM, but that's not good enough either.

Phones in 2017 often last a full day or even a day and a half, but the ZTE Axon 7 Mini struggles to last three quarters of a day with regular usage.

We also put the Axon 7 Mini through our video battery test where we play a 90 minute clip on full brightness with connectivity options on and surprisingly it scored a great result - 85% - rivalling the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S7 for great battery life when playing video.

But this doesn't excuse the terrible battery life when you’re using the phone generally. It does at least have fast charging capabilities though, which make it simple to pump back up to full quickly.

This is the saving grace of the battery on the Axon 7 Mini, as it allows you to go from nought to 50% in just over 30 minutes.

You’ll need to be using the charger included in the box to get the quickest charge and there’s no wireless charging on the Axon 7 Mini, which is a disappointment.

Camera

• 16MP rear camera and 8MP front-facing shooter
• Good everyday photography, but not great in low-light

ZTE has equipped the Axon 7 Mini with a 16MP rear shooter and it probably won't disappoint you. In fact, it’s quite an impressive setup given the price of the phone.

Landscape and well-lit shots all turned out great. Pixel peeping showed the images to be a little low-res at times, but when looking at the image as a whole it was quite hard to fault the way they came out.

In fact, the Axon 7 Mini can just about hold its own against some flagship phones, despite being around half the price.

It has autofocus tech, HDR, a dual-LED flash and an aperture of f/1.9.

That aperture is not all that impressive though and it really does impact night time shots. We found a lot of the samples we were getting out of the Axon 7 Mini were blurring at night and struggled with focus.

Even static objects ended up blurring in front of us and that was a big disappointment.

How well the photos came out in the daytime though made up for its struggles at night and if you’re just looking for a simple, high quality point and shoot camera on a cheap phone this is a good option.

For video, the Axon 7 Mini can record in either Full HD or 720p. You won’t need anything more than this considering the screen you’re watching it back on is Full HD anyway.

Focus within videos looks good and we found it all controlled easily, with a simple to use interface on both camera and video modes.

There's also an 8MP front-facing sensor, for all your selfie needs and 1080p videos.

The picture quality is good enough for uploading snapshots of you and your friends to social media, but for anything more intense we’d recommend using the rear camera.

There’s also a beauty mode on the selfie camera. It blurs out the blemishes of your skin and makes you look quite strange. This is set on as a default and we recommend taking that off unless you want to look like the photo below.

Camera samples

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini should be a more thrilling phone than it actually is. On paper the spec looks great, the design is brilliant and there's a lot here for the price.

But there are a lot of issues that stand in the way of making this a truly great cheap phone.

There's so much competition in the market as well. With options from Motorola, Honor and many more, the Axon 7 Mini is against some very, very tough competition in this space.

Why should I buy the ZTE Axon 7 Mini?

The ZTE Axon 7 Mini is gorgeously designed and considering this phone is only $299/£250 it's surprising how high-end it feels. This is the kind of phone people won't realize is a cheaper option and that's the best sort of bargain phone. 

There's nothing like the speaker setup on the Axon 7 Mini at this price point. HTC's BoomSound tech is also impressive, but you won't get the full package on a phone this cheap, so if you're looking for a powerful speaker setup on a budget go for this handset.

The display on the Axon 7 Mini is also impressive. If you're after a 5.2-inch size phone with a Full HD AMOLED display, this is one of the few high quality options on the market, especially for this sort of money.

Why shouldn’t I buy the ZTE Axon 7 Mini?

Despite all the great features above, there are also quite a few reasons you shouldn't buy the ZTE Axon 7 Mini.

Considering the display is only Full HD, the battery is a real disappointment and you'll likely work through it before the end of the day.

If you're happy to use the fast-charging features to ensure it's juiced up, you'll like the ZTE Axon 7 Mini though.

The phone may not be powerful enough for you either. Compared to other phones at this sort of price, such as the Moto G4 Plus, the Axon 7 Mini is particularly slow and will take too long to load some of your favorite apps and games.

For some people that will be a major issue, and that's a big shame.

The last negative of the Axon 7 Mini is the software the company has decided to install on it. It gives many apps strange icons and doesn't offer enough extra functionality to make this worthwhile.

It won't cause any major issues in the way you use your phone, but the way your home screen looks will probably disappoint you.

First reviewed January 2017

Competition

Don't like everything you've seen here about the ZTE Axon 7 Mini? Here are some phones we think make good alternatives.

Moto G4 Plus

Motorola’s Moto G4 Plus from 2016 has been consistently ranked one of our best cheap phones and even sits in the top position of our best cheap phone list at the time of writing. 

It features a fingerprint sensor, 5.5-inch Full HD screen and a more powerful processor than the Axon 7 Mini.

The design arguably isn't as good, but it’s even cheaper than the option from ZTE so we’d recommend you take a look before buying the ZTE Axon 7 Mini.

Read the Moto G4 Plus review

Honor 6X

Honor’s latest beat the ZTE Axon 7 Mini in benchmarking results, has a great battery life and even features a larger screen. 

It doesn’t have such a great design and won’t have those stereo speakers, but if battery life and power (or lack thereof) are putting you off the ZTE Axon 7 Mini, the Honor 6X could be a good option at a similar price.

Read the Honor 6X review

ZTE Axon 7

Like everything you see on show here but fancy a larger phone with a more powerful processor and much better battery life? The ZTE Axon 7 is the phone to go for, but be prepared to pay a lot extra for the experience.

It does everything the ZTE Axon 7 Mini does and much, much more though and a lot of the issues we’ve had with the Mini are solved on the larger option. But be warned, if you have smaller hands this won’t be a good choice for you.

Read the ZTE Axon 7 review

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