What do manufacturers do when the word “Pro” has lost all meaning in describing phones?

We move to ULTRA!

The Axon 40 Ultra was a happy return for me.

I was a huge fan of ZTE phones during the Axon 7 era. I’ve been really curious what the company has to offer today. Judging whether the Axon 40 earns its “Ultra” badge, we should probably break down the current spectrum of phone pricing.

Reviewers fell into a lazy habit of mis-using the word “flagship”.

Flagship could mean the “best phones across the whole market”, or it could mean “the best phone one company has to offer”. The word was casually used to define several different ideas, and we would run into hilarious problems re-defining the word mid-sentence.

“This is the flagship phone from a budget brand, but it’s not a flagship tier phone compared against more expensive flagship products.”

Reviewers really aren’t great at defining these differences, and mostly fall back on marketing to help them position comparisons. When we use vague words to create our comparisons, it’s a lot easier to HELP some brands win over others.

I used to hold to a three-tier phone category based on MSRP and the category of phone I was reviewing. I shot a video on phone types embedded below, but I broadly sort features for Communicator, Multi-Media, Productivity, Content Creation, and Gaming phones.

After deciding on the type of phone, then I look at the collection of features balanced against the MSRP.

We KNOW phones devalue fast and go on sale. Pricing is super fluid. The MSRP is a claim made by the manufacturer that sets the potential value of the product.

“We believe our phone deserves comparisons at THIS tier of the market.”

The three pricing tiers I used were Entry, Mid-range, and Premium. There’s a healthy overlap between those tiers, but I broke down prices GENERALLY like this:

• Entry = $100 – $299 ish
• Mid-Range = $300 – $600 ish
• Premium = Above $600

I realized I was shifting those numbers around, and over the last two years, it really hasn’t made sense to keep only three tiers. Manufacturers are increasingly pushing MSRPs higher, but the $600 range is still a great sweet spot for high performance products.

ENTER THE ULTRA

Going to four price tiers looks like this:

• Entry = $100 – $299 ish
• Mid-Range = $300 – $600 ish
• Premium = $600 to $1000 ish
• Ultra = Above $1000

People will debate on those dividing lines, but they work for me. I figure there’s probably a $50-$100 buffer between those prices. Someone might consider a $325 phone more of an entry level option than a mid-ranger, as one example.

Which brings us back to the Axon.

The Axon 40 Ultra has the “Ultra” name, but the MSRP tops out at $899. Where do I properly rank and compare this phone?

In years past, techies fell in love with the concept of “flagship killers”. Are we now going to find a “Premium” tier of phones labeled “Ultra Killers”?

The 256GB version of the Axon slots in-between my price tiers. It lives in the gray area. It’s a conflict between MSRP and Marketing.

So, What is an ULTRA?

An Ultra should have features that justify the higher price tag.

That’s easy for me to type, but harder to define in practical terms.

Techies have a fixation on spec sheets, and often conflate numbers like camera megapixels as being “gooder or badder”, but some of that spec measuring makes sense.

A Xiaomi 12S Ultra delivers on a promise, including the largest smartphone camera main sensor currently in production. A Galaxy Ultra has a Quad camera setup, an active pen stylus, and Dex.

There’s nothing “avuraj cunzoomer” about these Ultra phones.

I expect an Ultra phone to replace other expensive gadgets when I’m working on the go. I’m HAPPY to spend over $1000 on a phone, when that phone can replace my need to carry $3000 worth of camera gear or my $2000 gaming laptop. I consider that phone money well spent.

Which brings us back to the Axon.

The 40 Ultra is a gorgeously built, powerful, feature packed phone.

The trio of camera sensors are excellent, and the choices made for content creation are unique. The main camera has a NICE photographic look. The Ultra-Wide is the second largest sensor ever used for that role. The Telephoto similarly competes well against phones like the 12S Ultra and the Pixel 6 Pro. It’s only the second phone behind an XPERIA 1IV that can match 4K/120fps across all three rear sensors.

The front of the phone also features the best version of an Under Display Camera I’ve ever seen. This is easily two generations ahead of what Samsung currently offers, and makes the unbroken screen on the Axon one of the prettiest phone faces available.

Performance is well balanced for the Qualcomm SOC inside, though we do see some “management” on heavier lifting tasks, likely reigning in thermals. Battery life is respectable, and the 65W charging absolutely shames what Samsung can offer on their Ultra. That fast charger is in the box alongside a case and a headphone dongle, for a further cost savings against a Galaxy.

The Axon is a stunning application of hardware and manufacturing, but given the company’s history, I would imagine long term software support is likely an area where the company cuts costs. Beyond full yearly operating system updates, I HOPE that it receives several years of security patches, but there’s no guarantee from the company.

This makes a comparison really tricky.

Searching for the phone, it immediately gets compared against the Galaxy S22 Ultra. They’re both called “Ultra”, but that comparison feels incorrect.

It’s easy to line up two similar names.

ZTE is using “Ultra” as an emotional hook to make someone feel good about their purchase. Framing the Axon against significantly more expensive phones FEELS unfair though.

At the time this article was written, the 256GB version of the Galaxy Ultra was $1299 from Samsung direct. Giving the Samsung a $400 advantage over the ZTE, I think the ZTE performs admirably. It manages to compete well, though I think most would agree the Samsung probably takes more wins, feature for feature.

If we ignore the “Ultra” name, and focus more on the claim made by the MSRP, that pits the Axon against the Galaxy S22+.

MSRP to MSRP, the Samsung is $150 more expensive than the top-of-the-line Axon, but now the fight is reversed. There are precious few wins for the Galaxy. The Axon is less expensive, and it helps highlight the corners Samsung cut on the S22 and S22+.

I love a good underdog story…

The 40 Ultra is right on the knife’s edge between two very different sections of the phone market. Mostly weighting hardware, it performs above its price tag. Axon outpaces many “Plus” and “Pro” phones dollar for dollar, and it can give a more expensive phone healthy competition.

In my brain, emotionally, I WANT to lump it in with the highest tier of expensive phones, but it really doesn’t belong there. It’s the same emotional idea at play as the “Flagship Killer” fad. We want to feel clever for spending less on a high-performance phone.

It’s not an “L” for ZTE though.

Delivering one of the best “Premium” phones of 2022 should be applauded. This is a monster solution at the price. It’s a woefully underrated option that competes well against OnePlus, Moto, and Samsung. It has hardware advantages over an iPhone 13 at the same price. This is exactly the kind of competition we should hope to see from smaller players in the market.

As tech enthusiasts, we just need to do a better job of creating rules for comparisons and applying those rules consistently. Those rules are doubly important when a phone comes around that makes you think.

The Axon 40 Ultra challenged (and almost broke) my idea of what an “Ultra” tier phone should be. That’s not the time to get lazy with my classifications…