Nubian Z17 evaluation: upgrading is not just adding a camera.

IT168 evaluation Since the mobile phone changed from the functional machine era to the intelligent machine, consumers' demands for endless screens have never stopped. Now we can see the hardware-level derivative processes such as "borderless", "curved screen" and "full screen" all from this. Nubia, as an advocate and leader of "borderless" mobile phones, has never stopped moving forward in terms of process iteration and software innovation. The annual flagship Nubian Z17 evaluated this time is another masterpiece after years of technical precipitation, and it also leads the "borderless" mobile phone to take a big step forward again.

this year, the whole mobile phone industry is advocating consumption upgrading, and cost performance is no longer the primary reference standard for most consumers. Only by comprehensively improving industrial design, software experience, imaging quality and battery life can we gain market recognition. The mobile phone with excellent performance at all levels and no shortcomings is called "bucket machine". In my opinion, it is also very appropriate to use this title to describe Nubian Z17.

basic parameters of Nubian Z17

color

dark blue (highest configuration, adopting "glass metal" technology), gold, pure black, black gold and red

size

152.66*72.38*7.6mm

screen

5.5. Corning's third-generation gorilla glass

processor

Qualcomm Xiaolong 835(MSM8998)

system

nubia UI 5. (based on Android 7.1)

camera

rear:

23 million+12 million, supporting 2x dual-camera zoom and full-pixel dual-core focusing; 16 million

storage in front

6 GB RAM+64 GB/128 GB ROM; 8GB RAM+128GB ROM, UFS 2.1

fingerprint identification

rear, support WeChat, Alipay payment

other

waterproof life, full-function NFC, full netcom /VoLTE

battery

32mAh, and support Qualcomm QC4+ fast charging technology

interface

.

1. Camera solution

The rear dual camera of Nubian Z17 adopts Sony IMX318 and IMX362 sensors respectively. The former is used in hammer M1L, Xiaomi Note2 and other models, while the latter is the public version of Samsung S7 series mobile phone CMOS. Except for Nubian Z17, only vivo Xplay6 and ASUS Hawkeye 3 have been used. It can be seen that Nubia has made great efforts in taking pictures this time.

2. The brand-new nubia UI 5.

For nearly a year, the nubia UI has changed too obviously, and the version iteration mainly focuses on power saving and adding functions. This big version of the update finally shows us Nubian's rethinking on the user interface. The brand-new UI makes Nubian mobile phones look brand-new and experience an upgrade.

3. First launch of Qualcomm QC4+ fast charging technology

At present, a number of mobile phones equipped with Qualcomm Xiaolong 835 have appeared on the market, but none of them have adopted the QC4+ fast charging technology supported by this processor, which is quite surprising. Nubian Z17 adopts SMB1381+PMI8998 dual charging chip scheme, which may bring us new surprises in charging efficiency.

▲ The random plug supports Qualcomm QC4+

If you take a fancy to the camera ability of a mobile phone or its game performance, then Nubian Z17 will not let you down. Moreover, thanks to the process technology of Qualcomm Xiaolong 835 chip and the blessing of QC4+ charging technology, Nubian Z17 can also be reassuring in battery life and charging.

but this upgrade is not just the above. Nubia has also brought us some surprises in industrial design, UI design and bottom-level optimization. Let's officially start this evaluation.

Nubian's "borderless" journey was not smooth sailing. After the launch of Nubian's first borderless mobile phone Z9, although it won widespread praise in the mobile phone market at home and abroad, as an "explorer" in the new field, Nubian has to practice everything on its own, and it is inevitable to take some detours. Limited by the technological level at that time, Nubia had to increase the thickness of the Z9 glass cover if it wanted to create a visual borderless, which made the whole fuselage look too heavy.

one year later, Nubian Z11 solved the problem of the thickness and weight of the Z9 fuselage, and the subsequent versions such as black gold, aurora blue and ceramic white could hardly pick out any black spots in the face value, all of which pushed Nubian Z17 to a higher starting point. However, it is a pity that the evaluation machine we got is not the top version Nubian Z17 with "glass metal" technology, but a relatively common pure black color scheme.

after three iterations, the borderless display screen of Nubian Z17 seems thinner, which means that the "rainbow pattern" reflected by light is also lighter. Judging from the author's daily use, if it is not under the pure white desktop background, there is basically no "rainbow pattern". But as far as the current borderless solution is concerned, it is almost difficult to completely avoid "rainbow pattern".

this time, Nubia has made a micro-innovation in the solution of the metal body antenna. Compared with Nubian Z11' s three-stage fuselage, Z17 chose a higher-cost nano-injection molding process to solve the problem of antenna overflow, which made the technology proportion of the back of the fuselage reach 98% and the integration was higher. Different from other mobile phones using this technology in the market, Nubian Z17 moved the top antenna from the back of the fuselage to the top of the middle frame, leaving only one antenna strip at the bottom of the whole fuselage.

it is also worth noting that the Nubian Z17 also canceled the 3.5mm headphone jack, and the opening at the bottom of the fuselage was designed symmetrically, but there were not two built-in speakers, and at the same time, the earpiece part could not sound at the same time with the bottom speaker, creating a stereo effect.

this time, Nubian did not give away headphones randomly, but only gave away a patch cord, which is convenient for users to use their headphones on Nubian Z17.

Ni Fei once mentioned in an exclusive interview with the media that full-screen is the development trend of the whole mobile phone industry, and Nubia's advantage is that it has taken the lead in "doing nothing" on the left and right borders of mobile phones, which gives it a head start in the competition for full-screen mobile phones. On the other hand, Nubian Z17 may be the last borderless mobile phone in Nubian flagship mobile phone, and it is also the closest borderless mobile phone created by Nubian.

in the system part, Nubian Z17 runs nubia UI 5. system based on Android 7.1.1. I have been using the Nubian mobile phone before, and the nubia UI gave me the impression that it was relatively dull. The interface design is unremarkable and the functions are not rich. However, after getting nubia Z17 this time, after a simple experience, we found that the latest nubia UI 5. has changed in many aspects, especially in terms of functionality and interaction, which is like being reborn. Let's re-recognize nubia UI through some upgrade points.

let's look at the basic interface design first.

in terms of interface design, nubia UI5. has done some processing on icons. Through intelligent algorithm, the colors and styles of all system and third-party icons under various desktop themes are more unified, and they look more concise visually.

it's worth mentioning that nubia UI has done a lot of detail optimization in the interface interaction, just to say a few. Application notification is changed to floating window notification with jumping effect, which is concise and elegant. Some applications add dynamic effects to the icons to show the application status. For example, when playing music or installing an application, there will be corresponding animations on the icons, which are smart and flexible. In addition, Nubian Z17 does not support 3D Touch, but some applications support long-press outgoing shortcut menu, which can realize some simple controls without entering the application.

in the optimization of the interface, the system will also intelligently match the most harmonious anti-color effect according to the background wallpaper, so that the characters on the desktop or lock screen are not affected by the wallpaper and can be clearly distinguished. From this initial experience of the interface of nubia UI 5. system, I found that nubia UI has really changed, with attention to details, beautiful interface, smart interaction and elegance.

Another major change in interaction is the separation of the notification bar from the shortcut buttons. After separation, the drop-down menu is only used to display various application and system notifications. All kinds of shortcut buttons moved to the lower area of the screen are basically within the reach of one-handed operation, which simplifies the operation logic and optimizes the experience of one-handed operation.

tell me another interesting design, the dial. The screen size of Nubian Z17 is 5.5 inches, but because of the borderless design, the width of the fuselage has been made relatively narrow. However, in order to further improve the experience of one-handed operation, nubia UI 5. has made many targeted optimizations. The dial is one of them. The number key area of its dial adopts non-equal design, which is convenient for both left and right hands to press when dialing with one hand. At the same time, it also provides intelligent number retrieval. Local numbers and various service numbers can be found, which can be easily done with one hand. This experience is rare in 5.5-inch mobile phones.

here, there is another detail I want to share with you. In the call record and short message list of nubia UI 5., missed calls and unread short messages are sorted in reverse order, because it is difficult for users to select the first two lines of the call record or short message list when using with one hand, and even after the reverse order, they can easily perform operations such as calling back and replying to short messages with one hand.

nubia UI 5. is really careful in details and one-handed operation optimization.

function optimization.

In fact, as early as the first generation of borderless mobile phone Nubia Z9, Nubia has made some targeted operation optimizations for borderless screens. For example, the edge slides up/down to switch applications and start applications, the edge slides repeatedly to accelerate the mobile phone, and the brightness is adjusted by bilateral sliding. However, in the actual experience, the accuracy of these operations is too high, and it takes a certain learning cost to get started for the first time.

this time, on nubia UI 5., a new Fit Card is added, which can be exhaled by sliding from the edge of the screen to the middle. Here, you can view recent documents, photos, schedules and other information, which is like a personal assistant. Compared with the above mentioned operations, Fit Card's outgoing operation is simple and easy to use, and its practicability has been improved.

other popular new functions, such as long screenshot, split screen, suspended call, red envelope assistant and screen recording, have been embodied in nubia UI 5., which brings convenience for practical use. It's nothing unusual. Now these basically belong to you, me and everyone.

In other aspects, Nubian official said that nubia UI 5. introduced AI artificial intelligence technology, which effectively solved the problems of system jam and power consumption by analyzing users' usage behavior, allocating resources according to needs and reasonably scheduling. This needs to be verified for a long time, but the response speed of the system is really fast. At the same time, NeoSpeed can effectively improve the application loading speed through intelligent loading and memory compression. Let's feel the loading speed of the application.

The overall experience of nubia UI 5. is satisfactory in these three main dimensions: function, interaction and interface design.

nubia UI 5. has made significant progress compared with before. Although the software system has never been the strength of Nubian mobile phones, thanks to the support provided by the underlying Android system and Nubian's own efforts, it has gradually equalized the gap with excellent Android UI. Especially in some details of the system, it gave me a lot of surprises, and it was quite elaborate.

From "a mobile phone that can shoot stars" to "a mobile phone photographer", Nubia has always built its own brand image around taking pictures. As far as products are concerned, Nubian mobile phones always use CMOS with better imaging quality than mobile phones of the same price to gain the advantage of taking pictures. In addition, Nubian mobile phones also give photographers the opportunity to exert their creativity and imagination through the NeoVision camera system, and at the same time reduce the learning cost of ordinary users to shoot "blockbusters", which can be described as killing two birds with one stone.

since this year, Nubia has officially entered the era of "double-camera". As a flagship mobile phone, Nubian Z17 is naturally equipped with a better camera and the most advanced technical solutions. Its rear camera is a 23 million+12 million pixel dual-color camera, which supports 2 times dual-camera zoom and portrait mode. The two cameras are Sony IMX318 and IMX362.

after all, Sony IMX362 is the public version of Samsung S7 series mobile phone camera, with almost the same hardware specifications, and also supports full-pixel dual-core focusing. Each pixel can be used not only for light sensing, but also for focusing at the same time, and its single pixel size has reached 1.4μm, which has strong night shooting and focusing capabilities. Let's take a look at the sample of the product first.

when it comes to the photo experience, the Nubian Z17 gives me the feeling of neatness, which is reflected in focusing, imaging speed, photo browsing speed and so on. Even in the dark environment, Nubian Z17 has been able to show its first-class focusing speed, from pressing the photo button to opening the photo just taken, the whole process is done in one go.

All proofs are taken in automatic mode. What impressed me most about Nubian Z17 in imaging is that the photos obtained are very transparent and the brightness of the pictures is relatively high, which gives people the most direct feeling that the pictures taken are very clean. In addition, thanks to the large aperture of F1.8, Nubian Z17 is also outstanding in macro shooting. In terms of color matching, Nubia also takes the route of pleasing the eye. In many scenes, the photos taken have their own LOMO style and look very comfortable, such as the first sample and the penultimate sample.

every Nubian flagship adopts the top processor of that year. As the flagship for 17 years, Nubian Z17 naturally chooses the Xiaolong 835 platform. At present, in the market, there are only three products that have adopted the Xiaolong 835 platform: Samsung S8 Series (Bank of China Edition), Xiaomi 6 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium. Two products are expensive and one needs to be snapped up. It can be seen that the Xiaolong 835 platform is still in the stage of capacity climbing. Moreover, Z17 adopts UFS 2.1. Under the condition of 17 years' shortage of memory resources, whether Nubian Z17 can be supplied smoothly at the initial stage of listing is a problem that we are more concerned about.

▲ The first product that can reach the peak of Xiaolong 835 in application

Theoretically, this Xiaolong 835 adopts Samsung 1nm FinFET LPE process and 8-core Kryo 2.