Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “When Smartphones Copy Each Other!”.
So this is the samsung galaxy note 20 ultra, and this is the zte axon 30 ultra hey! What’S up mkbhd here, so you know how you see a lot of people like clowning on companies for copying stuff like as if you should never copy anything and everything you always make in a piece of tech always has to be totally original. This might be a hot take, but not go ahead. Copy stuff, i’m totally fine with companies learning from each other’s successes and downfalls as long as they copy the good stuff, and on top of all that for my fellow business majors out there. This is all a perfect example of why the second mover advantage can be just as good as maybe even better than the first mover advantage in the tech world so case in point.
This is the zte axon 30 ultra now, the ultra in the name, is probably a dead giveaway. Before you even see the phone, this word gets thrown around a lot in a lot of the high-end smartphone space, but most popularly by samsung. So zte goes ahead and grabs that name great, but then they went on to put together a really compelling phone 10 months after the note 20 ultra came out, so you can see the design is pretty nice right and of course, there’s only so many ways to Make a glass rectangle look but they’ve clearly taken some nice cues from samsung the front and back are both gorilla glass, 5 and this glass back has an anti-glare finish. That does a great job of rejecting fingerprints. I really like it one of my favorite things about the note series also is that slightly boxier form factor, you know flatter edges slightly more squared off design, and it’s the same thing here with the zte. You can just stand it right up on its edge impressively easily.
It’S got a flat top and bottom same power, button and volume, rocker placement on the side and, of course, the now signature square camera table on the back which i’ll get to in a minute. Zte. Also curves the display over the edges just a little bit.
I think it’s right on the edge of starting to get some of those annoying accidental touches. So i’d want it to be just a little bit flatter, but it does a great job of looking good for the same reason, others have been doing this for so long. The only annoying part of this build to me is actually the rails, so samsung does a way better job of smoothly going from the front glass to the side rail to the back glass. So when you’re holding it, it’s just that smooth edge where this phone has a pretty big rail bump, especially on the back edge. So you could argue, maybe it’s a little easier to hold, but it just doesn’t feel as good. It doesn’t feel as seamless which i think is a bit less premium, but that camera square that camera square might be the most identifying feature of this phone just like it was with the note, 20 ultra, and so many other phones.
This time it’s a boxy square platform bump with this little tab on the side that says neovision photography. This is branding zte has used in some other phones in the past. Some might find it kind of random and unnecessary, but i think, along with this sort of rainbow finish on the camera glass, it gives it some personality. At least you know it’s not literally cloning. The note 20 ultra it’s more of just like copying the homework but then making a few changes so that it doesn’t look like it copied the homework. You know it is almost the same layout of cameras as the samsung, but not quite the same, and it is definitely not the same cameras at all, so you’re, getting a primary camera, an ultra wide, a medium telephoto and then a periscope telephoto, like you also get On samsung’s ultra, but the actual photo quality from these is it’s okay. It’S passable.
I mean, i guess, i’m not completely shocked that the camera isn’t as good as the note 20 ultra, which is some of the best cameras on any phone. But it is a little surprising that this triple 64 megapixel setup, plus a periscope and a camera bump. This big aren’t delivering at least really good photos most of the time, so this this truly is the hardest thing to copy, but it’s the biggest shortcoming of this phone, but this is probably a good time to bring up the prices of these phones right now. So the note 20 ultra, the first mover still to this day – costs 10.99 about 1100 bucks where the axon 30 ultra brand new 749. And so, even though this is a lower costing phone because it is brand new, i’d actually argue, it has better specs than the first mover right now.
It has the newer, more capable snapdragon, triple eight chip, the same base, storage and a little less ram, but a slightly larger battery and much faster 65 watt fast charging and up front. You even get a nice little bonus of an even faster refresh rate display. Now this is another perfect example of that second mover advantage, where the note 20 ultra at the time that it came out, probably the best display in any phone and i’d still say it’s overall, the nicer display right, it’s a little bigger and it gets closer to The edges and it’s brighter, and it has that 1440p resolution zte’s display here – is 1080p at 144 hertz, but guess what, when this first mover came out, it could not do 1440p and 120 hertz at the same time. So if you are a fan of high refresh rate you’re using this phone at 1080p already anyway, and so with the newer tech that’s out now, you can do a little smoother 144hz, but also you probably can’t tell the difference between 144 and 120. Nevertheless, they’re both very smooth, this axon 30 is super smooth and responsive through scrolling, animations and everything throughout the ui. At this point, it’s all really about how the software can take advantage of it. Zte’S display has a 300hz sampling rate. It’S a 10-bit oled that covers 100 of the p3 color gamut and it’s got a pretty small hole punch up top, it’s nice. I like gaming on it. I like watching videos on it.
It’S really nice, not quite as nice, as the top of the line. Samsung panel, but that costs a lot more, so this is a great display in a 750 phone, and even the software here is kind of interesting. This is android 11 with zte’s my os overlay on top of it and as you’ve probably already noticed by now. It has a look to it that includes some very big colorful touch targets in the quick settings, something android 12 is picking up very soon.
Actually, here you can customize, which quick settings show up underneath the huge ones, but the flashlight bluetooth data and wi-fi will just be gigantic same with the volume controls, though big colorful hard to miss, and then the rest of it is pretty basic, not too much bloatware. It’S nice and clean when you get the google page to the left of the home screen. If you want it, i’m a fan, but the point is the point is: if you get a whole bunch of these good things in one place, then it doesn’t really matter where you get them from right, like even if a bunch of them were obviously heavily inspired From a certain other thing, like the square camera bump, or the squared off design, or literally the name of the phone, because you’ll get other things from other places too, the 65 watt fast charging didn’t come from samsung or even 144 display, and then, of course, with This phone and every other phone there’s going to be little things that are new, so i got to give this one credit for a lot of that software stuff and especially the big touch targets, and things like that. This software is very well done and also i am working on a video about android 12, which will have a lot of these bigger aesthetics in them so definitely subscribe.
If you want to see that if you haven’t already so that’s pretty much all i wanted to say super quick video just wanted to get the thought out there that we should be okay with companies, especially in tech. They’Re gon na have to be copying each other and looking at what else is happening around them and as customers we should be okay with them, looking around learning from each other as long as they copy the good stuff. So i happen to use the axon 30. Ultra, which is pretty new as my example i’ll leave some full review links below if you’re interested. I think it’s a pretty good premium mid-range priced phone – it’s not perfect, though definitely does have its downsides, like this phone doesn’t have an official water and dust resistant. Ip rating doesn’t have wireless charging, it also doesn’t work on verizon, but this phone is 750 bucks for a reason and you get what you pay for, but if the things they have included are the things you like then well, you might have just found yourself a Really good deal so yeah. It kind of reminds me of that saying.
I think it’s a quote that good artists copy great artist steal, although i might modify that in this case, where good artists copy great artists copy, but then change it a little to make it look not as much of a copy. I think i think that’ll be my quote. So a lot of the thoughts and ideas i get for things i want to turn into videos definitely come from stuff. I watch and a lot of that is going to be things i watch on nebula, which is a streaming service built by independent creators, including myself, and that comes bundled with curiosity stream and nebula is pretty dope. There’S a lot of the smartest creators.
I know on there minute physics, renee, ritchie tech, alter all using nebula to share their best stuff and sometimes even trying new stuff that doesn’t quite work on youtube. I’Ve been putting my own videos on nebula, but the ad free versions. So you never see these ads on nebula, so you’re welcome for that shout out in an ad for the ad free version, but then there’s also curiosity stream, which is a subscription streaming service which has a lot of really well produced stuff. In my exact subjects of interest, so it’s home to thousands of documentaries and shows about technology and futurism and inventions and the social web all this kind of stuff you can see in the category drop down on their site.
It’S pretty amazing. There’S one called autonomy, which is really good. It’S all about us being on the dawn of completely self-driving cars that i’ve just started. It’S so good, also they’re in 4k, they’re ad-free couldn’t recommend it more.
So, since the two together are kind of a no-brainer, you can use my code or the link below to get both nebula and curiosity stream, bundled in one so definitely check it out. I feel like i’m, recommending a lot more of that stuff in the future, either way until the next one. Thanks for watching catch, you guys later peace, .