The moment I saw this brick phone, I wanted to get one. See this for the specs.
It uses the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with a built-in cooling fan. This means that it can run at a higher frequency much longer and may even sustain it indefinitely as long as the battery lasts. It has no camera bump and can lie flat on your desk, shocking for a 2023 mobile phone indeed. The front uses an under-screen camera and fingerprint scanner which means that it is a full screen without a notch or a hole. Sadly, you can still see some pixels on top, but it is much better than my Samsung Z Fold 5. Overall, it is almost the perfect phone I have dreamed of for years, and ZTE delivered it.
The software is okok. It is quite stock Android and runs the latest Android 14. There are some nice additional features, but it is nothing compared to what Samsung offers. I found many things missing from it, but it is fully usable with some alternative solutions. From what I heard, some users in motherland may complain about the software. Well, you have very customised Android UIs in motherland. I find it reasonable that they may not like it. Ultimately, it depends on your use case. Why buy this phone in the first place? A cooler phone or maybe you want a large 6500 mAh battery, or you just want to play games?
Yeah, games. That’s probably why many may purchase this device. Well, what can you play on it? Almost all Android games, I believe they should run very smoothly. The cooling fan is quite helpful to keep the phone cool. However, if you run it using a very high profile, like Raise or Diablo mode, the phone can get very hot up to 60 degrees. To me, it is too hot to hold the device.
However, I am more of a retro gamer. That’s why I have my Razar Kishi V2 controller attached. This way, I don’t feel the heat directly. Well, I still can because of how hot the device can get. In the end, the controllers can get warm also. That’s very wild temperature control.
Most systems run very well on this device. I think it can go up to the Switch simulator. Yes, you can play Switch games better on this device in a way. I have tried dumping some of my games and playing on it. They run unbelievably well even in the balance mode. The Diablo mode goes even further to lock the framerate to a stable 30 for most games. There are some graphical glitches now due to the driver, but I believe they will be fixed soon. Yuzu should be the most intense simulator so far. I haven’t tried Vita3K since I own a PSVita, so there is no need. Everything else runs very smoothly and cool.
That’s about it I think. Very cool brick phone with crazy performance and burning temperature. The charging is too fast for a 25W super fast charge Samsung user. The battery lasts two days from 100% with a long screen time. Either a gaming or just a regular phone, it is a good one. However, I have not yet tried its Google services like Android Auto or Google Wallet. Last time, my Poco phone had some localisation issues.