A few days ago, Nubia released its flagship smartphone, the Nubia Z17 at the Water Cube in Beijing. Nubia smartphones have impressed us in the past featuring an excellent combination of performance and hardware and we were glad to see that the Z17 continues the same tradition.

Nubia Z17 Design & Display

Nubia was one of the first mainstream smartphone brands to popularize the concept of bezel-less display on its flagship phones, starting with the Z9. The company has improved the technology in its third generation bezel-less flagship, the Nubia Z17, using a new version of its Refractive Conduction Technology to make the display pop out. The aRC technology is much more refined now and this has enabled the company to reduce the thickness of the phone giving a better in-hand feel. You can see how aRC works in the diagram down below.

While aRC tech makes the display really bezel-less, there’s more to these edges. The Nubia Z17 carries forward FiT (Frame Interactive Technology) to enable edge gestures. So, you can still adjust the brightness, go back, switch apps — all via simple gestures on the display edges. We have seen this feature work smoothly on earlier models and I was glad to see the same continues with the Z17. Apart from this, there’s an additional FiT card feature as well, which is basically a smart summary of everything on the phone. The FiT card contains a lot of useful information like your reminders, recent files etc and you have this just one swipe away. It’s pretty cool.

You can check out our Nubia Z17 hands-on gallery from below.

Nubia Z17 Dual Camera Performance

Another stand-out feature of Nubia phones has been innovative photography. The camera app offers shooting modes not available on other devices, such as electronic aperture, light painting, star track, time, cloning, delay photography, multiple exposure, etc. These features have been improved upon in the Z17.

One of my favorite feature on the phone is the clone camera. The app captures a person/ object in different parts of a frame and stitches them together to create one seamless photo. You’ll look like you have a team of clones – or twins – with you in one shot. Once you get the hang of this app and start posting it on social media, I am sure will get a lot of questions from your followers about your Z17.

The software has always played an important role in a smartphone camera, but the Z17 makes substantial improvements in the camera hardware as well. Adopting the trend, the new Nubia flagship comes with two powerful cameras at the back. Apart from improving the quality of the images captured, the two cameras at the back perform a very important function of creating a smooth SLR like depth of field effect. It’s worth adding that Nubia Z17 makes use of a smart AI technology to ensure the blurring effect is more natural.

If you really take the time to play with the Nubia Z17’s camera, you can capture some amazing bokeh photos. A few samples with depth of field effect are given below.

The dual rear cameras are 12 megapixels + 23 megapixels (yes, the 23MP sensor is the secondary camera), with 1.4μm single large size pixel similar to the Samsung Galaxy S8, sensor size is 1/2.55 inches, f1.8 big aperture, 2x dual-camera zoom, 10x dynamic zoom. The imaging quality, as you can see from samples, is excellent. The front camera is of 16 million pixels.

In your everyday usage, the Z17 will manage to capture very good amount of details with realistic saturation levels. Unlike the Huawei P10 which sometimes oversaturate the images captured, Z17 manages to keep the colors quite realistic. Even in low light situations, the photos come out quite bright, but colors may be a bit dull. I have used the Z17 as well as P10 side by side and I find the Z17 manages to keep the noise extremely low.

Just check out the samples down below to see how the dual cameras at the back perform in real life situations.

Nubia Z17 AnTuTu Benchmark & Hardware

Under the hood, the Z17 is impressive too, with a Snapdragon 835 processor, 6 / 8GB RAM, 64 / 128 GB UFS2.1 flash storage. On the AnTuTu benchmark, the device scored an impressive 180,745, just a tad lower than the iPhone 7 Plus. Note that there’s no headphone jack on board and you have to use a type-C convertor or type-C headphones on the device.

Nubia Z17 Battery Life

With built-in 3200mAh battery together with Nubia NeoPower3.0 technology, the company claims that it provide up to 2.5 days of usage in one single charge. That’s actually a pretty big claim, given the battery capacity. On a realistic note, you can expect the Nubia Z17 to breeze through more than a day even under power use. That’s pretty impressive and says a lot about the efficient 10nm Snapdragon 835 and Neopower 3.0 software optimizations on the phone.

Even when the battery is falling below 40%, you can squeeze out another day’s usage using the super power saving modes available. Of course, these modes limit the functionality of the phone to a major extent, but it can come in handy during emergencies.

The Z17 supports Qualcomm quick charge 4.0 by utilizing dual circuit charging to choose the best charging circuit. The result is charging times that’s 20% faster than quick charge 3.0.

So, I ll make one thing clear — Nubia Z17 is indeed the first smartphone with QC 4+ support. But you won’t get QC 4+ speeds yet, because there isn’t a QC 4+ compatible charger yet (blame Qualcomm for this). So, until you can get hold of a fast 4.0 generation charger, you’ll have to be happy with the pretty good QC 3.0 speeds. I personally managed to charge my phone from near 0% to 50% in just 25 minutes, which is pretty good for my everyday usage.

The Z17 is also water-proof, the first Nubia device to do so. So if you’re stuck in the rain or get wet by the pool, have no worries because the Z17 will work fine. You can even talk on the phone during a shower! This is useful because you can simply wash your Z17 when it gets dirty. But do note that the phone is not meant to be used underwater, so don’t get too excited to plan an underwater photography session.

There are many more hardware features that are worth mentioning. The Z17 comes with NFC functionality — users can use it to pay, transfer data, and connect to speakers, etc. With MIMO dual antennas, the WIFI connection speed is 100% faster than last generation’s devices. The Z17’s speakers use a professional grade of BASS stuffed material and SmartPA speaker technology. The fingerprint sensor is super fast and works well to unlock as well as make payments with the phone.

Nubia Z17 Review Conclusion

As far as overall performance goes, Nubia Z17 is a very worthy flagship, making it one of the best Android flagship in the market right now.

With the Snapdragon 835 chip and 6 / 8GB of RAM, the performance on the device is super smooth. There are many other features that make the Z17 special, like the aRC technology, the FiT gestures that has become more mature and the newly added waterproofing feature. But the real highlight of the Z17 is the dual camera setup at the back, a rather good one, which manages to capture great low light images, thanks to the large pixel sensor. The support for high-quality dual camera zoom up to 2x times is an added plus.

If you can ignore the fact that the phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm headphone jack, the Z17 is worthy of being called as one of the best flagship smartphones in the market right now.

The post Nubia Z17 Review: No Side Bezels, Smart Features & An Amazing Camera Makes It Worth Your Money appeared first on Gizmochina.

Nubia Z17’s entry into the smartphone market brought yet another dual camera choice for us customers. But having so many flagships feature a similar dual camera setup could end up being confusing for all of us. These are flagship models, which means their camera quality would be pretty good by default. This is particularly evident in the pictures taken in daylight wherein most 2017 flagship cameras would do a great job of getting detailed, clear and focused shots. But things are a bit different when it comes to low light images. The same flagships who did well in the daytime may not perform as well as we would expect at night, which is why it makes sense to see which brand has optimized their cameras for the best images, including in low-light environment. And while playing around with the newly announced Nubia Z17 (hands on here!), I was quite surprised to see a stark difference in the low-light image quality from the Z17 as compared to the Huawei P10 and Xiaomi Mi 6 models.

First up, Nubia is known for its stellar camera quality and its Neovision software. The company’s phones have managed to take pretty good pictures in the past and the same continues with the Z17. We will definitely bring a comparison of the Nubia Z17 vs Huawei P10 vs Xiaomi Mi 6 camera performance in daylight (most likely by today evening) but first, let us check out how these three smartphones perform in low-light situations. So, we are comparing these three flagships from top brands in China to see which one has better low-light images.

So, look at this image. The leftmost sample is from the Nubia 17 (also evident from the watermark) and at the center is the Huawei P10 sample and on the right lies the Mi 6 sample. The Nubia Z17 clearly takes the more vibrant and brighter image of the three. P10’s sample looks warmer and the colors are good while the Mi 6’s sample looks pretty dull. Out of the three, I would clearly select Z17’s sample as the best because of its clarity and light. The green leaves are a bit better on the P10, but still, the best overall picture has to be the Z17’s sample. You can further see Nubia Z17’s stellar performance in low light in the samples down below. I’m actually quite impressed with Nubia’s dual cameras.

In some instances, the Huawei P10 does take better images (more color and less noise). For example, in the image of the doll down below, the colors are better on the P10 and the noise is limited as well.

Check out the low-light images below and let me know which phone do you think is the best.

[envira-gallery id="135319"]

The post Nubia Z17 vs Huawei P10 vs Xiaomi Mi 6 Low Light Camera Performance Comparison: Guess Who Wins? appeared first on Gizmochina.

As Nubia’s June 1 flagship conference draw closer, the company continues to tease more and more features of the Z17 as well as the bezel-less device which would likely be launched on that day. The Nubia Z17 has been shown to have a waterproof body and its water resistance feature has been demonstrated in a leaked video. The Z17 is also coming with Qualcomm’s latest chip as well as a dual camera setup. Nubia’s latest teaser focuses on the picture quality of the Z17’s camera.

According to the poster released a few days back, the Nubia Z17 will have good dual cameras which will support 2X zoom shot with the same clarity as without zoom. The dual camera will also have a good night shooting function. The teaser contains an image which projects this powerful feature of the Z17’s camera but which we are not sure is shot be the camera.

Read More: Nubia’s GM Teases Pressure Sensitive Display for Nubia Z17 and New Version of UI

The teaser still points at a bezel-less design for the Nubia Z17 and that put us in a confused state if Nubia will be unveiling two smartphones on that day or just the Z17. A leaked image had emerged showing the upper half of a Nubia smartphone with a nearly bezel-less design. The phone is said to be a Nubia bezel-less phone with a screen to body ratio that is likely higher than the Galaxy S8 and even the Xiaomi Mix and not the Z17 but we really can’t be so sure about that. June 1 promises to be an interesting day for tech fans.

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