ZTE Axon 7 Mini

The look of the Axon 7 Mini makes me question whether or not some sort of gun capable or producing a shrink ray exists in an evil doctor’s basement lab somewhere.

When looking at the Mini compared to its bigger brother, the Axon 7, the Mini is identical in design and layout. The same speaker grills sit above and below the display. The camera lens and fingerprint sensor are in the same spot, as are the Axon and ZTE logos on the back.
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The unlocked ZTE Axon 7 Mini's lower price comes at the cost of significantly pared down hardware. It's a decent midrange Android phone, but the Axon 7 is a better deal. It is only slightly smaller than the Axon 7. In fact, the size difference is hard to notice unless you actually put both phones side by side.The phone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor. It's a midrange chipset, nowhere near as powerful as the Snapdragon 820 you get in the larger device.There's also less RAM, 3GB instead of 4GB. read more →

The Axon 7 Mini falls short of being the platonic ideal of a “mini” phone, one that takes a flagship, features intact, and gives us a handset with a smaller screen. Instead, it practically turns that approach on its head, barely decreasing size at all, and instead bringing us a phone that might be better called the Axon 7 Lite, dialing back on processing power and bells and whistles.

But that doesn't make the Axon 7 Mini a bad phone by any stretch, either. read more →