We welcome one of the most powerful flagship smartphones from China today, the Nubia Z17. The phone has been in the news for the past few weeks and now it’s finally official. The Z17 becomes one of the first smartphones in the market (after Zenfone AR) with a massive 8GB of RAM inside. This definitely makes the phone special, considering how China is obsessed with specifications.
Nubia Z17 Design
The basic design of the Nubia Z17 remains the same as its predecessor, the Z11. However, the company has made a few changes at the back, like adding a dual camera setup on the top left corner as well as adopting industry’s first single slit antenna design. The body is still metal at the back. Further, the company is using the new generation aRC 3.0 (arc Refractive Conduction) which helps to keep the thickness of the display glass to a bare minimum and makes the compact and borderless screen design possible. The front features the traditional red circular home button (capacitive). The fingerprint sensor is located at the back of the phone, above the Nubia logo.
There are five color options for the Nubia Z17 — Black Gold, Black, Gold, Blue and Red.
Nubia Z17 Specs
While there may not be significant changes in the design as compared to the first generation Nubia Z11, the Z17 makes sure the specs are upgraded to meet the demands of 2017. Under the hood, the phone comes with the latest flagship chipset from Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 835 clocked at 2.45GHz along with a massive 8GB of RAM and 128GB of ROM. There are other memory options available like 6GB + 64GB /128GB. Note that Nubia particularly highlights that the storage is the super fast UFS 2.1 standard (probably to ensure users they get the fast memory unlike the Huawei P10). With this setup, you will never have to worry about gaming on the phone. The screen is bezel-less and comes with a 5.5-inch 1080p panel protected by Corning Gorilla Glass.
Note that there’s no headphone jack on the phone nor does it support MicroSD expansion.
The phone features a 3200mAh battery inside which charges up to 50% in 25 minutes. It isn’t as large as some of the batteries inside competitors but with NeoPower 3.0 software, you should get a day out of it. The phone is splashproof as well, so you won’t have to worry taking it out in the rains.
As for the software, the phone comes with Android 7.1 with Nubia UI 5.0 on top. Connectivity features include Dolby Atmos, Hi-Fi+, NFC, Bluetooth 4.1 and dual-band Wi-Fi ac.
Nubia Z17 Camera
Nubia adopted dual cameras on its new smartphones released in 2017. So, it’s no surprise that the Nubia Z17 comes with a dual camera setup as well. It’s a powerful setup that consists of a 23MP + 12MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture and 1.4um large pixel. The setup supports 2x optical zoom and 10x dynamic zoom. The focus time is also impressive at 0.03 seconds. With large aperture and pixels, the company promises great low light images with the Z17’s dual camera setup.
The camera setup is complemented by the company’s popular NeoVision 7.0 software which uses a bunch of smart algorithms to improve dual camera performance, zoom, scene recognition as well as video recording. There’s a special Wi-Fi camera feature as well which allows you to remotely control another smartphone to capture images from its camera.
The Nubia Z17 also comes with the new Portrait Mode 2.0 which adds a bunch of AI algorithms to optimize features such as depth of field as well as portrait profile. This seems to be similar to what we see on other dual camera phones like iPhone 7 Plus and the Huawei P10.
As for the front camera, the Z17 comes with a 16MP sensor with f/2.0 aperture and 80-degree wide angle lens.
Nubia Z17 Price & Availability
There are three variants available for the Nubia Z17, and surprisingly there isn’t a 4GB RAM version.
The 6GB + 64GB Nubia Z17 version retails at 2799 Yuan ($411).
The 6GB + 128GB variant retails at 3399 Yuan ($500).
Finally, the super flagship 8GB + 128GB variant will go on sale for 3999 Yuan ($587).
Nubia will start accepting registrations for the first sale at 9PM today and the Z17 will officially go on sale on June 6 at 10AM on Nubia’s official store as well as JD.com.
