Nubia Smartphone is always a different experience. It’s never been an overwhelmingly delightful or agonizingly poor first encounter, but always a pretty daunting one to wrap your head around. Bold and distinct design, high-end hardware at a bargain price, original screen gestures – these have always been a prominent part of the package ever since the Nubia Z9.
Z17 keeps throwing curve balls, making it even harder to define what this phone is all about or put a finger on a single signature aspect or feature. This latest Nubia flagship comes with a trendy dual-camera setup and the beastly Snapdragon 835 chipset under the hood. The Z17 boasts Quick Charge 4+ support before everybody else, and ZTE still manages to hang an extremely competitive price tag on it. At about $465, the Nubia Z17 undercuts the OnePlus 5 and the Xiaomi Mi 6 by a few dollars, pointing to a less-than-subtle stab at the “cheapest Snapdragon 835 phone” title.
Nubia Z17 key features
- Body: Aluminum chassis, 2.5D Gorilla Glass. Aurora Blue, Black Gold, Obsidian Black, Solar Gold, Flame Red color schemes.
- Display: 5.5″ IPS LCD, 1,920×1,080px resolution, 403ppi.
- Rear cameras: Dual 12 MP, f/1.8 + 23 MP, f/2.0, 1/2.55″ sensor size, 1.4µm pixel size, phase detection autofocus, 2x lossless zoom, dual-LED (dual tone) flash; 2160p@30fps video recording
- Front camera: 16MP Sony IMX371 sensor, 1.0µm pixel size, f/2.0 aperture; 1080p/30fps video recording.
- OS/Software: Android 7.1.1 Nougat; nubia UI 5.0 custom overlay.
- Chipset: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835: octa-core CPU (Kryo 280, 4×2.35GHz + 4×1.9GHz), Adreno 540 GPU.
- Memory: 6/8GB of LPDDR4X RAM; 64/128GB UFS 2.1 storage.
- Battery: 3,200mAh Li-Po (sealed); Quick Charge 4+ fast charging support.
- Connectivity: Dual SIM; 3-Band carrier aggregation, LTE Cat.9 (450Mbps/50Mbps); USB Type-C (v1.0); Dual-band Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac; GPS, GLONASS, BDS; NFC; Bluetooth 5.0; Infrared port.
- Misc: Rear-mounted fingerprint reader; single speaker on the bottom.
ZTE Nubia Z17 Full Specification
ZTE Nubia Z17 Price in Bangladesh
ZTE Nubia Z17 Price in EUR about 500. Roughly The ZTE Nubia Z17 Price in Bangladesh 47,000 (expected).
Nubia Z17 Video
Display
“Bezel-less” is not exactly the buzzword it was a few years back. Infinity displays and ultra-wide aspect ratios seem to have taken over. Still, Nubia’s optical tricks are impressive enough, even if a little outdated. As already mentioned, however, there is a downside to bending light to extend out an otherwise flat LCD panel. You can spot distortions along the edges quite easily, especially when viewing the phone at an angle.
Still, if you don’t focus too much on the image quality in that particular border area, the overall style benefits still outweigh the inherent deficiencies. In other words, we quite like what we see. Just like its predecessor, the Z17 uses a 5.5-inch, FullHD panel. Nothing too fancy, but still plenty sharp, with a pixel density or around 403ppi.
The panel is a rather basic IPS LCD unit, but one with surprisingly wide viewing angles.The maximum brightness is average and tops off at around 388 nits. There is a Max Auto boost that needs to be enabled in the settings first. However, it is not particularly useful, as it only managed to push the display up to 392nits in our tests.
User Interface
Nubia is no stranger to flashy, bloated and over-the-top custom versions of Android. Nubia UI 5 is no exception. The OS is custom end-to-end and is filled to the brim with added features, little tweaks, and options everywhere you look.it is running a Chinese Android 7.1.1 Nougat ROM.
Besides the multitude of odd local apps, this also means a total absence of Google Play services and the Google App package, and no apparent way to sideload any of them. Not without rooting the device, at least. Of course, we did our best to work around this and not to judge the OS too harshly based on its localized features. What we did find a little hard to swallow, however, was the overwhelming number of bad and confusing English text translations found all throughout the UI.
Performance
The Nubia Z17 is a true flagship offer and a beastly one at that. It is built around the latest Snapdragon 835 chipset. This means a potent 4×2.35 GHz Kryo & 4×1.9 GHz Kryo CPU setup and Adreno 540 GPU. Naturally, this lets the Z17 rub shoulders with the cream of the crop of today’s smartphone market.
The Snapdragon 835 powerhouse is still found in only a number of handsets. These include the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ pair, Sony Xperia XZ Premium and HTC U11 – all more expensive than the Z17. However, there are other rivals out of China which have also taken up the hard task of integrating a Snapdragon 835 chip on a budget – most notably, the OnePlus 5 and the Xiaomi Mi 6. In a perfect scenario, free of all the additional availability and support concerns, these are the contenders the Nubia Z17 has to face and beat.
Making it in this fairly new, ultra-value, sub-$500 niche is probably one of the toughest challenges a manufacturer can take on in 2017. After putting the Z17 through its paces quite thoroughly, we are happy to report that it aces the performance round.Kicking things off with the pure CPU-based GeekBench, we can see the Nubia Z17 hold its own with a multi-threaded workload and even out-inch the other Snapdragon 835 phones in single-core tests.
Camera
It really seems that “trendy” with a signature design spin is what Nubia was after with the Z17. And nothing really says “2017” like a dual-camera setup. In this case, it’s a 12 MP, f/1.8 + 23 MP, f/2.0 setup, which is actually one of the highlights of the phone.A 1/2.55″ sensor size and 1.4um pixels are a strong foundation to build on. The Z17 adds phase detection autofocus, a dual-LED (dual tone) flash on top and the dual camera setup even allows for 2x lossless zoom. OIS is a notable omission, though.
On the far left of the viewfinder, you get a few toggles, including HDR and flash, both of which can be left on Auto. The options do change, depending on the mode you select, but they are all very self-explanatory. The settings wheel opens up a few quick toggles. Both face and smile detection work really well.
We don’t exactly appreciate the absence of a clear and plain resolution selector for stills. All you get instead is an aspect ratio switch. Tapping on the More settings opens the detailed settings menu, where at least the video resolution is nicely laid out for you to manipulate as you see fit (up to 4K on the main camera and 1080p on the selfie).
Battery
The Nubia Z17 is equipped with a 3,200mAh battery – only a bit smaller than that of its OnePlus rival, and nearly identical in capacity to the Sony Xperia XZ Premium’s unit. Since all of these smartphones are based on the Snapdragon 835 chipset, there is a certain degree of consistency to be expected in terms of battery life.The Z17 managed to score an impressive 81 hours of endurance in our testing routine.
A quick comparison with the OnePlus 5 reveals that both devices behave equally well in terms of 3G call time. 19h is definitely not bad, especially considering the poor past experiences we’ve had with units intended for the Chinese market and networks.Video playback is quite easy on the battery as well. 12:26 is a definitely a solid accomplishment on an LCD panel. Naturally, the OnePlus 5 squeezed a few hours more out of its efficient Optic AMOLED display.
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