Nubian Z17 review: Upgrading is not just about adding a camera

IT168 Review Ever since mobile phones shifted from the era of feature phones to smartphones, consumers’ demand for boundless screens has never stopped. The derivative processes at the hardware level such as "borderless", "curved screen", and "full screen" that we can see today also come from this. As an advocate and leader of "borderless" mobile phones, Nubia has never stopped moving forward in terms of process iteration and software innovation. The annual flagship Nubia Z17 reviewed this time is another masterpiece after years of technological accumulation, and it also leads the "borderless" mobile phone to take another big step forward.

This year the entire mobile phone industry is advocating consumption upgrades, and cost-effectiveness is no longer the primary reference criterion for most consumers. Only comprehensive improvements in industrial design, software experience, imaging quality, battery life, etc. can gain market recognition. A mobile phone that performs well in all aspects and has no shortcomings is called a "bucket phone". In my opinion, this title is also very appropriate to describe the Nubia Z17.

Nubian Z17 basic parameters

Color

Dark blue (the highest configuration, using "glass metal" technology), gold, pure black, black gold, red< /p>

Size

152.66*72.38*7.6mm

Screen

5.5-inch FHD borderless, in-cell screen, Corning third generation Gorilla Glass

Processor

Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 (MSM8998)

System

nubia UI 5.0 (based on Android 7.1)< /p>

Camera

Rear:

23 million + 12 million, supports 2x dual camera zoom, full pixel dual-core focus; front 16 million

Storage

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

Fingerprint recognition

Rear-mounted, supports WeChat and Alipay Payment

Others

Life waterproof, full-function NFC, full Netcom/VoLTE

Battery

3200mAh, supports Qualcomm QC4+ fast charging technology

Interface

Type-C, 3.5mm headphone jack canceled

Price

Starting from 2,799 yuan

From the perspective of hardware parameters, Nubia Z17 has three highlights worthy of attention, which will also become the focus of the subsequent evaluation.

1. Camera solution

The rear dual cameras of Nubia Z17 use Sony IMX318 and IMX362 sensors respectively. The former is used in Smartisan M1L and Xiaomi Among models such as Note2, the latter is the public version of the CMOS of Samsung S7 series mobile phones. Apart from Nubia Z17, only vivo Xplay6 and Asus Hawkeye 3 have used it. It can be seen that Nubia has put a lot of effort into taking pictures this time.

　2. The new nubia UI 5.0

For nearly a year, nubia UI has undergone significant changes. Version iterations mainly focus on power saving and adding functions. This major version update finally allows us to see Nubia’s rethinking of the user interface. The new UI gives Nubia mobile phones a new look and an upgraded experience.

3. First release of Qualcomm QC4+ fast charging technology

Currently, there are a number of mobile phones equipped with Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 on the market, but none of them The use of Qualcomm QC4+ fast charging technology supported by this processor is quite surprising. Nubia Z17 adopts SMB1381+PMI8998 dual charging chip solution, which may bring us new surprises in terms of charging efficiency.

▲The random plug supports Qualcomm QC4+

If you are interested in a mobile phone’s camera capabilities or its gaming performance, then Nubia Z17 will not let you disappointment. And thanks to the manufacturing process of Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chip and the support of QC4+ charging technology, the Nubia Z17 can also be reassuring in terms of battery life and charging.

But this upgrade is more than just the above. Nubia also brought us some surprises in terms of industrial design, UI design and underlying optimization. Let’s officially start this evaluation.

Nubia’s “borderless” journey has not been smooth sailing. After Nubia's first bezel-less mobile phone Z9 was launched, although it won widespread praise from the domestic and foreign mobile phone markets, Nubia, as an "explorer" in new fields, has to rely on its own practice and will inevitably take some detours. . Limited by the craftsmanship at the time, Nubia had to increase the thickness of the Z9 glass cover if it wanted to create a visually borderless look, which made the entire body appear too thick.

One year later, Nubia Z11 solved the problems of Z9 body thickness and weight, and the subsequent black gold, aurora blue, ceramic white and other versions have almost no black spots in appearance. , all of which push Nubia Z17 to a higher starting point. Unfortunately, the review machine we got was not the top-end version of the Nubia Z17 that uses "glass metal" technology, but a relatively ordinary pure black color scheme.

After three iterations, the Nubia Z17’s edge-to-edge display seems to be thinner, which means that the “rainbow pattern” refracted by light is also lighter. Judging from the author's daily use, if it is not on a pure white desktop background, there is basically no "rainbow pattern" visible. But judging from the current borderless solutions, it is almost difficult to completely avoid the “rainbow pattern”.

This time Nubia has made a micro-innovation in the metal body antenna solution. Compared with the three-section fuselage of the Nubia Z11, the Z17 chose the more expensive nano-injection molding process to solve the problem of antenna overflow, making the technology on the back of the fuselage account for 98%, and the integration is higher. Unlike other mobile phones on the market that use this process, Nubia Z17 moves the top antenna from the back of the fuselage to the top of the middle frame, leaving only an antenna strip at the bottom of the entire back of the fuselage.

Another point worth noting is that Nubia Z17 has also canceled the 3.5mm headphone jack. The opening at the bottom of the fuselage adopts a symmetrical design, but it does not have two built-in speakers. At the same time, the earpiece part is also It cannot sound simultaneously with the bottom speaker to create a stereo effect.

This time Nubia did not give away headphones, but only gave away an adapter cable to facilitate users to use their headphones on Nubia Z17 through this adapter cable.

Ni Fei once mentioned in an exclusive interview with the media that full screen is the development trend of the entire mobile phone industry. Nubia’s advantage is that it is the first to eliminate the left and right borders of mobile phones, which makes it a leader in full screen mobile phones. gained an advantage in the competition. From another perspective, Nubia Z17 may be the last bezel-less phone among Nubia’s flagship phones, and it is also the closest to perfect bezel-less phone Nubia has ever created.

For the system, Nubia Z17 runs the nubia UI 5.0 system based on Android 7.1.1. I have been using Nubia mobile phones before, and the nubia UI gave me the impression that it was relatively dull. The interface design is bland and not feature-rich. But after getting the nubia Z17 this time, after a simple experience, I found that the latest nubia UI 5.0 has made changes in many aspects, especially in terms of functionality and interaction. It is like being reborn. Let’s go through some of its upgrades. Click here to re-understand nubia UI.

Let’s first look at the basic interface design.

In terms of interface design, nubia UI5.0 has done some processing on the icons. Through intelligent algorithms, the colors and styles of all system and third-party icons under various desktop themes are more unified and visually simpler.

It is worth mentioning that nubia UI has made many detailed optimizations in interface interaction, just to mention a few. App notifications are changed to floating window notifications with a jumping effect, which are concise and elegant. Some applications have added dynamic effects to the icons to display the application status. For example, when playing music or installing an application, there will be corresponding animations on the icons that echo the current status and are smart. In addition, Nubia Z17 does not support 3D Touch, but some applications support long-pressing to bring up shortcut menus, and you can achieve some simple controls without entering the application.

In terms of interface optimization, the system will also intelligently match the most coordinated inverse color effect based on the background wallpaper, so that the text on the desktop or lock screen is not affected by the wallpaper and is clearly legible. From this beginning of my experience with the nubia UI 5.0 system interface, I found that nubia UI has really changed. It pays attention to details, has a beautiful interface, and has flexible and elegant interactions.

Another major change in interaction is the separation of the notification bar and shortcut operation buttons. Once detached, the drop-down menu is used only to display various apps and system notifications. The various shortcut buttons moved to the lower area of ??the screen are basically within reach of one-handed operation, simplifying the operation logic and optimizing the one-handed operation experience.

Let’s talk about another interesting design, the dial. The screen size of Nubia Z17 is 5.5 inches, but due to the bezel-less design, the body width is already relatively narrow. But in order to further improve the one-handed operation experience, nubia UI 5.0 has made many targeted optimizations. Dial is one of them. The numeric key area of ??its dial pad adopts a non-equally divided design, making it easy to press regardless of whether the left or right hand is dialing with one hand. At the same time, it also provides intelligent number retrieval. Local numbers and various service numbers can be searched, which can be easily done with one hand. This kind of experience is rare in 5.5-inch mobile phones.

Here, there is another detail I want to share with you. In the call history and text message list of nubia UI 5.0, the missed calls and unread text messages are sorted upside down. This is because when using one hand, it is difficult for users to click on the first two rows of the call history or text message list. After that, the order is reversed. , even with one hand, you can easily perform operations such as calling back and replying to text messages.

Nubia UI 5.0 really pays attention to details and one-handed operation optimization.

Function optimization.

In fact, as early as the first generation of bezel-less mobile phone Nubia Z9, Nubia has made some targeted operational optimizations for bezel-less screens. For example, swipe up/down the edge to switch applications and start applications, slide the edge repeatedly to accelerate the phone, slide bilaterally to adjust the brightness, etc. However, in actual experience, the accuracy requirements of these operations are too high, and it requires a certain amount of learning to get started for the first time. cost.

This time on nubia UI 5.0, Fit Card is newly 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. And compared with the several operations mentioned above, the outgoing operation of Fit Card is simple and easy to use, and its practicality has been improved.

Some other currently popular new features, such as long screenshots, split screen, floating incoming calls, red envelope assistant, screen recording, etc., are all reflected in nubia UI 5.0, bringing convenience to actual use. . There is nothing unusual about this, these are now basically the kind that you have, I have, and everyone has.

In other respects, Nubia officials said that nubia UI 5.0 introduces AI artificial intelligence technology. Through the analysis of user behavior, resources are allocated on demand and reasonably scheduled to effectively solve system freezes and power consumption. question. This needs to be verified by long-term use, but the system response speed is indeed very fast. At the same time, NeoSpeed ??can effectively improve application loading speed through intelligent loading, memory compression, etc. Let’s get a feel for the loading speed of the app.

In these three main dimensions of function, interaction, and interface design, the overall experience of nubia UI 5.0 is satisfactory.

nubia UI 5.0 has made significant progress compared to before. Although the software system has never been the strong point of Nubia mobile phones, thanks to the support provided by the underlying Android system and Nubia's own efforts, it has gradually closed the gap with the excellent Android UI. Especially some of the details of the system gave me a lot of surprises, and they were quite crafted.

From "a mobile phone that can shoot stars" to "a mobile phone photography expert", Nubia has been building its brand image around taking pictures. As far as products are concerned, Nubia mobile phones have always used CMOS with better imaging quality than mobile phones of the same price range to gain advantages in taking pictures. In addition, Nubia mobile phones also use the NeoVision camera system to give photography enthusiasts the opportunity to use their creativity and imagination. At the same time, it also reduces the learning costs for ordinary users to shoot "blockbuster" movies, which can be said to kill two birds with one stone.

Since this year, Nubia has officially entered the "dual camera" era. As a flagship phone, Nubia Z17 is naturally equipped with better cameras and the most advanced technical solutions. Its rear camera is a 23-megapixel + 12-megapixel dual color camera that supports 2x 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 cameras. The hardware specifications are almost the same. It also supports full-pixel dual-core focusing. Each pixel can not only be used to detect light, but also be used for focusing at the same time. The size of a single pixel has also reached 1.4μm, which has powerful night shooting and focusing capabilities. Let’s take a look at the product samples first.

When it comes to the photography experience, Nubia Z17 feels clean and neat to me, which is reflected in focus, imaging speed, photo browsing speed, etc. Even in low-light environments, Nubia Z17 has been able to demonstrate its first-class focusing speed. From pressing the photo button to clicking on the photo just taken, the entire process is completed in one go.

All sample photos were taken in automatic mode. What impressed me most about the imaging of Nubia Z17 is that the photos obtained are very transparent and the brightness of the picture is relatively high, giving people the most direct impression. It feels like the pictures taken are very clean. In addition, thanks to the large F1.8 aperture, Nubia Z17 also performs very well when shooting macro. In terms of color grading, Nubia also takes the route of pleasing the eye. In many scenes, the photos taken have a LOMO style and look very comfortable, such as the first sample and the penultimate sample.

Every Nubia flagship uses the top processor of the year. As the flagship of 2017, Nubia Z17 naturally uses the Snapdragon 835 platform. Currently on the market, there are only three products that have been launched using the Snapdragon 835 platform: Samsung S8 series (National Bank version), Xiaomi 6, and Sony Xperia XZ Premium. Two are expensive and one still needs to be snapped up. It can be seen that At present, the Snapdragon 835 platform is still in the production capacity ramping stage. Moreover, the Z17 uses UFS 2.1. As memory resources are relatively tight in 2017, we are currently more concerned about the smooth supply of the Nubia Z17 in the early stages of its launch.

▲The first product that can reach the peak of Snapdragon 835 in applications

Theoretically, this time Snapdragon 835 uses Samsung’s 10nm FinFET LPE process and 8-core Kryo 280 semi-customized The core of the architecture has a maximum frequency of 2.45GHz. In some previous tests, some other products equipped with Snapdragon 835 were limited to 2.35GHz in daily use. However, through our tests, in large-scale games and some daily applications, , the main frequency of Z17 is not limited, and can reach 2.45GHz when loading "Honor of Kings" and entering the camera. In actual use, there is no doubt that Snapdragon 835 also gives the Z17 a smooth system experience, and scenes that require GPU computing such as camera zooming and blurring are also relatively smooth.

The Snapdragon 835 uses Samsung’s 10nm FinFET LPE process. It is said that the Snapdragon 835 integrates nearly 3 billion transistors, which is the most in several years. It has gradually narrowed the distance with the A10 Fusion. We mentioned a long time ago that the FinFET process can reduce the CPU leakage rate by transforming the deletion form, thereby reducing chip power consumption. In this generation, on the Snapdragon 835 platform, the balance between power consumption and performance has reached a higher level.

In terms of GPU, Snapdragon 835 is equipped with Adreno 540 GPU, which supports various graphics standards such as OpenGL ES 3.2, complete OpenCL 2.0, Vulkan and DX12. Through a simple running score, we can see that the single-core of Snapdragon 835 is 2027, and the multi-core can reach 6184 points, and it can be easily understood: whether it is theory or actual experience, the Snapdragon 835 platform can be called the current performance Combine the best SoC with experience.

In addition, to our surprise, Z17 has also become the first product to support QC 4. Compared with the previous QC3.0, QC4 mainly improves its support for USB Type-C and USB-PD. It has high compatibility. Compared with the previous generation, QC4’s charging speed is increased by 20% and its charging efficiency is increased by 30%. As the world's first product to support QC4, Z17 uses SMB1381+PMI8998 dual charging IC solution, which can intelligently adjust charging power and maintain the temperature during charging. Judging from the actual charging power provided, the charging head provided by Z17 supports 12V1.5A, 9V2A and 5V3A, and can basically maintain 17W+ data during charging.

China's mobile phone market has transformed from an incremental market to a stock market in just a few years, and the era of "dividing and enclosing" each mobile phone manufacturer has ended. From competing for cost-effectiveness to competing for products and now for brands, the entire industry is moving forward along the trend of consumption upgrading. For Nubia, it has never given up its dedication to products. Whether it is the unique selling points such as bezel-less design, NeoVision imaging engine, Fit edge interaction, etc., they fully reflect Nubia’s creativity.

In general, from a product perspective, the Nubia Z17 does not have any shortcomings. For cowboys and friends who like to take pictures, this is a very good opportunity to change the phone. But in the face of a market worth more than 3,000 yuan, it is still difficult for mass consumers to pay for it based on product strength alone.