ZTE Axon 10 Pro has an Android 10 update you can sideload

Although not banned in the US like Huawei, ZTE hasn't been able to truly recover its footing in the US smartphone market. The Axon 7 may have been its last notable phone despite the Axon 10 Pro using every trick in the book to appeal to the US market. It seems that the company is at least rewarding the few loyal customers that did get that flagship and is now rolling out its Android 10 update, one you won't have to wait for to install on your ZTE Axon 10 Pro.

On a technical level, ZTE's flagship phone ain't all that bad, especially considering the $550 price tag it carried. It had the latest, at least by early 2019 standards, Snapdragon 855 processor, 8 or 12 GB of RAM, and a 6.47-inch FHD+ display with a waterdrop notch. It was far from perfect, of course, and the cameras, despite having the megapixel count, didn't exactly perform as advertised.

In terms of software, ZTE's MiFavor Android skin may not exactly be the most favored but that's all that ZTE phone owners can get without installing a different ROM. ZTE definitely surprised many by releasing the Android 10 version of its customized experience in December, ahead of many other OEMs, and now that has started to roll out to users.

XDA reported that the Axon 10 Pro in Europe started to receive MiFavor 10, based on Android 10, a few days ago but ZTE apparently had one surprise for US owners, too. At the bottom of the phone's US product page, one will see a download for the Android 10 update which they can install from a microSD card through the phone's recovery mode.

Of course, the process can be daunting for most consumers who'd prefer to wait for a proper OTA to hit their devices. Still, almost no other manufacturer provides downloads for firmware updates, making ZTE's surprise move a welcome one as well.