Tomorrow Nubia is going to launch its next flagship dubbed as the Nubia Z17. And though we know to less about this handset, it’s going to be a real beats capable of beating all its rivals. We are sure this phone has all chances to grab the first positions due to great rumored features and bezel-less screen. But seems all the latest phones come with similar specs. So what will become a selling point for it? To answer this question we have to recall another phone from this line. The Nubia Z17 mini has been announced a couple of months back. Undoubtedly, this is a great device packed with a number of top-end features including great camera. We have already got our hands on it and reviewed that 13MP dual-camera. So we know it’s about hardware. But what other key features the Nubia Z17 mini sports should be explored yet. So let’s keep in mind the Nubia Z17 mini is a camera phone providing unseen shooting experience, but there are other character traits we should mention when talking about this amazing smartphone.
The Nubia Z17 mini is a high-quality smartphone regardless the fact there is a ‘mini’ suffix in its name. This means everything in this phone should be well-thought and well-done. Fortunately, it is. As for the housing, the body is still using one-piece metal material coming with nano-injection molding process. The whole body is very smooth. So it’s very comfortable to hold in hands. Plus, it sports a 5.2-inch display, which is thought to be gold-size.
The display comes with 2.5D curved glass as well as borders with high-gloss diamond trimming process. Thanks to latter and a 7.45mm thickness the phone looks outstanding. The rounded corners help this deal as well. So we can state we are dealing with a piece of metal that is also ‘smart’.
There is a front camera and a speaker above the display, while the home button with a traditional red circle is located below it.
The SIM card slot is on the left. The volume rocker paired with a power button are placed on the right. The USB Type-C port is on the bottom. And finally the 3.5mm audio jack and the noise reduction microphone hole are on top.
As for the back, it comes with a design common for many current flagships including the Xiaomi Mi 6 and Huawei P10. I mean Chinese manufacturers began putting the camera module as well as the flash horizontally. The Nubia Z17 mini is no exception. There is also a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, which looks outdated. I guess this is the first ‘semi-kicks’ of this handset.
There are up to 4 color options you can choose from – Elegant Black, Gold Black, Champagne Gold, and Red. But I guess the most stylish colors are black and red. As for the former one, it also hides the antenna ribbon well. So I bet it will sell more than other colors.
The look of this handset is one of many key features. The next one is hardware, which is the way improved in comparison to its predecessor. The Nubia Z17 mini sports a Snapdragon 652 / 653 CPU. The former comes with eight cores clocked at 1.8GHz, while the second one runs at 1.9GHz. Both models are packed with an Adreno 510 GPU and 4/6GB RAM + 64GB internal memory.
To understand what performance these chips can provide we have tested it via benchmarks.
AnTuTu– 90.025
GeekBench 4.0: Single Core – 1522, Multi Core – 4541
3D Mark: 955 / 1514
The aforementioned benchmark scores confirm the Nubia Z17 mini showcases the same performance seen on other Snapdragon 653-powered devices.
The Nubia Z17 mini comes with a dual-SIM card slot supporting 4G. Plus, this phones come with a NFC chip allowing users to make on-screen payments.
The Nubia Z17 mini is equipped with a 2950mAh battery that provides 1.52 days of heavy usage, while regular users can operate on it during 2.1 days on a single charge. This smartphone is capable of providing such a long lifetime to NeoPower technology.
Though we have talked about this amazing camera in details, we should write down its main features once again. This handset uses a 13MP RGB+MONO camera. Both of them has a model number of IMX258. This is a regular RGB color sensor, but the second one is the customized version of the same module. The focusing speed is only 0.1s.
As for software, the Nubia Z17 mini comes with the custom version of NeoVision professional photography system. Thanks to it the dual-camera module of this handset provides better mobile photography experience.
You can read more on the camera of Nubia Z17 mini and get acquainted with the sample photos below.
Sample Photos Taken via MONO Sensor
Checking Zoom Effect
Daytime Photos
Night Shots
The Nubia Z17 mini is priced at 1699 yuan ($249) and 1999 yuan ($293) for the 4+64GB and 6+64GB variants, respectively. So the performance provided by a device at this price tag is quite excellent. However, the selling point of the Z17 mini still continues to be the dual-camera with a list of improved camera features. So we can state this device is an actual rival to all phones costing 1500-2000 yuan.
