The nubia brand, which is relatively exotic for us with a small presence in the global market, offers very interesting smartphones in China. One of them is the flag model nubia Z40 Prowhich we tested in detail.
The nubia brand was established as a subsidiary of ZTE, which, however, sold its majority stake in 2016, making nubia independent according to available information. However, it is still associated with ZTE on its official website and we will find a number of applications from ZTE.
Where to buy a nubia Z40 Pro smartphone?
Like other Chinese smartphones, we ordered the nubia Z40 Pro from our most popular partner, the e-shop TradingShenzhen. Delivery is hassle free and without any additional customs duties.
Technical specifications
| Model designation | NX701J |
|---|---|
| dimensions | 161.9 x 72.9 x 8.4 mm |
| Weight | 199 g |
| processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (SM8450-AC) |
| Display | 6.67 "OLED |
| 2400 x 1080 px resolution | |
| 20: 9 aspect ratio | |
| refresh rate 144 Hz | |
| pixel density 395 ppi | |
| RAM | 8 GB LPDDR5 |
| ROM | 256 GB UFS 3.1 |
| Memory card support | nie |
| Cameras | main 64 MPx Sony IMX787 with aperture f / .65 |
| ultra-wide 50 MPx Samsung S5KJN1 with aperture f / 2.2 | |
| 8 MPx telephoto lens with 9x optical zoom | |
| selfie 16 MPx with aperture f / 2.45 | |
| Drums | 5000 mAh |
| charging | 80 W |
| Connectivity | WiFi 6 / Bluetooth 5.2 / NFC / GPS / A-GPS / GLONASS / Beidou / Galileo |
| Operating system | Android 12 with MyOS 12 extension |
Surprisingly rich packaging
The nubia Z40 Pro smartphone package was delivered to us by a courier in a traditional box, which we are used to from our partner TradingShenzhen. Inside, however, a surprise awaited us in the form of many smaller boxes.
But let's start with a smartphone. It is sold in a black box, in which we find only the smartphone itself wrapped in a transparent foil, a black protective case and a USB-C charging cable.
The mains adapter is not included in the smartphone package, but the TradingShenzhen retailer adds it as a free gift. We had an 80 W adapter with a Chinese terminal, but with a European reduction included.
But that's not all. In the box we found two more small boxes with red nubia Z40. In one there is another case for the smartphone and in the other there is a kind of strap that can be attached to this case. We were very pleasantly surprised by the contents of the package and it did not happen to us long ago that we received a smartphone with such a large number of accessories.
Quality of workmanship and design
The Nubia Z40 Pro has a metal frame with a plastic back cover. Overall, this smartphone is excellent in terms of quality and we have nothing to complain about. In addition, it impresses with its attractive design with a large rear camera module and a red unlock button. Red is a kind of nubia brand, which can be seen at first glance on the packaging of individual components.
The dimensions of the smartphone are 161.9 x 72.9 x 8.4 mm and the weight is 199 g. The 20: 9 aspect ratio means that the smartphone is relatively narrow and high at the same time, which holds it very well in the hand. The rounded edges of the sides also contribute to this. In contrast, the bottom and top edges, which are sharp and pointed.
Layout of elements
The layout of the individual elements of the smartphone is standard, similar to most smartphones. The left edge is completely blank, while the right is home to the classic two-button volume control and unlock button, which has a rough texture and is red.
The bottom edge is traditionally home to the USB-C charging port, next to which there is a microphone, a speaker and a slot for SIM cards. It can serve 2 SIM cards, but there is no room for expanding the memory with a MicroSD card.
The top only contains the microphone. You would look in vain for a second speaker grille here, as the second speaker also uses the one that is also used for telephoning.
The back cover is matte, black and is particularly interesting for the relatively large rear camera module, next to which is a smaller glossy area with the brand logo. The main camera has an interesting red trim, which makes the smartphone attractive.
OLED display with high refresh rate
The big attraction of the flagship nubia z40 Pro is also the 6.67 ″ OLED display with FHD + resolution of 2400 x 1080 px and a high refresh rate of up to 144 Hz. It covers 100% of the DCI-P3 color profile and has a high brightness of 1000 rivets. The display is literally the pride of a smartphone and definitely one of the best on the market.
A matter of course in this class is the automatic regulation of the refresh rate, which is also a preset option. It is possible to manually select the frequency of 60, 120 or 144 Hz, but from the point of view of energy saving in combination with the smoothness of the display, the best choice is automatic adjustment according to current requirements.
In the upper part, there is also a shot at the selfie camera, which is located in the middle, but it is not one of the smallest. An interesting and slightly special element are the corners of the smartphone. Because the display has rounded corners and the design of the smartphone has sharp corners, this combination creates a slightly special effect.
Uncompromising performance
Nobody has to worry about a lack of performance in this case. The Nubia Z40 Pro has received one of the most powerful processors on the market, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. It is a well-known eight-core processor, which is manufactured using 4 nm technology. It consists of 1 x Cortex-X2 3.0 GHz cores, 3x Cortex-A710 2.5 GHz and 4x Cortex-A510 1.8 GHz and we have had the opportunity to test it in several smartphones.
It is seconded by the Adreno 730 graphics chip and, in our case, 8 GB of LPDDR5 RAM, along with fast 256 GB of storage thanks to UFS 3.1 technology. The manufacturer describes it as a gaming smartphone without an extravagant look, and he rightly decides. The smartphone has no problem with any game, so fans of mobile games will also get their money's worth.
The peculiarity was that, despite the high performance, the keyboard almost always had delayed responses when entering passwords on various pages. However, this is probably a bug that could be resolved by one of the system updates.
In the popular AnTuT benchmark, we achieved a high score of up to 40 points with the nubia Z956 Pro, thanks to which it ranks among the best smartphones attacking the magic limit of 061 points.
MyOS graphic superstructure
The flagship from nubia runs on the latest Android 12 with its own superstructure, which bears the name MyOS with the same version as the latest Android, 12. Since the system is a big unknown for us and probably for you, our readers, we will take a closer look.
In terms of design, it is very successful. It offers clean lines, a simple look and a very similar layout of elements as we know from the MIUI superstructure. The home screen looks exactly the same, as does the main application menu, which is accessed by swiping your finger to the left.
Since the nubia Z40 Pro is not sold on the global market, we can only find English and Chinese, without Slovak or Czech. This is not a problem for us, but of course this fact can also discourage someone from buying.
In connection with this, the system contains many applications that cannot be used by us, such as Z-Voice, App Center, Z-Assistant, Z-Backup, Z-Service, BBS, Baidu and others, of which there are quite a few. For us, they are ordinary software, ie useless applications, of which we can only uninstall some.
However, the presence of the Play Store is a matter of course, which allows the installation of other applications. You can also use the built-in App Center, but like all other unknown applications, it is only in Chinese. It will please the side panel, similar to the one we know from MIUI 13 by Xiaomi. Here it is called Z-Smart Sidebar and its content is fully customizable.
Wide range of customization options
We liked the MyOS extension during testing and we especially appreciate the wide range of options for customizing various settings. In addition, they offer an interestingly designed layout that gives the system a modern and attractive look.
There is a dark mode, various themes, an optional lock screen design with the possibility of displaying the number of steps, customizing the design of icons, animations, system colors, font or even fingerprint unlocking animations. You can also choose from an application grid of 5 x 4, 5 x 5, 6 x 4 or 6 x 5.
An interesting feature is the so-called ZTE Locker also called ZTE SuperLock, which offers a pair of options called Target push and Climber. Target push changes the background of the lock screen, using various photos from well-known and lesser-known servers.
But more interesting is the Climber mode, which changes the classic always-on display, which shows one of the mountains located in China, which represents a kind of goal in terms of steps and distance traveled. During the day, the nubia will count the number of steps and the distance traveled and display the collected data as the way up the mountain according to the current distance.
Notification issues
Similar to a smartphone I live iQOO 9 Pro, even in this case we had problems displaying notifications from different applications. Only missed call notifications and SMS messages were displayed without any problems.
Unfortunately, we still had problems with apps like Viber and Whatsapp. When the display is active, alerts appear in the top bar without any problems, similar to pop-up notifications, but we encountered several problems when the smartphone was blocked.
Only notifications for missed calls and SMS messages are displayed on the always-on display. Any other applications will only turn on the display and sound an alert, but will not display any notifications even on the lock screen. Even after a long search on various forums, we were unable to resolve this issue, even though we were enabled to display lock screen notifications in our settings.
There is no 4G LTE band B20
The manufacturer does not provide information about the supported bands, but several applications that we have installed on the smartphone have confirmed to us that the 800 MHz 4G band marked B20 of the smartphone is not missing. In the city, it joined the 2660 MHz band marked as B7, but outside the city, the smartphone used the most famous B20 band, which is used by all our operators.
The popular NFC, fast WiFi 6 or Bluetooth in version 5.2 will also please wireless connectivity. The smartphone also supports 5G networks, but due to very limited coverage in Slovakia, we did not have the opportunity to test the 5G speed.
NFC also works seamlessly for mobile payments, but you must additionally install Google Pay and set it as the default for payments. This option popped up automatically on our first payment attempt.
Excellent main camera
The Sony IMX64 787 MPx sensor with optical stabilization, a 50 MPx ultra-wide camera from Samsung and a periscope lens that supports up to 9x optical zoom have found their place in the photo equipment of this smartphone.
| Main camera | 64 MPx | Sony IMX787 sensor | aperture f / 1.65 with a focal length of 35 mm | OIS |
| Ultra-wide camera | 50 MPx | sensor Samsung S5KJN1 | aperture f / 2.2 with a focal length of 14 mm | without OIS |
| telephoto lens | 8 MPx | unknown sensor | aperture f / 3.4 with a focal length of 125 mm | OIS |
The main camera takes excellent photos. The colors in the photos from it are warm, colorful, saturated, although sometimes not very natural. Sometimes the camera tends to overemphasize the colors, which are then oversaturated in places, but overall the photos look very attractive. A very good dy will also pleasenamiky range, thanks to which there are no unwanted flare-ups or too dark places in the shadows.
The sharpness is also excellent and we must admit that this camera is definitely one of the best. In poorer light, especially indoors, the photos are of course a little darker, but still at an acceptable level without a significant merging of dark spots. Noise can already be seen in the photos in very dark places in the interior, but the automatic night mode is often activated here as well.
Wide angle lens and macro
The wide-angle camera is noticeably weaker. It has a cooler color rendering, worse dyenamick range and greater problems with strong backlight. In good light, the differences are not that significant, but in poorer lighting conditions, you can see a significant drop in quality compared to the main camera.
Nevertheless, very nice shots can be taken with a wide-angle lens, so it's definitely not to be missed. Sharpness is still at a good level, but you need to get used to certain shortcomings.
In this case, the macro has a fixed focus, but the camera application helps us to take a sharp picture, which informs us whether we should move further away from the photographed object or get closer. Nevertheless, the result is not always perfect, but with sufficient patience, the macro mode will serve well.
Telephoto and night mode
The big attraction of the nubia Z40 Pro is the 9x zoom, which should be optical, not digital. What's worse is that the periscope lens only has 8 MPx, so don't expect any miracles. The peculiarity is that the camera application does not allow you to control the zoom, as we are used to from other phones.
The Nubia Z40 Pro automatically switches to 9x zoom when the telephoto lens is turned on, without the possibility of changing to XNUMXx or XNUMXx or any other.
Night mode brings warmer colors to the photo and also renders objects that are very faint to see without night mode. Overall, we are very satisfied with the exit of the night mode, as it also maintains relatively good sharpness.
Video and other options
You can record the video in the maximum resolution of 8K, but without stabilization. Other options already offer optical image stabilization, specifically resolutions: 4K, 4K at 60fps, 1080p at 60 fps, 1080p and 720p. However, video stabilization does not work very well and often causes various image flicker.
However, the camera application offers quite a few different interesting features. These include photographing the moon, night sky, light drawing, time-lapse, cloning function, panorama, photo for documents, various filters and video effects or VLOGs. You can win to the fullest in the application, but not all outputs from these special functions are usable.
Unlock options and sound
Nubia Z40 Pro has classic options for unlocking a smartphone, which include the standard "swipe", pattern, pin, password or the more commonly used face or fingerprint unlocking.
The fingerprint reader is located in the display this time and works very reliably. As for the unlocking speed, some minor delay is visible, but there is nothing terrible that would interfere. The reader is reliable and we had no problems with it.
The Nubia Z40 Pro has a typical speaker grille at the bottom, but still has two loud speakers. The second one is the one you use during the phone call. The sound quality is not top notch, but it maintains a good level. Damage only to the volume control buttons, which click significantly when pressed.
Charging and endurance
The power is supplied by a 5 mAh battery to the smartphone and it will please a relatively fast, 000 W charge. Although this is not among the absolute top, as many models, especially from the Chinese giant Xiaomi, already support 80 W charging, but 120 W is still a very decent performance.
As we mentioned in the introduction, the standard package of the smartphone does not include a charging adapter, but the dealer TradingShenzhen is adding a free 80 W adapter. You will find a cable with support for fast charging in the package, in addition, with an attractive red color.
The fast charging process, which in this case is called NeoCharge, is as follows:
| battery capacity | charging duration |
|---|---|
| 20 - 50% | 8 minutes and 34 seconds |
| 75% | 19 minutes and 9 seconds |
| 90% | 26 minutes and 8 seconds |
| 100% | 34 minutes and 40 seconds |
Our smartphone usually didn't last longer than 1 day, but with less intensive use, we got a couple of times for almost 1 and a half days. However, they only count on the classic one-day endurance. Wireless charging support is missing in this version.
Final evaluation: nubia Z40 Pro
We have been testing the nubia Z40 Pro flagship for quite some time and we must admit that we really liked this smartphone. In addition to an interesting square design, it also offers a beautiful display, high performance with the latest processor from Qualcomm, Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 with support for all networks, including our 4G B20 LTE band. There is also 5G support, fast UFS 3.1 storage and an excellent main camera.
A slight negative is the Chinese system with the MyOS 12 extension, which contains a lot of bloatware. As with other Chinese smartphones, we often had trouble viewing notifications. Overall, however, the graphic superstructure offers many customizations and design tweaks.
Is the back plastic?