The Nubia brand by ZTE launched the Z17 Mini, the latest offering in the Z series, at an event in China. The specs look pretty neat on paper, but what does it hide in the hood? Let’s find out.
Nubia Z17 Mini Specifications
Design
Nubia used a combination of metal and glass on this one, with the glass running from top to bottom on the front, and a full metal back with the dual camera housing, with the trademark circular red haptic home button in the front (that red halo is a beauty). Sporting a thin form factor, the phone is just about 7.45mm in width and weighs around a 160g.
The fingerprint scanner resides at the back of the phone above the nubia logo and below the dual cameras. This phone is available in 4 different colors for you to choose; champagne gold, black gold, red or elegant black.
Specifications
Sporting a 5.2 inch, 1080p display with 2.5D Gorilla Glass, the Z17 provides a pixel density of 441 ppi, meaning, you will seldom see any distorted pixels.
It is available in two variants, with the difference being in the RAM and the processor. The 4GB variant houses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652, whereas the 6GB variant is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 653, providing a slight performance increase over the Snapdragon 652. Both the variants have 64GB of internal storage, with a hybrid slot for the micro SD card, which means you can either use two sim cards or one sim card and one SD card. The Nubia will be shipped with Nubia UI 4.0 based on Android Marshmallow.
It houses the standard connectivity options with dual band WiFi and NFC being the cherry on the cake, since many vendors skip on these small, nifty features. It has a USB Type-C port and DTS audio.
The phone lives on a 2950mAh battery, which, coupled with the 653/2’s turbo charging, might help the phone get through the day.
Cameras
This time, Nubia outdid itself in the camera department. The rear sports a dual camera setup, both being Sony IMX258 13 MP, f/2.2 sensors with Sapphire glass protecting the lens. And that’s not all, there’s EIS and OIS for that extra stability you need while shooting moving objects. A 16 MP sensor powers the front camera with 80° wide-angle lens and a f/2.0 aperture.
Price
The 4GB variant will sell in the Chinese market for ¥1699 ($247) starting 13th of April on Nubia’s official website.
The 6GB variant will sell in the Chinese market for ¥1999 ($290) starting 13th of April on Nubia’s official website, and offline stores too.
The Z17 seems to be a promising device, at least on paper. But only time will tell whether it does justice to the features it boasts of. Watch out for more!
Do these models have a same features as Z11? Edge sliding etc…??
I would assume so – that actually came along on the Z9 range about 18 months ago (all versions of the Z9, including the budget Z9 mini – I believe they updated the MyPrague phones too). I think it is on all thier handsets with thier skin – Nubia UI, from v3.6 onwards had FIT (Frame interactive technology) enabled. Version 3 point something anyway. Looking back through my ROM collection and emails, I’ve been using the frame edge features since late July 2015 on my NX510J.
ok thanks…only con for this device- battery…at least 3500 should be, IMHO
can you get it any cheaper ?
Cool1 has the same camera sensor, right?
Nice move from Nubia ! IMHO this device shows a good balance between SoC power, features and price. Plus you got Nubia’s build quality and camera fine tuning as usual.