After quite a bit we’re starting to see some action from ZTE’s Nubia.
Recently it was learnt that ZTE spent a lot of money to get the Nubia.com domain name, and now the company seems to be prepping the X8 for a launch.
Leaks point at a fairly powerful phone with some high-end specs… lets take a look.
Like the recently launched Letv Le Max Pro, the Nubia X8 will have a fairly large screen — a 6.44 one at that. A big screen isn’t everything that the phones will have in common; two of the most key specs are also going to be the same, if the leaked info is to be believed. This includes a 2560 x 1440p resolution and the Snapdragon 820 SoC.
Gizchina News of the week
If that does happen, it would really heat up (no pun intended) the competition.
Jokes apart, the leaks go on to mention a 4500mAh battery for the Nubia X8. Whether or not the Snapdragon 820 happens to be as energy-efficient as the Snapdragon 801 is yet to be seen, but with a 4500mAh battery there’s hardly anything to worry about, one would imagine.
Nubia have an event scheduled for the 18th this month, so thankfully there isn’t too much you have to wait before you get to see the phone in all its beauty.
ZTE Nubia X8: Pictures
Too big.
wrong
6 is fine, any bigger is ridiculous
To quote IBM back in 1983, “64kb of memory is more than ANYONE would ever need in a PC”.
Just a year ago “size-ists” were saying “5.5 is fine, any bigger is ridiculous”, so perhaps it would be wiser to take a historical view of things and acknowledge that there’s a place for many size options, and that market forces will dictate which one’s succeed. Usually the only one that comes off as “ridiculous” is the person that predicts the upper limits of anything.
Granted, I should probably not have just written “wrong” above. I was lazy. I should have explained that it was wrong thinking to bash a size, and not a wrong preference.
I was giving my personal opinion with the 6 inch comment. Obviously 6 inches is far above what there is high levels of consumer demand for, and even 5.5 is above the average consumer demands hence Motorola, HTC, Samsung etc staying at 5.2-5.3~ for flagships. 5.5 inches is common in Chinese phones, and also other countries like India and Brazil, due to cultural and economic reasons I don’t have the time to explain. I am a Product Designer by profession so if you want to call the opinion of someone whose job is ethnographic research and the design of products to meet those needs then feel free to be a bigot.
Sorry… didn’t mean to make it personal.
The point I was trying to make is that one size DOESN’T fit all and that killing (or even trimming) the size ranges in exchange for having every device fit into the 5″ to 5.5″ limits consumer choice and ultimately limits innovation as well.
There’s also an underserved audience that wants SMALL screens (i.e. back to the days of 3.5″ and smaller). It’s not what I would want personally, but I’d hate to see that others couldn’t get an option for it. If there’s market interest more small screens will start being offered.
As David Pogue said, “80% of what’s made is pure crap. But you have to make all the stuff to figure out which of the 20% will be winners in the marketplace”.
The reason we see a lot of 5.5 inchers now too is price btw, you can get 5.5 inch 1080p screens for very little compared to something odd like 5.2 or 5.3 Your perception of customer demand is likely skewed because of economies of scale but I can say quite confidently that 99% of people in the Western market now prefer 4.8-5.2 inches. The Sony 6.44 inch phone didn’t do very well and we no longer see the 7 inch phablets that OEMs tried to sell even a year ago so I am very surprised anyone would still be trying this.
Indeed. Only few companies in the world are able to manufacture a compact flagship due to cost and lack of engineering capabilities.
Damn, we need bigger alien hands
I’m always surprised when people are negative about large screens. There’s a good reason why they’re exceedingly popular, it’s because people think that being able to see more is more important that one handed operation. And, of course, the large size, allows for other advantages, like larger battery and running time, as a side benefit.
I remember when the first large screen devices became mainstream. I was living in HK, and noticed that more women than men were using the big screens on the MTR. When I asked people why they liked it, it was usually the same answer, “I can see more”, occasionally, someone would say, “It’s easier to type on the screen”. The reason more women than men: just a guess, but they fit just fine in their purses, and men hadn’t adapted yet to putting the large devices in their pocket.
At the time, the only people that didn’t like large screens were iPhone users, and their negativity was more politically motivated than anything else. Of course since the iPhone 6+, they think that Steve Job’s personally invented large screens, even though he’d been dead for 3 years before they came out… sigh.
I don’t like iPhones, never had one, once had an ipod touch, didnt liked, but you just said: bigger phones are more suitable for women with purses, men can’t put that phones in the pocket. About the large screen, if I want to see more I would use a tablet.
5 inch is enough maybe 5,5
I carry around a Nexus 6 in my pocket all the time. It’s actually smaller than the iPhone 6+ which has a 5.5″ screen.
Nubia’s problem is their In-house OS.
This could be a great device IF that would make a “Pure Android” version of it. Or if they would get Cyanogen (either commercial or open source) to support it as a primary phone. Or if they could get Google to support their hardware directly (like some sort of “Nexus version” program… which doesn’t currently exist).
Would like to know some of the other specs, like # of SIMs, LTE bands, memory, storage, SD card support, quick charging, fingerprint, NFC, and of course, price.
It could be a promising device, but something tells me that the LeTV guys are a bit more in touch with what’s needed to succeed.
It’s a Nubia, will have a lot of LTE bands, now they’re expanding will have more and more, SD card maybe , Quick charging 3.0 surely and I can see fingerprint in the pics. And will be expensive of course :/
I’m surprised that a big company like ZTE doesn’t just give a dozen phones to the core CM developers on the open source side. It would be worth 100x the cost to have their devices supported, and it would be so easy to do!
maybe CM devs are getting too greedy, or maybe they are not that good like they think they are.
i own a MI4 and a OPO and even if CM feels faster than MIUI, it has more bugs and it takes much longer to fix them.
speaking from my personal experience
Or AOKP (they’re more “stock Android” than CM) or take your pick 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_firmware
i agree with AOKP, I’ve said in the past several times.
although i referred to small companies that can’t deliver a decent rom.
speaking of big companies like ZTE in not surprised that they come out with their ROM.
Look at Samsung, LG,HTC… they all make their skinned rom and they all suck at it, but they still believe they make great software.
It’s great to finally see some large screen phones on the market, although I think this will be much more expensive than the Letv announced yesterday.
The thing about Nubia is that they’re owned 100% by ZTE. So there’s a chance that there could be some carrier subsidies offered in some markets.
Unfortunately, phones that come through a carrier channel tend to have extra bloatware installed, software features that the carrier doesn’t like disabled (like WiFi hotspot, etc.) and a slow, if ever, software upgrade time.
If it gets released in my country (and if the battery specs with other specs is right) then am getting one.
M8 is starting to look small compared to the new ones coming out.
Doesn’t Huawei have a 6.44″ of their own? I think maybe the P8Max.
At what screen size should we stop calling something a phone? IMO, just because it looks like a phone, acts like a phone and works like a phone, doesn’t mean it should be called a “phone”.
Though I like devices with bigger screens, carrying these monsters is a pain. Just now I have gotten used to a 5.5 inch phone. So though I would love to use them, I just don’t think it’s worth the hassle.
Ugh. Which 5.5″ phone? A 5.5″ iPhone 6+ is bigger than a 6″ Nexus 6.
I like the idea of seeing more on the screen, I hate the idea of wasting space and making it bigger for no reason. Granted this one is quite a bit bigger than the median, but the 6.44″ size has been tried before (by Nubia with the X6, Sony with their Xperia Z Ultras, and Huawei), so clearly their experience with previous devices has given them enough confidence to offer another this size.
BTW, who cares what they call it. Call it a phone if they want to, or something else. I would personally try to stay on the side of choosing a descriptive term.
One term that I’ve always disliked it Phablet, which was part of Steve Job’s “Hummer” name calling campaign against giving consumers choices for large screens. It was always used in a negative context by Steve et al to try to discredit large screens, so I don’t like using the term.
In my opinion, this phone is way too big. As a man, I don’t know where to put it in my pocket… But there has to be a market for such big phones, otherwise they wouldn’t be sold as good as they are.
You yourself don’t like it but you are OK to understand it, Good for you… Doing better than most on that regard.
Damn, it is huge!! Really hope Mi5 has 5.2″, bigger than that i’ll look for another phone, like the Mi4c or Redmi 3, even the xperia z compact series could be an option.