Two months ago, at the MWC2024 conference, Nubia unveiled several exciting gadgets, including the world’s first 5G+AI naked-eye 3D tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D Ⅱ, Nubia Music smartphone, and its inaugural small foldable screen phone—the Nubia Flip.
In the current somewhat dull mobile and tablet market, this lineup of innovative products from Nubia truly stands out, showcasing their technological prowess and unique perspective on innovation.
According to official statements, it’s touted as the thinnest Chinese foldable with a new youthful design. Surprisingly, unlike typical high-price tags associated with foldable screen products, the Nubia Flip comes with a more accessible price tag, positioning itself as the “people’s foldable” with a sincere starting price of 2999 yuan.
This new Nubia Flip is hands-on, and they’re here to share their firsthand experience with you.
Design
Upon first holding the Nubia Flip, it feels lightweight yet sturdy. Nubia Flip makes no compromises in its design details, with craftsmanship and texture comparable to foldable screen products at higher prices. Examining its appearance, Nubia Flip adopts a design language of flat rear shell and mid-frame, with the aerospace aluminum mid-frame featuring delicate matte spray coating, resulting in an outstanding texture.
The version received by the reviewer is the black variant, termed “Toffee” by the official, utilizing starlight AG glass technology, providing a silky-smooth feel with a hint of coolness and resistance to fingerprint smudges. Enhanced by the starlight AG technology, the black glass back presents a crystalline beauty, pure black yet constantly shimmering, exuding a subtle sophistication yet not overly conspicuous. Nubia Flip’s camera module and external screen resemble a “vinyl record”, with its appearance when folded resembling a vinyl record player, featuring a “concentric ring” design, enhancing its recognition.
The SIM card slot sits on the left side of the upper mid-frame. On the opposite side, you’ll find the volume keys and the power button. Integrated with fingerprint recognition, the power button stands out with a conspicuous orange-red color. This creates a vivid contrast with the pure black body, serving as a finishing touch to the whole device. Weighing 209g, with dimensions of 170mm in length and 75.5mm in width, when unfolded, Nubia Flip measures only 7.0mm in thickness, offering both a tactile and visual experience that is remarkably slim and light.
Display
The droplet hinge adopts a dual-track suspension design and high-strength aerospace steel material, with the hinge hovering at an angle of 60~110 degrees, producing a very satisfying opening and closing sound. Moving to the main screen, Nubia Flip features a 6.9-inch AMOLED high-definition flexible screen, supporting a 120Hz high refresh rate, 21:9 cinematic aspect ratio, with a resolution of 2790*1188, supporting 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and 10-bit color depth.
This screen supports 2160Hz PWM high-frequency dimming for eye protection. The Nubia Flip addresses concerns about creases on small folding screens. Its droplet hinge design maximizes the screen-to-body ratio, reducing creases. The crease is only visible when the screen is completely black or under specific angles of light. When the screen is lit, the crease visually diminishes significantly, becoming practically negligible.
External Screen Interaction
Let’s dive into the neat little external screen of the Nubia Flip. It’s a circular screen measuring 1.43 inches with a resolution of 466*466. It’s quite versatile, allowing you to take selfies, record audio, check your steps, weather updates, and control music.
Now, talking about the settings, Nubia has included a special section called “External Screen Zone.” Here, you get three main modules: wallpapers, screen-off styles, and functions. Regarding wallpapers, you have quite a variety: personal photos, cute pets, dynamic backgrounds, abstract art, and natural scenery. You can set your favorite photo as wallpaper or opt for adorable animated pets. Tapping on these pets brings some lively animations, giving off a virtual pet vibe.
Nubia Flip also introduces dynamic wallpapers based on the twelve Chinese zodiac signs, each corresponding to a different time of the day. As time passes, the wallpaper changes accordingly. For screen-off styles, Nubia Flip offers choices like a clock, personal signature, Year of the Dragon theme, and dynamic screens.
In terms of functionality, you get access to the camera, weather updates, music control, calendar, schedule, health tracker, stopwatch, voice recorder, and more. Just swipe left or right to switch between different functions. Swiping down reveals notifications, making the interaction somewhat akin to a smartwatch. Two apps, Kuaishou and Bilibili, currently support this feature, although it is hidden within the developer options. Once you enable the developer options, you can locate “Outer Screen Playground” to activate it.
Now, let’s take Bilibili as an example
However, it’s important to emphasize one point: the size and circular shape of the Nubia Flip’s outer screen have already determined its specific application scenarios. It’s more of a secondary screen for the main display, such as quickly checking notifications, viewing schedules, weather, and other information. After all, nobody wants to tap and type on a 1.43-inch small circular screen. The outer screen will receive FOTA updates for AI translation functionality. Imagine this: when you’re out and encounter a situation where translation is needed, you don’t need to open your phone. You can simply operate it through the outer screen, which is quite convenient.
Cameras
Nubia Flip has a combination of a 50-megapixel main camera and a 2-megapixel depth sensor, with a front-facing camera of 16 megapixels, supporting hover-to-capture functionality.
Let’s delve into the imaging capabilities of Nubia Flip
The main focus of Nubia Flip’s imaging system lies in the 50-megapixel main camera, which covers most shooting scenarios. Additionally, the 2-megapixel depth sensor complements the main camera. Nubia Flip incorporates exclusive camera features such as star trails, astrophotography, electronic aperture, brilliance, ID photo, and delayed flash photography. Despite having only two cameras, it doesn’t lack any essential features.
The extensively optimized Neovision Tai Shan AI imaging system powers the algorithm. It achieves lightning-fast captures through AI motion detection, AI neural network noise reduction, and image fusion calculation. In well-lit conditions, Nubia Flip’s main camera delivers satisfactory color reproduction and detail retention for its class. It offers both 26mm (main camera) and 50mm focal lengths. Although lacking a dedicated telephoto lens, the 50-megapixel main camera performs decently at 50mm (2X). With sufficient lighting, it effortlessly captures clear and vivid images. However, in slightly darker environments, capturing experiences a slight lag, requiring a steady hand. Some noise is noticeable in low-light conditions.
The Nubia Flip improves imaging with its foldable design. This boosts selfie and main camera capabilities. Even closed, you can use the main camera for selfies. It has a 50MP aperture and depth-of-field lens for better results than the front camera. The outer screen previews photos of others. Opening the camera and tapping “Outer Screen” enables dual-screen preview. This lets others control their image.
In the camera interface, simply fold Nubia Flip gently to enter hover-to-capture mode. The upper half of the screen is used for photo previews, while the lower half integrates various photo-taking buttons. In this mode, you can also hold the phone horizontally with one hand, walking and recording simultaneously, experiencing the retro style of handheld DV.
Performance
The Nubia Flip features the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, offering a maximum of 12+512GB storage, a built-in 4310mAh battery, supporting 33W fast charging, NFC, linear motor, stereo dual speakers, and DTS:X Ultra 3D sound quality.
The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor is a seasoned player, having been released two years ago. It stands as the first platform of the Snapdragon 7 series following the brand’s nomenclature update. The Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 employs Samsung’s 4nm process, comprising a CPU with one 2.4GHz A710 Prime core, three 2.36GHz A710 Performance cores, and four 1.8GHz A510 Efficiency cores. Its GPU, the Adreno 662, boasts a 20% increase in graphics rendering speed compared to the Snapdragon 778G.
Currently, the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 is mostly used in some mid-range products, making it an entry-level processor. Of course, the Snapdragon 7 Gen1 handles everyday light entertainment without pressure.
Now, let’s delve into a simple experience of playing “Peace Elite”, and assessing its performance on this chipset
In a simple “Peace Elite” experience, the smooth picture quality and maximum frame rate can generally be maintained at around 60fps. Frame drops are minimal, only slightly occurring at the beginning of the game, with stability throughout. Overall, looking at the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 placed two years later, its performance in games like “Peace Elite” remains effortless, despite having noticeable performance limits, the minimum performance isn’t low either.
For instance, after sliding out the gaming toolbar, it supports performance mode switching, prevents accidental touches, provides virtual joysticks, and offers screen-off gaming standby mode.
Even more, there’s a “charging separation” feature. When playing games while charging, enabling this feature allows direct charging to the phone rather than the battery, further avoiding heating issues.
For games like “Peace Elite”, the control panel even offers complex customization features such as control adjustment, GPU settings, and sound enhancement, no less professional than gaming smartphones.
Moreover, it provides a plugin library including auxiliary lines, crosshairs, a “Hunting Mode” for one-click color inversion, and a “Scout Mode” for enlarging the center of the screen, essentially physical enhancements!
AI-Based Intelligent Assistant
Opening the intelligent voice assistant in the phone reveals the “Nebula Assistant” backed by a large model. In terms of skills, it supports chat conversations, knowledge queries, creative writing, and other productivity functions. The author asked for help making an invitation for a Nubia Flip offline experience event. In just a few seconds, the phone generated the invitation. The Nubia Flip is ready to upgrade its AI magic eraser feature, intelligently removing unwanted content from photos.
For instance, whether it’s crafting a movie review, diving into a quick PPT tutorial, or even conducting car reviews, creative ads, speeches, short video scripts, or product marketing, the “Nebula Assistant” handles it all effortlessly. In just a few seconds, tasks are completed. It’s worth mentioning that, in the future, leveraging the power of its large-scale model, the Nubia Flip will also enhance its AI magic eraser feature. This upgrade will intelligently remove unnecessary elements from photos, setting the stage for anticipation.
Conclusion of Nubia Flip
The highlight of the Nubia Flip is the word “fold,” bringing an unprecedented folding feature in this 3K price range. Despite the cost constraints, Nubia Flip maintains its craftsmanship and quality, avoiding any sense of cheapness.
In terms of experience, although the hardware specifications of the Nubia Flip are not outstanding, even somewhat ordinary, the greatest experience lies in the word “fold.” The novelty and psychological satisfaction brought by unfolding and folding, along with features like hovering photography, outer screen selfies, outer screen pets, and browsing through apps like Kuaishou, compensate to some extent for the lack of performance.
In conclusion, for users who want to try out a small foldable screen phone and seek high cost-effectiveness, the Nubia Flip is undoubtedly a very suitable choice.
Read Also: Nubia Flip Appeared on The Telecom Equipment Terminal Network: with Snapdragon 7 Gen1
