Nubia Z11 First Impressions: Impressive Bezel-less Design and High-End Hardware

Nubia Z11 poses a threat to the recently launched OnePlus 3T and Honor 8 with its eye-catching bezel-less front and top-notch specification.

By Rohit

| Updated: Thursday, December 15, 2016, 13:59 [IST]

The eye-catching 'Bezel-less' Nubia Z11 along with the affordable battery-centric Nubia N1 are now official in the Indian market. The smartphones are priced at Rs. 29,999 and Rs. 11,999 respectively and will exclusively sell on e-commerce portal Amazon.in.

Nubia Z11, which we are going to talk about in detail in this article, is a direct rival of recently launched OnePlus 3T and the Huawei's Honor 8. The handset offers 6GB of RAM and brings the first-of-its kind Bezel-less display equipped with Frame Interactive technology.

We at Gizbot tested the device during the launch event and here is what we think of the Budget Flagship- Nubia Z11.

Eye Catching Bezel-less 5.5-inch Display

The first thing you will notice about the smartphone is its Bezel-less 5.5-inch screen that comes protected with a 2.5D Arc Edge Tempered Glass. The display offers a Full HD resolution and is able to offer eye-popping visuals because of its high pixel density and border-less 81% body to screen ratio.

The display also has Nubia's Frame interactive Technology that provides some eye-catching animation effects and new way to interact with a touch screen mobile device. Sliding up and down on the either side of the display (on the edges of frame) and other gestures let you shift home screens and access other smartphone features that enhances practicality in everyday usage.

Moreover, watching videos and playing games will be a sheer treat on Nubia Z11 due to its bezel-less 1080p screen.

Elegant Design

Nubia Z11 is made out of aircraft-grade aluminium alloy and offers a neat and premium design. Despite having a 5.5-inch display, the smartphone feels quite compact, all thanks to the bezel-less design.

The company also says that the smartphone material is corrosion resistant and is anti-oxidative that will protect it from corrosion caused by the surrounding environment. Guess we'll have to wait for a bit longer to find this thing out, but overall we are quite pleased with the design of the handset.

High End Hardware

Coming on to the hardware, Nubia Z11 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 CPU paired up with mammoth 6GB of RAM. We have seen the similar configuration in OnePlus 3, which is now replaced by the upgraded OnePlus 3T offering the latest Snapdragon 821 CPU and 6GB of RAM. It will be worth finding out who wins the title of best flagship smartphone in under Rs. 30,000 during the detailed review of both the handsets in the coming days.

Nubia Z11 comes with 64GB internal memory that can be expanded further by up to 200 GB via microSD card slot.

Not the latest Android Flavor

Nubia Z11 runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system and not the latest Android 7.0 Nougat. However the near stock Android UI runs quite smoothly and did not stutter during our brief stint with the handset.

The company's customized Android skin- V4.0 offers a clean user interface, gesture support, and some nifty software tweaks that we will discuss in detail while reviewing the handset.

Decent Camera Hardware

Nubia Z11 features a 16MP rear camera with Nubia's NeoVision 6.0 feature, which as per company is a DSLR-like photography system provided to deliver on everyday mobile photography front.

The camera combines OIS (Optical Image Stabilizer), nubia HIS (Hand-Held Image Stabilization) EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) to capture long exposures without the use of a tripod. Besides, the camera interface is packed with variety of modes such as slow-motion, time-lapse, pro mode, and a set of filters including clone camera, star trail, macro mode, etc.

We took some shots and found the 16MP rear and 8MP front camera decent enough to offer good pictures in good lighting conditions. We will test the low-light performance and all above mentioned camera features in our detailed review of the handset.