Gadgetory

what's up guys lon here from Android Authority and this is the Nubia Z it's been out for a while now in other regions like China but it's coming to the States to compete with other flagship Android phones what does this phone do differently from the myriad of other high-end Android flagships that make this phone worth buying let's find out with the Nubia Z 11 so the new uz 11 doesn't have the most eye-catching or original design but it is a pretty good-looking phone with solid build quality it's an all metal unibody rectangular slab that's really thin at 7.5 millimeters feels great in the hands and puts its build quality on par with a lot of other flagships it's got rounded corners and slight tapers around the back and sides which make it more comfortable to hold but because it's bare aluminum and there aren't any sharp or flat edges to help with a grip the phone can be a little slippery and tough to hold on to at times because this is a Nubia phone you'll notice some red accents on the phone like the ring around the camera lens and the bright red capacitive keys along the bottom of the display to make the phone stand out a little more the z11 also comes in a black and gold color if you want something a little more flashy over the standard silver and grey and personally I think this color option looks much nicer and makes the phone look a little bit more unique going around the device you've got the power button and volume rocker on the right side which are also made of metal so they're very clicky and tactile and they're positioned well enough that they're easy to reach and press with your thumb on the left side is the SIM card slot that also houses a micro SD card slot for expandable storage and on top you have the headphone jack and an IR blaster which can be really convenient for controlling your TV and other peripherals especially considering a lot of phones nowadays don't have this feature finally on the bottom you have the USB type-c port and what looks like dual speakers but only the right side houses a speaker while the other is just a microphone the speaker sounds fine and doesn't get distorted or tinny at all at max volume but it's a little on the quiet side and a half volume or less it becomes pretty tough to hear on the back of the phone you also have a fingerprint sensor which has worked extremely well it's fast accurate takes very little time to set up and I've had no issues with it it's been very reliable and rarely never misread my fingerprint so it's definitely on par with some of the best fingerprint sensors on the market one of the most eye-catching parts about the z11 is the display it's a 5.5 inch LCD display but instead of quad HD like most high-end flagships does the Elevens display is actually 1080p it's very bright has very saturated colors good viewing angles and it still looks plenty sharp that web browsing playing games and watching YouTube is not an issue whatsoever so unless you're using this phone for VR you're not going to be able to notice any difference what makes a screen stand out though is that it's basically bezel is on the left and right sides and part of the reason why Nubia has been able to achieve this bezel let's look is by curving down the sides of the display if you used other Nubia phones in the past you're probably used to seeing this but it's still really impressive to look at simply because we haven't seen this from many other phone manufacturers and it really feels like you're holding just a screen in your hands because the side bezels are so thin it also makes this phone feel a lot smaller and more compact and comparison to other 5.5 inch smartphones the curves on the sides of the screen aren't as drastic as what you might find on the s7 edge or note 7 but that didn't stop Nubia from adding some additional software tweaks to take advantage of the super thin side bezels you can do a variety of different things like adjust the screens brightness by sliding two fingers up and down along the edges of the display swipe up or down from the edge to switch between apps you have running in the background swipe repeatedly from the edge to close all recent apps and hold along the edge and swipe inwards to quickly switch to a specific homescreen they all sound really useful but can be a little awkward to use and some of them aren't that much faster than doing things the traditional way I also ran into a lot of issues with accidentally triggering these features from just holding the phone but fortunately all these features can be disabled if you run into the same problems or don't find them all that useful inside it's got the typical specs for a 2016 flagship you have the Snapdragon 820 4 gigs of ram and 64 gigs of internal storage and if you opt for the higher-end black and gold model this actually comes with 6 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigs of internal storage while I can't comment on what performance is like on the 6 gigabyte model performance has been perfectly fine on the 4 gigs of ram version even with Nubia is very heavy skinned it's been very fast and they use from launching apps web browsing watching videos and playing a lot of graphically intensive games it does all those things without much of a problem with the only exception being multitasking the multitasking experience on this phone feels very slow and clunky there's no recent apps key so instead you have to long press the back key to get to your recent apps and the loading of the recent apps usually takes a good couple of seconds the apps are also laid out in a horizontal view allowing to only see a couple apps at a time and swiping back and forth to switch between apps is a much slower experience in comparison to something like the card stack layout from stock Android as far as battery life goes it's nothing out of the ordinary it's got a three thousand milliamp hour battery and Nubia says their battery optimizations will allow you to get two days worth of battery but in my experience it never lasted more than just a typical days worth of use with texting social media email web browsing and a couple hours of YouTube and gaming per day the phone usually lasted between 12 to 13 hours off the charger which is far from Nubia stood a claim but it was always good enough to get me comfortably through a day and yes of course with this being a flagship and running a snapdragon 820 it does come a quick charge 3.0 to make it really fast and easy to get this phone back up and running the camera isn't rocking any fancy dual lens setup that we've been starting to see on a lot of other smartphones but it is packin some rather interesting features the front camera is an 8 megapixel lens and if you're into taking selfies it is definitely more than good enough to do that the rear camera comes in at 16 megapixels with f 2.0 aperture optical image stabilization and phase detection autofocus the camera app is straightforward and easy to use but it does look very I Oh s like you can swipe left or right to switch between different camera modes and there are some modes built into this camera that make it unique and fun to use for example there's a clone mode that we're overlapped several photos to make it appear as if there are multiples of a person or object in one photo and for the most part it does a pretty good job of stitching these photos together but it isn't always perfect another interesting mode on the z11 is called electronic aperture and this mode lets you dial in an aperture from as wide as f 2.8 to as narrow as f 44 changing the aperture will effectively change the shutter speed from as little as three tenths of a second to 72 seconds long and the longer shutter speeds will allow you to capture some very silky smooth motion blur with moving subjects while still keeping everything else that's stationary in focus the z11 has three types of stabilization built in to allow you use this feature with just your hands but in my experience the results were still much better with a tripod especially if you're using shutter speeds that are over a minute long in terms of general picture quality it's actually quite good the pictures that it takes are pleasantly sharp and detailed and there's a good amount of color to make them look pleasing to the eye but not so much that they look oversaturated or unnatural it does however have the tendency to overexpose and blow out highlights which can be alleviated by using HDR the thing I like most about the HDR mode on this camera is that it will automatically take a standard shot and an HDR shot for you in one take which can ultimately save you a lot of time and hassle from having to switch back and forth between HDR and standard photos and low-light the camera does tend to focus on a lot which makes the camera experience feel a lot slower but the pictures that it takes in low-light still have a relatively good amount of detail there isn't a whole lot of graininess or noticeable noise reduction but it still has problems with properly exposing highlights just like it does in daytime shots it's currently running Android 6.0 marshmallow with Nubia UI version 4.0 which drastically changes the entire Android experience it's filled with very bright and cartoonish looking icons a lot of transparency effects and there's also no app drawer but Nubians UI does come jam-packed with some pretty interesting features if you long press on the fingerprint sensor or hold volume down in power this will give you the option to take a long screen shot which is great for web articles a standard screen shot that you can crop into different shapes like hearts and circles or create a screen recording my favorite feature is actually the way this phone handles split-screen multitasking to enter split-screen multitasking all you have to do is swipe up from the bottom of the display but instead of give you a list of applications like you would get on other smartphones that have split-screen multitasking the z11 splits the screen into two separate desktops it's a very different approach but by doing it this way you're able to use virtually any application that you want the only exception is the camera but just because you can use any apps you want it doesn't necessarily mean that you should apps like games can open up as flat-screen view but they aren't exactly split-screen friendly but apps like social media email text and chrome work just as you would expect pricing for the Nubia Z 11 in the US is still to be determined but in other regions it's currently going for 499 euros for the standard version and 599 euros for the black and gold edition hopefully these prices aren't an indication of what the US prices might be because if they are then the z11 is going to be fairly expensive for an unlocked phone but the big question here is if this phone is worth getting over other flagships the z11 is a good flagship phone from Nubia but it doesn't necessarily have a ton of compelling reasons to make this phone a better option over the smartphones currently available had it came to the US a lot earlier in the year it might have snagged a lot more attention but at this point in 2016 there's a ton of great Android options at a variety of different price points and Nubia might be a little too late to the party as always thank you guys so much for watching this video hopefully you enjoyed this review of the Nubia Z 11 if you did please give it a thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and follow us on social media like Instagram snapchat Twitter Google+ all that good stuff will be linked down below and feel free to follow me on Twitter as well and as always check out the website and Jordan thorny com because we are your source for all things Android Oh