Nubia Z60 Ultra review: The era of the edge-to-edge display is nigh

The Nubia Z60 Ultra is the latest flagship of the brand, culminating a multi-year journey of innovation and design to bring consumers a truly immersive edge-to-edge display experience. There are a lot of things to get excited about in this flagship phone, and today we will cover every single one of them.

From the under-display selfie camera to the huge 6.8-inch AMOLED screen and the capable triple camera system on the back, this phone has a lot to offer. There are interesting design choices here and there, but overall, it is a solid device with top-notch features.

There's one key feature that makes this phone stand out next to your regular Galaxies and iPhones. It's not boring. So, without further ado, let's dive! Oh, and by the way, the Nubia Z60 Ultra is available globally (including in the US), and you can get one from the Nubia store for as low as $599.

As you can see above, the Nubia z60 Ultra review score is now lower than one might expect. That is not because of some incremental flaw, but because we have implemented a new rating system at PhoneArena that gives readers a better idea of the performance of a phone across different categories. Remember to look at the scores and compare them to the average for the class––we believe you will find these scores tremendously useful. Learn more about the new PhoneArena Review Scoring system here.

The specs sheet looks very impressive, at least on paper. The Nubia Z60 Ultra aims to tick all the boxes with the latest Snapdragon processor, an ample camera system, a huge battery, and the edge-to-edge screen we keep on blabbering about. However, it remains to be seen how well these specs translate into real-world performance.

Nubia Z60 Ultra Design & Colors

That's one big phone!

The first thing that you will notice about the Nubia Z60 Ultra is its massive size. The phone has a 6.8-inch display, but it's the overall design that's rather edgy and boxy, contributing to the experience. There are no curves to try and mask the size of the almost 250-gram body, and the camera bump is also enormous.

Design is subjective, of course, and this industrial-looking rectangular phone will most certainly find fans. Nubia has included a transparent plastic back cover in the retail package, and using it improves the situation with the sharp and edgy camera bump a lot.

Speaking of the camera bump, it takes more than ⅓ of the back, and it's made to look like a point-and-shoot camera. It's an interesting aesthetic, and it adds a unique touch to the overall design of the phone. For what it's worth, you can't call the Nubia Z60 Ultra a boring phone.

There's a red power button under the volume rocker and a programmable switch button further down below. Currently, you can get the Z60 Ultra in Black and Silver, but there's also a cool blue option called Starry Night that resembles a Van Gogh painting.

Normally, this section is rather empty, just like most flagship retail boxes are nowadays, but this isn't the case with the Nubia Z60 Ultra. Inside, you will find everything you will ever need to start using the phone right away.

I personally don't believe the eco-angle behind removing chargers, cables, and other stuff from the retail box, so it's a pleasant surprise to find a lot of goodies inside the Z60 Ultra's retail box. There's the transparent back cover mentioned earlier; you're getting an 80W fast-charging brick and a red USB-C cable. The phone also comes with a screen protector preinstalled, so you don't have to worry about getting one separately.

Nubia Z60 Ultra Display

Let's talk about that big 6.8-inch AMOLED display. It feels huge when you're coming from a 5.4-inch iPhone mini, but even when compared to more ordinarily sized phones, it still looks big. The resolution is 1116 x 2480 pixels, distributed at a 20:9 ratio, resulting in a pixel density of around 400 pixels per inch.

The display itself is great, bright, vivid, and crisp. Nubia advertises up to 1,500 nits of peak brightness, but we all know that these numbers don't hold in real-life scenarios due to how peak brightness is measured. Under bright sunlight, we measured a maximum brightness of just over 1000 nits, which is absolutely fine.

The color accuracy is also pretty good at under 2 delta E. You can fine-tune the color temperature and mode, choose between 60 Hz and 120 Hz refresh rates, and also leave it on Auto for the phone to switch at will. This is not an LTPO screen, so there is no 1-120Hz dynamic refresh rate.

Display Measurements:

As far as biometrics go, there's an under-display fingerprint scanner of the optical type, and it's working as expected. I'm not a big fan of those and prefer side-mounted physical fingerprint readers, but this one gets the job done.

There's also facial recognition, which works super quick but only relies on the front selfie camera, so the security side of it is a bit sketchy. The under-display selfie camera deserves a few words here. There are instances where you almost can't see it, especially in a dark-lit room with a darker wallpaper or background.

That being said, it's absolutely visible if you pay attention to it. Actually, in bright sunlight, there's a sun icon appearing on the selfie camera. I'm not sure if it's a feature to let you know where the camera is or just a clever trick to hide it when it's bright outside.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra comes with three cameras on the back, positioned in a quite auspicious camera bump. The design choice is deliberate, as it makes the phone look like a point-and-shoot camera from the past (we've said that too many times in this review). The cameras are quite good, following the latest trend to make uses of Sony's flagship sensors in the main camera and an OmniVision for the periscope zoom one.

In the case of the Nubia Z60 Ultra, the main camera uses a Sony IMX800 sensor, 1/1.49-inch with optical image stabilization on top, and a focal length equivalent of 35 mm. The aperture is fixed at f/1.6. The aforementioned periscope zoom camera uses an OmniVision OV64B sensor, the same found on the OnePlus Open, OnePlus 12 and a slew of other recently launched Chinese phones.

There's an 18mm ultrawide lens, and the European version of the phone comes with a 12MP selfie camera, hidden under the main display. Let's see how good these cameras perform.

The main camera produces crisp and detailed images, worthy of the new generation of camera phones. The Sony sensor is quite good at capturing light, so even in the gloomy January afternoon, photos turned out pretty decent, with good dynamic range, and detail. Sometimes the colors look a bit boosted and too saturated, but this must be attributed to the post-processing algorithms, and not the hardware itself.

The camera system uses an AI assistant to switch between modes and offer you the best frame and setting, and for the most part it works pretty well. It can detect faces and offer you to switch to portrait mode, measure the focal distance and engage macro mode, and so on. 

Low-light shots are the usual affair, but unlike other Chinese smartphones (khm...Honor) that overexpose and brighten every night shot, the Nubia Z60 Ultra produces some really true-to-life low-light images. This is one of the phones that snapped night photos close to what I saw with my own eyes. There's a dedicated night mode, and you can use that if you like, but if you leave everything on auto, there's a better chance to get a decent shot.

The periscope zoom camera uses an OmniVision OV64B camera sensor, a popular choice of late for such type of systems. If we talk focal length, it offers an optical equivalent of 85mm, and when you add some sensor crop on top, you can get 170mm with near-optical quality. The resulting shots are great and they rival the main sensor in quality, detail, and sharpness. The zoom camera is useful for a lot of things, from portraits to snapping distant signs, and getting close when you need to. There's no big drop in overall quality between 85 and 170mm, and while the zoom levels aren't insane, the Nubia Z60 Ultra can snap amazing zoom shots at 3.3x and 6.6x.

Portrait mode is a mixed bag. We recommend using the zoom lens and just get close enough to create a natural bokeh effect. With the f/1.6 aperture this is rather easy. If you decide to use the dedicated portrait mode, you might smear parts of the object you want into the frame, and sometimes even get a misplaced focus on the background. For what it's worth, you can change the virtual aperture to control the bokeh algorithms, but once again, we think you can make decent portraits without this software crutch.

The ultrawide camera delivers decent results, with similar color tone to the main and telephoto cameras. What's interesting is that in low-light this camera tends to produce wild glares, to the point where images are almost unusable.

Time for the verdict on the under-display selfie camera. Is it any good? Well, it's still way off other non-covered by a display front cameras but the technology is maturing slowly. When the lighting is uniform, you can get a good selfie out of this phone. But any strong light source would produce blur, overexposure, and sometimes double image artifacts. Another interesting thing is that the Nubia Z60 seems to apply beauty effects even when the setting is turned off. I personally don't mind, but people with enough charisma on their own might want not to use the artificial enhancement.

  

The Nubia Z60 Ultra can record 8K videos at 30fps, but we recommend keeping things at 4K@60fps for best results. It's the most popular option, doesn't take as much space, and also allows for some decent hybrid stabilization, resulting in smooth videos. 

We have rigorously tested the camera on the Nubia Z60 Ultra and above you can see the results of those tests. We carefully measure the performance of all cameras in various test scenes, ranking the performance across important metrics like exposure, subject exposure, color accuracy, detail, artifacts and more. We do these tests for both photos and videos. 

You can learn more about our PhoneArena Camera Score testing protocol here.

 

Nubia Z60 Ultra Performance & Benchmarks

Hotter than hell and half of Georgia

There are two sides when we talk about performance on a phone. On the one hand, we have all your benchmark numbers and scores, which can give you a quantitative measure of the phone's performance. These are all fine and dandy, but they rarely translate into real-life experience. The truth is that smartphone processors have been fast enough for many years now.

On the other hand, there's the real-life feel of the phone. How fast you subjectively perceive it to be. These two angles sometimes cross, sometimes they're far off, and sometimes they align perfectly. In the case of the Nubia, the real-life performance is top-notch; there is nothing to complain about. However, when it comes to benchmarks and stress tests, things are looking… let's say, rather hot.

During our 3D Mark stress test, the phone failed to complete due to overheating and even shut itself down a couple of times. We were able to run the test in the fridge, which is not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Heavy games and apps also made the phone run hot, sometimes to the point of being unpleasant to hold.

The RAM and storage situation is very flexible, there are lots of variants, starting from a modest 8GB/256GB option and going all the way to the whopping 24GB of RAM on the 1TB model. You can get middle-ground models with 12GB and 16GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of onboard storage too.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra comes with Android 14 out of the box, with MyOS 14 on top of it. There's no bloatwea onboard, and there are a couple of cool features worth mentioning. You can customize your theme, including adding animated wallpapers, selecting the animations, type and shape of different elements, fonts, effects, and AOD. It's a nice touch, and the themes look quite polished.

Another cool feature we already mentioned above is the customizable switch on the side of the phone. You can use it as a mute switch or launch the flashlight, camera, voice recorder, or gaming space app.

There is other stuff adding to the navigation options, such as the Z-Pop (a pop-up window with shortcuts), the ZSmart SideBar (an edge-activated floating bar with apps and shortcuts), a floating window feature, and more.

All in all, the experience is smooth and uncluttered; you can forget about the added Nubia-specific features if they're not your cup of tea and use the phone as a normal stock Android one.

The software support situation is a bit uncertain. On the Nubia website, we find this: At Nubia, we’re committed to providing regular system updates for up to 3 years from the date of purchase, ensuring your device's performance and security." It's not perfectly clear whether it's OS updates, security ones, or both.

But if we assume it's three whole years of full software support, the Nubia Z60 Ultra will get the following Android versions:

• Android 15
• Android 16
• Android 17

Nubia Z60 Ultra Battery

Run, Forest, run!

There's one big advantage to having such a huge chassis. You can snug a huge battery inside as well. The Nubia Z60 Ultra comes with a 6,000mAh battery. Unsurprisingly, the phone manages to last two full days on a single charge easily, even if you use the 120 Hz refresh rate and put it through its paces.

Our battery benchmark scores paint the same picture; the phone managed more than 17 hours of browsing, 11+ hours of YouTube streaming, and 6 and a half hours of gaming at 120 Hz. That's very impressive, given the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside and the big screen.

Nubia Z60 Ultra Charging Speeds

The not-so-great news is that there's no wireless charging onboard, probably because the battery took up all of the space. Below, you will find the detailed charging profile.

Looking at the table above, you probably get the picture. There are other Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones that offer sometimes even better features but they are inevitably more expensive, or in the case of the ROG Phone, lack in the camera department. 

Nubia Z60 Ultra Summary and Final Verdict

Well, here we are at the end of the review. Should you buy the Nubia Z60 Ultra? That's a really tough question. This phone has a lot going on but there are some drawback we just can't overlook. For one, it tends to get very hot under heavy load, and if you're gaming a lot or using heavy apps, it might be an issue. Then there's the form factor. The phone is huge and boxy, might not appeal to everyone.

On the other hand, this industrial design, paired with the latest Snapdragon, an ample camera system, and a great display with an almost invisible selfie camera, could very well justify the $599 starting price. One thing is certain, though. The era of the edge-to-edge display is nigh. It's only a matter of time for the big guys to perfect the technology and get there. And if you want an early taste of that, the Nubia Z60 Ultra is a decent choice.