ZTE will hold its Industrial Terminal Summit and Spring Product Launch on April 12, and the Axon 50 Ultra smartphone will be the star of the show. Unlike last year’s Axon 40 Ultra, which boasted the company’s under-display camera technology, the new smartphone will feature a traditional selfie camera housed in a hole. Instead, a popular feature that has sparked excitement in the industry – satellite connectivity – will appear.

The Axon 50 Ultra will debut in China first, and the main event is scheduled for April 12 at 13:30 CET. The phone will have the ability to orchestrate BeiDou satellite communications and is touted as the first secure 5G smartphone with SATCOM support. This allows users to send messages and location information to others even when there is no terrestrial network coverage.

Satellite connectivity is a relatively new feature, and the Huawei Mate 50 series was the first to offer it back in September. Not long after, Apple introduced the same feature in its latest iPhone 14 Pro smartphones. It was said that Samsung would also join the party, but the Korean company decided not to attend, saying it would wait until the technology matures.

Coming back to the ZTE smartphone, it is expected to have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC under the hood. As mentioned, the phone will get a central cutout for selfies. It can be seen that its screen is curved with sharp corners. The teaser image also shows that the volume and power buttons will be located on the right edge, while the left edge will remain blank.