• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

ZMax Pro ridiculously glitchy

I bought this phone on sale from MetroPCS and from week 1 immediately had issues with it.. Have no insurance on it and currently no Wireless carrier, using it only on WiFi. Just trying to understand what might be going on with it because the internet says this is a great phone but I've never owned a phone that performs so poorly and has SO many pervasive issues.... I'll try to be brief but I'd just love to hear if I seem to be the only one?

1) Keyboard malfunctions extremely frequently, tried stock Android and SwiftKey. When typing, it will randomly take my input and jumble it up in a nonsensical fashion. For example let's say I type the word 'great' , hitting every key cleanly. Sometimes I'll get 'great', sometimes I'll get 'gr3a t' , sometimes I'll get 'gr@rt', there's no rhyme or reason. It randomly decides to capitalize letters, sometimes it will enter the associated symbol for that letter such as '@' for 'a'... Sometimes it will insert a space, or random punctuation. Using portrait or landscape mode makes no difference. (I just typed the word 'difference' and first it returned 'xifvefenn e' and second it returned 'differ3nce' .) the microphone key trips about 20 or more times per day also, resulting in a pop up message stating it is sending an audio transcript to Google for speech recognition. Just in creating this post it has sent four audio transcripts to Google.

2) Alarm clock doesn't work consistently. Regardless of power settings or which app I use, any alarm that I set will either work normally, vibrate only and never sound regardless of Alarm volume, or neither vibrate nor sound whatsoever. Has been doing this since day 1.

3) Extremely slow camera app operation (it just returned 'ope5ayjo' instead of 'operation'). Regardless of available storage, RAM, etc the screen refresh rate when operating the rear camera is something like 5 frames/second. Any motion whatsoever results in extreme motion blur and unusable photos, so I have to manually set the dhigget speed (I typed shudder speed) etc. Doing so results in poor but usable photos but only affects the photo, not what's displayed)

4) WiFi connections that arent extremely strong will randomly disconnect/drop and disappear from Available networks for several refresh cycles. Available networks also randomly show WiFi connections that are not present, such as it showing an Open Network that is miles away.

5) Unpredictable battery usage and unpredictable charging speeds. Running the same app with the same settings, screen brightness, volume etc, sometimes it will run 5 hours on a charge, sometimes 1.5 hours. Charge speed is erratic.

6) No persistence for apps, websites forms etc... if I move another app to the top, for example changing my focus from Google Chrome to Settings to find my android version, when I go back to Chrome it will be a blank page and Reloads, so I constantly have to select all and copy everything I type.


I've attempted to update Android but even after doing a Factory Reset it says my version is up to date... It's running 6.0.1 and ZTE System Update version 1.0.0B21. Performance is generally poor and even the most basic games, such as a 100mb turn-based 2-dimensional game, will skip and lag.
 
Thanks, I've had it for too long now though and I stopped paying for the network- Shoulda, woulda, coulda....it's definitely gotten much worse over the months but I do remember that right out of the box, the Alarm didn't work properly and the Camera issues were present as well. Somewhere along the way I remember doing a Factory reset on it after being advised that a lot of the issues sounded like Android system problems... And doing that reset seemed to make things much worse actually-before I found a free app that did some file system repairs iirc, the phone would show 'Optimizing app 1 of 1' during boot up, and every time the phone booted regardless of whether it was shut down or restarted, etc it took 20-30 minutes to complete every boot. I remember reading somewhere that some of my symptoms were indicative of a corrupted file system or something like that
 
  • Like
Reactions: psionandy
Upvote 0
It's a phone that cost $99 new when released. The Pro is a buggy phone so some of the issues you are seeing are due to it being a 2 year old phone w/only 2GB RAM and some glitches that came out of the box and no more support or updates. It is stuck on Marshmallow.

I wonder if you got a refurb - maybe a returned phone that they never bothered to check the phone to make sure it still worked properly after a return.

I still use my Zmax Pro as a tablet and once in a while as a phone to give my S8+ a "rest" and when I want a big screen.



I use Swiftkey with no issues. Alarm clock works fine. I use the alarm every day even when I use it as a "tablet" w/no sim card. My camera works fine and actually takes decent photos.

Wifi connections are weak. My S8+ at work still has a strong wifi connection even though I am upstairs and the router is downstairs. My ZMax Pro is shaky on the wifi when I'm at work

The battery and charging are erratic. Again, not much can be done about it.

B21 is the latest and final update.

I use alot of 3rd party apps when using this phone because the stock apps are weak. Nova Launcher Prime w/Tesla Unread, Android Messages, Swiftkey (Stock is google keyboard which worked fine but I use Swiftkey, and a 3rd party weather/clock widget. I clear cache partition once in a while because this phone is just too limited and too old.

BTW, What is this free app that you are talking about that did "file system repairs"?
 
Upvote 0

BEST TECH IN 2023

We've been tracking upcoming products and ranking the best tech since 2007. Thanks for trusting our opinion: we get rewarded through affiliate links that earn us a commission and we invite you to learn more about us.

Smartphones