yea this phone is still great and worth it, specially if you can get it without the update. i love the phone but i cant stand that i have to turn wifi off every day. i only use it as a wifi phone, so the battery drain kills me. but legit still one of the best phones ive ever had for sure.
just want it to get updated again so its fixed, used to be able to use it for 7 days straight before needing to charge it. but if i leave wifi on its drained in less then 12 hours.
Still using my non-updated V8 so I'll be checking in once in a while to see if it's safe to take the Feb. update. I'm guessing ZTE will just move on from here and forget about all the ruined V8s but ya never know. Battery life is still fantastic on mine!!!:):)
I recently read about the ZTE ban essentially being lifted, great news. I'm not sure if it was an old used one but I recently tried out an ebay galaxy s7 but the camera arrived cracked so I sent it back for refund, the battery appeared to drain quite quick though and was lackluster even with high performance mode, location, and bluetooth off. After hearing such great claims about this v8 blade pro's battery is one of the main things making me want this phone. After "window shopping" around online all month I've narrowed it down to possibly another s7, an lg g5 or v20, or this v8 blade pro. I hear lots of praise online for the honor 7x, but I personally grew quite a bit of disdain for its older sibling the 6x due to their heavy and bloated overlay/skin which ends up glitching, hanging, lagging the phone out...I've heard many of the same claims for the 7x too sadly. Great battery life, dual cams, 1080p screen, cheap price, and light nearly vanilla android skin are what keep bringing me back to this v8 blade pro. Battery life is indeed important to me, it's why I actually got rid of an iphone 6s before, it was quite the battery guzzler especially when out and about using actual mobile data instead of wifi. I've noticed phones in general tend to use more battery on mobile data vs wifi at home.
I've become a bit of a budget phone connoisseur over the years, I've never used an android flagship as a daily driver before but am intrigued about this phone, several sites said it's feature packed just like a flagship....3gb ram, 625 octa core cpu, 1080p screen, nfc, type c charging, good battery, dual cams should stand the test of time.
I still have one of my V8's but now drive a LG-G6 most of the time. Any word on ZTE kickin out a fix for all the broken V8s that took the Feb security patch?????
@Ock1 said:
I still have one of my V8's but now drive a LG-G6 most of the time. Any word on ZTE kickin out a fix for all the broken V8s that took the Feb security patch?????
Unfortunately @Ock1 I think this phone has been forgotten about. Which really sucks. I'll be looking into a new phone when I can.
After trying out two android flagships(s7 and v20) and not finding them much better than a $40 vanilla android cheap moto e4, and sometimes worse due to poor battery life and lag, glitching, and heating issues, I'm likely about to pick up a v8 pro finally. I greatly value battery life, which this v20 I'm currently using is lacking, not much better than the previous iphone 6S I used before. It's just sad it's not much better than a $40 Moto E4...the stock camera app is horrible on the v20, turning up soft undetailed pics, I don't want to tinker with manual settings, I just like a decent point and shoot camera decent enough for social media pics. With a 3rd party google cam port apk, the v20 produces good quality pics, although the google cam produces really "cold" looking pictures which honestly are way less pleasing to my eyes than the warmer stock camera app, and even a spare iphone I have laying around takes pleasing warmer pictures than that google cam port >_>
One final question though if anybody ever really encounters this in daily usage, since it's an older android OS version, do emoji commonly show up as boxes with an x in them...? when I used a cheap galaxy j3 last year on marshmallow, certain random emoji would show up as boxes with an x in them since the older android OS didn't support them, whether they were newer ios emotes or android emotes I couldn't say for sure, but it was frustrating and embarrassing not being able to see what friends sent me or posted in comments and me having to ask what they even sent.
I don't remember having any problems with emoji not showing up properly. As far as the camera goes, it tends to blow highlights out badly. I used a couple of 3rd party camera apps that allowed contrast adjustment and had to turn it way down to get bright areas to not look completely washed-out white. I also turned "wavelet denoise" off; that did introduce some noise in photos but kept a lot more fine detail. With those adjustments, the Blade V8 Pro's camera turned out to be one of the best phone cameras I've had.
"The best part is shooting with HDR ON is nearly just as quick as shooting without (although saving the photo can take a little more time).
We also learned that in today’s world, you don’t have to spend $600 to find a smartphone capable of delivering “iPhone-like” photo quality. In fact, in the case of the Honor 6X or ZTE Blade V8 Pro, often times your photos will come out looking better than if you wasted all that money on the iPhone 7. If that’s not telling of how quickly mobile camera technology is advancing, I don’t know what is."
nice to know the v8's cam can be quite respectable, that was the biggest con I remember with various super cheap budget androids over the years, the camera's being bad quality and quite blurry.
Pretty happy with the LG G6's I picked up so I unloaded my last V8 Pro but will be keeping a Blade Z for mini tablet duty. I never really liked the size and weight of the V8 but it was a really good phone.
Looks like they have abandoned the V8 Pro. So I have abandoned ZTE. First they didn't patch security exploits for many months, then once they did the patch introduced battery drain issues they have never been fixed or even touched. Shame on ZTE.
@Kellmourn I'm with you there. Once I have the money saved up I'm getting a Motorola g6. I will also be joining in the boycott of ZTE. Not only have they failed to keep at the bare minimum security updates, but they have been known to bundle spyware in their phones, for example TouchPal keyboard. Any third party apps have the potential for security leaks. Although options are available to disable it, but it's not disabled completely. If they were smart they would allow us to unlock our bootloaders, root our phones so we can uninstall pre-installed apps such as that. Thank you, drive through please. And don't forget to try the new mint milkshake.
Comments
yea this phone is still great and worth it, specially if you can get it without the update. i love the phone but i cant stand that i have to turn wifi off every day. i only use it as a wifi phone, so the battery drain kills me. but legit still one of the best phones ive ever had for sure.
just want it to get updated again so its fixed, used to be able to use it for 7 days straight before needing to charge it. but if i leave wifi on its drained in less then 12 hours.
i miss my battery life
The ban is lifted!!!!!!! Welcome back @sshasan and @jimlloyd40. When you guys get back.
Jim Lloyd was banned. He wasn't a community employee....
Ah I did not know that. Well anyway welcome back ZTE. Let kick the tires and light the fires.
Still using my non-updated V8 so I'll be checking in once in a while to see if it's safe to take the Feb. update. I'm guessing ZTE will just move on from here and forget about all the ruined V8s but ya never know. Battery life is still fantastic on mine!!!:):)
@Aerospaceman is Sam's counterpart on here.
I recently read about the ZTE ban essentially being lifted, great news. I'm not sure if it was an old used one but I recently tried out an ebay galaxy s7 but the camera arrived cracked so I sent it back for refund, the battery appeared to drain quite quick though and was lackluster even with high performance mode, location, and bluetooth off. After hearing such great claims about this v8 blade pro's battery is one of the main things making me want this phone. After "window shopping" around online all month I've narrowed it down to possibly another s7, an lg g5 or v20, or this v8 blade pro. I hear lots of praise online for the honor 7x, but I personally grew quite a bit of disdain for its older sibling the 6x due to their heavy and bloated overlay/skin which ends up glitching, hanging, lagging the phone out...I've heard many of the same claims for the 7x too sadly. Great battery life, dual cams, 1080p screen, cheap price, and light nearly vanilla android skin are what keep bringing me back to this v8 blade pro. Battery life is indeed important to me, it's why I actually got rid of an iphone 6s before, it was quite the battery guzzler especially when out and about using actual mobile data instead of wifi. I've noticed phones in general tend to use more battery on mobile data vs wifi at home.
I've become a bit of a budget phone connoisseur over the years, I've never used an android flagship as a daily driver before but am intrigued about this phone, several sites said it's feature packed just like a flagship....3gb ram, 625 octa core cpu, 1080p screen, nfc, type c charging, good battery, dual cams should stand the test of time.
I still have one of my V8's but now drive a LG-G6 most of the time. Any word on ZTE kickin out a fix for all the broken V8s that took the Feb security patch?????
Unfortunately @Ock1 I think this phone has been forgotten about. Which really sucks. I'll be looking into a new phone when I can.
i dont understand why this phone would be forgotten. its literally their best selling phone. that seems like a poor choice to forget about it
After trying out two android flagships(s7 and v20) and not finding them much better than a $40 vanilla android cheap moto e4, and sometimes worse due to poor battery life and lag, glitching, and heating issues, I'm likely about to pick up a v8 pro finally. I greatly value battery life, which this v20 I'm currently using is lacking, not much better than the previous iphone 6S I used before. It's just sad it's not much better than a $40 Moto E4...the stock camera app is horrible on the v20, turning up soft undetailed pics, I don't want to tinker with manual settings, I just like a decent point and shoot camera decent enough for social media pics. With a 3rd party google cam port apk, the v20 produces good quality pics, although the google cam produces really "cold" looking pictures which honestly are way less pleasing to my eyes than the warmer stock camera app, and even a spare iphone I have laying around takes pleasing warmer pictures than that google cam port >_>
One final question though if anybody ever really encounters this in daily usage, since it's an older android OS version, do emoji commonly show up as boxes with an x in them...? when I used a cheap galaxy j3 last year on marshmallow, certain random emoji would show up as boxes with an x in them since the older android OS didn't support them, whether they were newer ios emotes or android emotes I couldn't say for sure, but it was frustrating and embarrassing not being able to see what friends sent me or posted in comments and me having to ask what they even sent.
I don't remember having any problems with emoji not showing up properly. As far as the camera goes, it tends to blow highlights out badly. I used a couple of 3rd party camera apps that allowed contrast adjustment and had to turn it way down to get bright areas to not look completely washed-out white. I also turned "wavelet denoise" off; that did introduce some noise in photos but kept a lot more fine detail. With those adjustments, the Blade V8 Pro's camera turned out to be one of the best phone cameras I've had.
Thx for your info, I too read iffy things about the v8 blade pro's cam, this one site in a comparison claimed enabling HDR on the v8's cam largely fixes the problem, https://phandroid.com/2017/02/22/zte-blade-v8-pro-vs-iphone-7-honor-6x-hdr-camera/
"The best part is shooting with HDR ON is nearly just as quick as shooting without (although saving the photo can take a little more time).
We also learned that in today’s world, you don’t have to spend $600 to find a smartphone capable of delivering “iPhone-like” photo quality. In fact, in the case of the Honor 6X or ZTE Blade V8 Pro, often times your photos will come out looking better than if you wasted all that money on the iPhone 7. If that’s not telling of how quickly mobile camera technology is advancing, I don’t know what is."
nice to know the v8's cam can be quite respectable, that was the biggest con I remember with various super cheap budget androids over the years, the camera's being bad quality and quite blurry.
Pretty happy with the LG G6's I picked up so I unloaded my last V8 Pro but will be keeping a Blade Z for mini tablet duty. I never really liked the size and weight of the V8 but it was a really good phone.
still no fix for wifi power drain? so depressing
i read some people were able to update out of the dreaded update 22 and save their phone, but i legit cant find out how they did it... any ideas?