Considering we've somehow gotten to our 10th fortnightly episode of our column on amazing tech from far away lands, it's safe to say that time flies.
We started off with the still-fresh Vivo Xplay 3s back in January, and we've been on a mission since then to show you more of what you could be missing out. In this episode, we once again have something truly special.
Like Sharp, which has now won itself three consecutive mentions in our
Monsters from Asia column, the still-hot-off-the-conveyor-belt Nubia Z7 grants the company owned by ZTE that same distinction. Yes, Nubia is ZTE's project, and the company exclusively focuses on high-end devices -- like the Z7, of course. So what's so great about the Z7 to win it a distant nod from our side? It's simple really -- the hardware configuration on this thing is just mad.
Starting off with the exterior, the Z7 packs a 5.5-inch display with super-crisp, 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution (Quad HD). That same panel runs on the LG G3 and the Oppo Find 7. To power that beast, the Nubia Z7 relies on a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 processor and 3GB of RAM, which should hopefully manage the feat just fine. The phone is also packing a 13-megapixel Sony Exmor RS sensor with Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), f/2.0 lens, and a two-tone LED flash. In-line with Nubia's camera-centric values, the camera obviously shoots 4K UHD video and 120 FPS slow-moes, and the software offers support for a number of different shooting modes. In terms of internal memory, there's only a 32GB storage version right now, but you can add more via a microSD card. Lastly, keeping the lights on is a 3000 mAh cell, and the 8.9 mm-thin Z7, amazingly, also has support for two SIM cards -- one on LTE and one on 3G. That's very rare, specifically at this point.
So how much are you going to be expected to cough up for the Nubia Z7? Well, at the equivalent of $550, it's not exactly cheap, but one could argue that you're getting quite a lot of phone worth. In any case, availability obviously is a major roadblock, and we have no idea if ZTE is planning on pushing its wares to Europe and the States.
Things that are NOT allowed: