**First Impressions: ZTE zMAX with T-Mobile SIM**

As I take the ZTE zMAX out of its box, I'm excited to put it through its paces and see what this mid-range offering has to offer. The phone's design is a sleek black slate, which initially makes it look quite attractive. However, as I pick it up, I notice that it's a bit large and unwieldy, with a 5.7-inch display surrounded by a significant amount of bezel. This means that using the phone with one hand is not going to be easy, and I'll likely find myself relying on two hands most of the time.

**Unlocking the Phone**

To get started, I need to unlock the phone. Unlike some other devices, there's no swiping motion required; instead, I just need to hold down on the screen for a few seconds to activate it. This is a relief, as I'm not exactly fond of the swipe gesture that many Android phones use. As I wait for the screen to boot up, I notice that the phone has already set up with a T-Mobile SIM card, which is a nice touch.

**System Settings and Software Version**

Once the phone is unlocked, I jump into the system settings to check out the software version. To my surprise, it's Android 4.4.2 (KitKat), albeit an older version than what some other phones are shipping with these days. The interface looks fairly stock, which suggests that ZTE hasn't made too many changes from the original Android design. I do notice a few additional features, however, such as Quick Settings and some custom buttons.

**Camera and Display**

One of the camera lenses is actually quite nice to look at, with a 8-megapixel sensor on the back and a 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera. I'm eager to see how these cameras perform in our full review, but for now, it's hard to say too much without taking some photos myself. The display itself looks quite nice, with a decent screen size and a good brightness level. However, the bezel around the edges does make the phone feel slightly unwieldy.

**Full Review Coming Soon**

That's all for my first impressions of the ZTE zMAX with T-Mobile SIM. In our full review, we'll be taking a closer look at the camera, performance, and overall user experience of this mid-range Android device. We'll also be discussing its design flaws and whether they're worth the compromise in terms of price. If you're interested in learning more about this phone, be sure to check back soon for our full review.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enit's been a little while since I've seen zce much less held one in my hand uh which is why I was actually kind of excited when this particular film made it onto my doorstep hey it's Josh vagar from Android authority what's going on everybody and it's time to unbox and get my first impressions on the ZTE zMAX for T-Mobile all right and here we are with the ZTE Z Max now we have a pretty colorful box right here and as you're going to see right on the corner here it is made for T-Mobile so I did have a T-Mobile card SIM card available with this box and uh it was already perforated out so the SIM card should already be inside of this particular phone so we're just going to go ahead and jump into the actual phone itself or the contents of the Box rather so get the things out of the way and we have a nice big plastic bag right here with the 5.7 in device right here now I'm going to go ahead and take that out of the plastic in a little bit but let's see what else we get inside of the Box CTE bringing you closer as it says right there we're going to go and get that middle part out of the way and we have some pretty big pieces of plastic here even some bubble wrap right there which is kind of interesting uh but as far as the other peripherals go what we're going to have inside this box is a micro USB charging cable if I'm not mistaken along with the plug adapter there you go the plug adapter for us plugs and of course the charging cable we also get a tool for removing the SIM card or the SIM tray rather and another card with the T-Mobile SIM in it so I'm going to double check if the T-Mobile SIM is already inside of the phone but looks like we have an extra one here if I so choose to use it uh couple of manuals right here especially for T-Mobile uh documentation which we'll just leave over on the side and here we are the 5.7 in ZTE Z Max uh well we do have a rounded feel on the back but I'll go ahead and remove uh first thing I notice and I'll go ahead and remove the plastic here and then we'll get go ahead and get into the initial thoughts all right here's the actual device itself like I said already there's a bit of a curve over on the sides uh that kind of move into the backing and it does allow it to sit pretty nicely in the hand right here um the gripping on the sides is not quite as ideal because they're not flat obviously so you're going to have a little bit of a curve downward on your thumb and fingers over on the other side but that's just the initial thought when it comes to the fuel we'll go ahead and just remove the plastic right here there you go it's a really simplistic backing really it has just the ZTE logo right there with the camera Optics up top and then a slit on the bottom for the actual speakers if you look over on the sides we have the power button over here on the right side along with the SIM tray and if we move over to the other side we have the volume rocker with the micro SD card slot all right and here we are we didn't exactly have a setup that we had to do we'll just go ahead and Jump Right In we can long press the screen to unlock so it's not a swipe we don't really have a swipe here but you had to just sort of hold it there I'll show you that one more time it's a bit of a different lock screen that we have here just hold and there you go so what we have here is Android 4.4 or at least as it says in the Box we'll go and take a look at that in a bit uh that icon on the top right right there that says 4G LTE is all the confirmation I need to say that there's already a T-Mobile SIM in here so we're going to go ahead and get started pretty quick quickly we already have some T-Mobile messages right here so we are good to go in that regard head back so we have cap passive Keys here on the bottom and that includes a menu button right here we'll go ahead and jump into the system settings and just take a look a little bit at the software version so it looks like it's 4.4.2 so it is KitKat it is a somewhat older version of KitKat but that's all right 4.4.2 and it looks like it keeps a pretty stock looking Android right here uh ZTE doesn't really seem like they're really changing the formula too much especially if we look over here we have the notification drop down with the Quick Settings right here uh that includes some added uh buttons right here that aren't necessarily found in the real stock Android if you're looking for a good mid-range entry or just something that really kind of works gives you the Bare Essentials at the very least when it comes to your Android device the ZTE zMAX might be it so we're going to take even further looks at this phone before we get into our full review as far as the look and feel of of this device I do think that it's a pretty nice looking device but you can already see it in my hand it's kind of large and it does come with a 5.7 in display but as I turn on the screen right here you're going to see that there's actually quite a bit of bezel around that display that otherwise actually looks quite nice uh but the problem is when you already have 5.7 in in the screen and you add a lot of growth on the top and bottom and then if you look on the sides you actually have a pretty good bezel right there it actually makes this phone a little bit unwieldy and with that curve on the sides that leads to the back uh this phone's a little bit unwieldy I I have to admit uh it's not the worst looking device it actually looks pretty nice like I said already but being able to just get around with one hand it's definitely not something you're going to be able to do easily with the zMAX you will be using this with two hands probably in landscape more often than not uh but otherwise it's a nice black slate design and I do have to give it some credit for actually looking pretty attractive uh to further the fact that this is a mid-range offering we do have an 8 megap camera on the back with 1.6 megapixels in the front-facing camera now I did take a look at the interface a little bit it's one of the few places so far that I've seen that has changed that ZTE has changed from the original stock like uh feel of Android and it does provide you quite a few different modes including a manual mode that did provide quite a few options in order for you to change the shot to what you need it to be uh as far as camera quality goes we're obviously going to be waiting for our full review to show you that but that is just a quick look at the ZTE zMAX um in my case for T-Mobile and I'm pretty excited to take a look at this because ZTE is a is a phone uh company that I haven't really really played with their phones in a little while and with this one coming on my doorstep I just knew I had to give my first impressions on it and show them to you so keep it tuned to Android Authority for the zMAX full review as it's going to be coming soon and for all of our other coverage you can see a couple videos over on the side and make sure that you drop us some likes on our videos subscribe to our Channel if you haven't already and once you're done with all of that watch some more videos and then head on over to androidauthority.com because we are your source for all things Androidit's been a little while since I've seen zce much less held one in my hand uh which is why I was actually kind of excited when this particular film made it onto my doorstep hey it's Josh vagar from Android authority what's going on everybody and it's time to unbox and get my first impressions on the ZTE zMAX for T-Mobile all right and here we are with the ZTE Z Max now we have a pretty colorful box right here and as you're going to see right on the corner here it is made for T-Mobile so I did have a T-Mobile card SIM card available with this box and uh it was already perforated out so the SIM card should already be inside of this particular phone so we're just going to go ahead and jump into the actual phone itself or the contents of the Box rather so get the things out of the way and we have a nice big plastic bag right here with the 5.7 in device right here now I'm going to go ahead and take that out of the plastic in a little bit but let's see what else we get inside of the Box CTE bringing you closer as it says right there we're going to go and get that middle part out of the way and we have some pretty big pieces of plastic here even some bubble wrap right there which is kind of interesting uh but as far as the other peripherals go what we're going to have inside this box is a micro USB charging cable if I'm not mistaken along with the plug adapter there you go the plug adapter for us plugs and of course the charging cable we also get a tool for removing the SIM card or the SIM tray rather and another card with the T-Mobile SIM in it so I'm going to double check if the T-Mobile SIM is already inside of the phone but looks like we have an extra one here if I so choose to use it uh couple of manuals right here especially for T-Mobile uh documentation which we'll just leave over on the side and here we are the 5.7 in ZTE Z Max uh well we do have a rounded feel on the back but I'll go ahead and remove uh first thing I notice and I'll go ahead and remove the plastic here and then we'll get go ahead and get into the initial thoughts all right here's the actual device itself like I said already there's a bit of a curve over on the sides uh that kind of move into the backing and it does allow it to sit pretty nicely in the hand right here um the gripping on the sides is not quite as ideal because they're not flat obviously so you're going to have a little bit of a curve downward on your thumb and fingers over on the other side but that's just the initial thought when it comes to the fuel we'll go ahead and just remove the plastic right here there you go it's a really simplistic backing really it has just the ZTE logo right there with the camera Optics up top and then a slit on the bottom for the actual speakers if you look over on the sides we have the power button over here on the right side along with the SIM tray and if we move over to the other side we have the volume rocker with the micro SD card slot all right and here we are we didn't exactly have a setup that we had to do we'll just go ahead and Jump Right In we can long press the screen to unlock so it's not a swipe we don't really have a swipe here but you had to just sort of hold it there I'll show you that one more time it's a bit of a different lock screen that we have here just hold and there you go so what we have here is Android 4.4 or at least as it says in the Box we'll go and take a look at that in a bit uh that icon on the top right right there that says 4G LTE is all the confirmation I need to say that there's already a T-Mobile SIM in here so we're going to go ahead and get started pretty quick quickly we already have some T-Mobile messages right here so we are good to go in that regard head back so we have cap passive Keys here on the bottom and that includes a menu button right here we'll go ahead and jump into the system settings and just take a look a little bit at the software version so it looks like it's 4.4.2 so it is KitKat it is a somewhat older version of KitKat but that's all right 4.4.2 and it looks like it keeps a pretty stock looking Android right here uh ZTE doesn't really seem like they're really changing the formula too much especially if we look over here we have the notification drop down with the Quick Settings right here uh that includes some added uh buttons right here that aren't necessarily found in the real stock Android if you're looking for a good mid-range entry or just something that really kind of works gives you the Bare Essentials at the very least when it comes to your Android device the ZTE zMAX might be it so we're going to take even further looks at this phone before we get into our full review as far as the look and feel of of this device I do think that it's a pretty nice looking device but you can already see it in my hand it's kind of large and it does come with a 5.7 in display but as I turn on the screen right here you're going to see that there's actually quite a bit of bezel around that display that otherwise actually looks quite nice uh but the problem is when you already have 5.7 in in the screen and you add a lot of growth on the top and bottom and then if you look on the sides you actually have a pretty good bezel right there it actually makes this phone a little bit unwieldy and with that curve on the sides that leads to the back uh this phone's a little bit unwieldy I I have to admit uh it's not the worst looking device it actually looks pretty nice like I said already but being able to just get around with one hand it's definitely not something you're going to be able to do easily with the zMAX you will be using this with two hands probably in landscape more often than not uh but otherwise it's a nice black slate design and I do have to give it some credit for actually looking pretty attractive uh to further the fact that this is a mid-range offering we do have an 8 megap camera on the back with 1.6 megapixels in the front-facing camera now I did take a look at the interface a little bit it's one of the few places so far that I've seen that has changed that ZTE has changed from the original stock like uh feel of Android and it does provide you quite a few different modes including a manual mode that did provide quite a few options in order for you to change the shot to what you need it to be uh as far as camera quality goes we're obviously going to be waiting for our full review to show you that but that is just a quick look at the ZTE zMAX um in my case for T-Mobile and I'm pretty excited to take a look at this because ZTE is a is a phone uh company that I haven't really really played with their phones in a little while and with this one coming on my doorstep I just knew I had to give my first impressions on it and show them to you so keep it tuned to Android Authority for the zMAX full review as it's going to be coming soon and for all of our other coverage you can see a couple videos over on the side and make sure that you drop us some likes on our videos subscribe to our Channel if you haven't already and once you're done with all of that watch some more videos and then head on over to androidauthority.com because we are your source for all things Android\n"