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Amongst the other announcements from ZTE at Mobile World Congress this week, the company is announcing that they are rolling out Android 6.0 Marshmallow to their flagship, Axon Pro. The ZTE Axon Pro was announced back in July of 2015. It was pretty much a secret, many didn’t expect to see a high-end flagship from ZTE launching in the US – let alone one running virtually stock Android. On top of that, the ZTE Axon Pro was sold unlocked only – worked on AT&T and T-Mobile only – and was priced at $499 for the 32GB. Price has since come down, and just last week the 64GB model was running at under $400. Which is actually a really good buy when you think about it.
The update to Android 6.0 Marshmallow is available today for the ZTE Axon Pro. You can grab the update by heading into Settings > About Phone > System Updates and tapping on “Update Now”. As ZTE notes in their blog post, the update is rather large, weighing in at about 835MB in size. So you’ll definitely want to be sure you are on WiFi ahead of actually downloading and installing the update on your Axon Pro.
Marshmallow brings quite a few new features to the Axon Pro, and as the Axon Pro basically runs stock Android, you’ll actually see them (instead of a manufacturer skin covering them up). Two of the more important features in Marshmallow include Doze and Now on Tap. Doze is perhaps a fan favorite in Marshmallow. It allows your smartphone or tablet to get pretty impressive standby time. Allowing your smartphone to go into deep sleep when it hasn’t been used for quite some time. The other is Now on Tap, allowing you to get information from Google Now anywhere in the OS. Particularly useful for when you need to get some information on a web page or an email. There’s a third feature that ZTE is noting in their blog post, which is the changed app drawer. What they are referring to here are the changes in the Google Now Launcher. Which means that the Axon Pro is no longer using a slightly customized launcher. So your most used apps are pinned at the top while the rest of the app drawer is sorted alphabetically and scrolls vertically.