Gadgetory

what's going on guys lawn here from Android Authority and Chinese OEMs are slowly but surely starting to take the US market much more seriously and the latest flagship in the Nubia line is bringing top-tier specifications a borderless display and some unique software tricks but does it do enough to earn a spot in your pocket when it finally hits us Shores well that's what we're about to find out with the Nubia z-9 from a design standpoint it's easy to say that Nubia went with a conservative approach and by conservative I mean it's a design formula that we've seen a few times over but is that a bad thing not necessarily the Nubia z-9 is a rectangular slab that utilizes a glass sandwich design so there's glass on the front and rear and a metal frame with chamfered edges holding it all together lending for a very solid and high-quality feel in the hand for being predominantly made of glass it's not slippery to hold thanks to the angular design and chamfered edges which provides a fair amount of grip but as you might expect the use of glass on the rear does make the phone somewhat of a fingerprint magnet the z-9 measures in at roughly nine millimeters thick so it's certainly not striving to be the thinnest phone on the market and with no taper on the backside to create that illusion of thinness you're definitely going to feel every millimeter each time you pick it up it's also not the lightest phone at almost 200 grams in weight so it can be a little bit drawing to use at first especially if you've become accustomed to lighter and thinner devices the weight however does make it feel substantial further reminding you that the Z 9 is meant to be a high quality device every time you hold it going around the Z 9 you'll find the buttons and ports and typical locations with the 3.5 mm headset jack microphone and IR blaster up top metal power and volume keys on the right side both of which are very clicky and easy to press and there's even a dedicated camera key to quickly launch the camera and take photos which is a rarity on Android phones continue along on the bottom is the charging port which at first glance might look like USB type-c but it's just a standard microUSB flanking that is what appears to look like dual speakers but again it's just an illusion when in fact only one is a speaker and the is a microphone and finally the left side of the phone is completely bare with the exception of the dual SIM card slot for a touch of color there's a red ring around the camera lens and glowing red capacitive menu home and back keys on the front that's very reminiscent of the old Droid line back in the day by default the Menu button is on the left and the back button is on the right but this is completely interchangeable in these settings to suit your personal preference the main attraction of the Nubia z-9 is easily the display it's a 5.2 inch screen with 1080p resolutions so if you're expecting quad HD you're not going to get it here with the z9 but it's still a fantastic looking screen it's bright colorful vivid with great outdoor visibility and good viewing angles and with a ppi north of 400 is plenty sharp for reading text and consuming all sorts of media it's made of 2.5 B glass for that subtle curve along the edges but the interesting part about the screen is has been raised above the frame giving it a much more prominent curve that makes swiping across the glass a very pleasurable experience it's not curved to the point where alters your viewing experience with media like the s6 edge but there's just enough of a curved edge that Nubia was able to add some software tricks to take advantage of it but more on that later the raised glass also creates the illusion that the screen is entirely bezel is on the left and right sides when looking at it head on which really makes the screen the star of the show and you almost feel like you're holding on to just a screen but upon closer inspection the bezels are definitely still there they've just been cleverly hidden by being curved downwards along these sides providing for an almost bezel experience and it's quite an impressive feat in engineering to say the least as far as the specs go they're going to vary depending on whether you go with the classic elite or exclusive editions of the phone all versions of the Z 9 features a snapdragon 810 processor but the classic Edition which is the version we have for review comes with three gigabytes of RAM versus the 4 gigabytes of RAM on both the elite and exclusive editions regardless performance has been quite great on z-9 even if it is being powered by a somewhat scrutinized Snapdragon 810 performing basic tasks like navigating through the UI and opening applications is super fluid and multitasking and playing graphically demanding games also poses no problems now for those of you wondering if the device runs warm after lengthy sessions of heavy use like gaming the answer is yes but it was never anything out of the ordinary nor was it ever concerning in any way storage will also vary depending on which version you go with the classic model comes with 32 gigabytes onboard and if you want more you'll have to opt for either the elite or exclusive version of the phone which comes with 64 gigs of storage but those are basically the only choices you have for storage as the z9 does not have expandable storage if you're an audiophile the z9 comes with hi-fi audio and Dolby 7.1 surround sound for improved audio quality especially with headphones and speaking of audio quality the single bottom mounted speaker gets loud enough to hear even in relatively noisy environments and delivers a fairly clean sound but again like all bottom mounted speakers it can be easily muffled by the hand especially in landscape and also leads to a lopsided listening experience with only one speaker fiying out the side one feature that is exclusive to the exclusive version of the phone is the inclusion of a built-in fingerprint sensor which neither the classic or the elite models have and it's a very different implementation from what we've seen from the likes of Samsung with their home button or even Huawei with their rear mounted fingerprint sensor and on the z9 is actually mounted on the side of the phone now as to how well it actually works I can't really comment on that because we don't have that version but if a fingerprint sensor is a must-have feature for you then the exclusive version is going to be the one that you want to go for if nubia really wants to go toe-to-toe with the major flagships on the market it's going to need a great camera and for the most part dz9 handles itself pretty well there's a 16 megapixel camera on the rear with optical image stabilization and Nubia didn't skimp on the front camera either which comes in at 8 megapixels for some fairly high resolution selfie shots outside of smile detection and beauty mode there isn't much going on with the front-facing camera software before the rear there are a handful of options and shooting modes like time-lapse multi exposure slow shutter and many others including typical ones that you might expect like HDR and panorama the Pro Mode is also available for full control over exposure white balance shutter speed ISO and even manual focus to help you get that perfect shot in fairly good lighting conditions like outdoors for instance picture quality was surprisingly great with a nice amount of color reproduction dynamic range and a great amount of sharpness and detail HDR is always available when needed but is extremely aggressive in its image processing colors are a little too oversaturated there's a heavy reduction in the shadows and it doesn't handle skin tones well leading to some very unnatural looking photos in certain situations the extra saturation can create for a very appealing photo to the eye but in others they begin to look more like a watercolor painting than an actual photo in low-light and nighttime shots the camera becomes more or less an average performer nighttime shots are decent and the camera is able to handle prominent light sources like lamp posts and street lights without over exposing but take the camera indoors to environments like dimly lit bars or restaurants and the level of detail begins to deteriorate quickly there's a big increase in noise due to the camera operating at higher ISOs and not only do the images look muddy and appearance but they also exhibit some noticeable artifacting that's really the biggest downfall to this camera but in most situations you shouldn't have much of a problem getting the shot that you want battery life on the z-9 has also been very respectable with the capacity measuring in just shy of 3,000 milliamp hours even with several hours of heavy gaming and lots of picture taking the phone was still able to go over a day off the charger with anywhere between four to four and a half hours of screen on time and with more casual use you'll easily be able to extend those numbers a lot further keep in mind that this again is the Chinese version of the phone which does not have Google Play services installed so you're not going to be dealing with the typical data syncing that you normally would with your Google account this may have an impact on the z9 s battery life on the US version the phone which will undoubtedly ship with Google Play services out of the box in terms of the software the Nubia z-9 is running lollipop but because of nubia skin you really wouldn't know it without jumping into the settings and checking the version number with Nubia skin you won't find Google's material design and instead what you'll get a much more colorful UI filled with transparency effects across the board fortunately there's a built-in theme store with a handful of themes to tailor the UI more to your liking there nothing most intricate themes out there especially in comparison to theme stores on competing flagships theming only basic elements like the icons and wallpaper but it's still great to have some variety like many other Chinese Android manufacturers the Nubia z-9 also ditches the standard Android app drawer in favour of an all homescreen experience so you have to resort to folders for homescreen organization or download a third-party launcher you'll also notice that because this version of the z9 is geared for the Chinese market there's a lot of Chinese applications installed but most of them are just substitute applications for the lack of Google Play services the z-9 also packs a lot of really neat software tricks up its sleeve you've got screen division which is basically Nubia Zwerg a multi window for some split screen multitasking and a one-handed mode that shrinks the screen down to a smaller size just by long pressing the back button there's also a series of touch based gestures built-in like double tap and awake the display dragging three fingers upwards to take a screenshot or putting the phone to sleep by placing your palm on the screen where it starts to get interesting are the unique gesture controls that utilize what Nubia calls frame interactive technology or fit you can swipe up on either side of the glass to launch a specific application or switch to apps that are currently running in the background or quickly launch into the camera just by turning the phone sideways and touching four finger tips on the edge of the glass you can also perform various grip based gestures to unlock the phone or take a screenshot just by simply squeezing the phone many of these may sound a little bit odd at first and the grip gestures definitely take some getting used to but Nubia says they'll save you a lot of time over more traditional methods if you can manage to get them to work on the first attempt the Nubia z-9 is already available in markets like China but for those of you waiting for it to hit stateside the z-9 will be released in q3 of this year with a starting price of 564 dollars for the classic edition 645 for the elite and 725 for the exclusive version which again features a built-in fingerprint sensor the Nubia z-9 is no doubt a flagship device that's aimed to go squarely against phones like the galaxy s6 and the LG g4 and with very little presence here in the States Nubia will have a lot of catching up to do Nubia looks like they're taking the US market very seriously with the z9 unlike some other Chinese manufacturers who are only releasing their budget phones here in the States the Z 9 will be going up against the best of the competition and it's got all the right specifications to do so and these software tricks while very different and new aren't necessarily going to feel like a game-changer to most people what is a game-changer however is the screen if you've been looking for a truly bezel-less experience on a flagship z9 is probably the closest you're going to get at least for now as always guys thanks so much for watching this video if you did enjoy it 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