Nubia Z9 Mini Review

There have been many Chinese smartphone manufacturers entering the Indian market as seeing a potential market for their growth. ZTE has also entered the Indian smartphone  market with the Nubia Z9 Mini at the price of  ₹16999. Let's take what it has to offer for the budget hungry Indian market.
ZTE had already launched many low and mid range phones last year and is now ready to betting their premium line if products under the Nubia name.

Build and design

We had many Chinese phones that had premium build at very mid range process and Nubia mini is among them. The all alloy aluminium metal frame, glad and texture finish has truly like stunning in the black body. They metal frame has grey matte finish the with volume and power keys at the right side and dual SIM slot at the left. The keys also are metallic and have great feedback. On the top sites the 3.5mm headphone jack and at the bottom we have micro USB port with the speaker outlet. The back is removable and the panel has glossy look but it's actually plastic with diamond like texture and a silver text if Nubia logo at the center, under the back polycarbonate panel sits a sealed 2900maH battery with a sd card slot . The camera and LED flash is situated at the top left corner with a red lining for the camera lens. Same red theme is carried to the front with capacitive home and navigation keys with red backlight LED. The display sits around a very narrow bezel frame and a compact body.

Display

The front is almost covered by that beautiful 5" Full HD display with narrow bezels. The display is crisp and sharp with ppi of 441. The display isn't bezel less as its big brother the Z9,but is very narrow and helps in better handling. The color reproduction is great and pictures pop with bright colors and text appears sharp. Viewing angles are great and doesn't fade or color out.

Hardware and performance

Powering the phone from inside is a 64-bit snapdragon 615 processor clocked with 4 Cortex a-53 @ 1.5Ghz and 4 Cortex a-53 @1.0 GHz, which is mid ranger but  is a decent performer. The chip is coupled with a 2GB if RAM for better multi tasking and has adreno 405 to handle gpu tasks like games. All installed apps ran smoothly and the was no lag or stutter while browsing through different apps. The gaming was also nice with all graphics appearing clear and smooth.
There is 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded upto 128GB using the sd card slot.

Camera

The Nubia Z9 mini has a great camera and is equipped with a 16MP sensor from Sony which company calls it the NeoVision 5.0 SLR system with a 8MP sensor on the front. As company says the camera is a pro-SLR camera with great photography features.
The photos taken came spectacularly good for the phone at that range. The images captured are rich in details color and had no noise. The outdoor as well as indoor photos were just awesome and the low light performance is unrivalled one with its f/2.0 aperture. The camera in NubiaZ9 ini is a serious competitor and can easily beat even some high end flagships from top brands. The video quality is also very formidable and is great for any priced phone. The camera app is feature rich and with pro mode you can control each and every bit of your photography with some knowledge.
The front camera will please selfie lovers as its a wide angle camera and take some good shots.

Battery

To run these spec each phone we have a 2900 mAh battery on the back which is non-removable. The battery can easily last a day for a moderate to high usage. The call quality was good and it even comes with a FM radio in it which even one flagships of today are missing.

Final Thoughts

Nubia Z9 Mini will appeal to any smartphone buyer with its aircraft grade aluminium and that very capable camera. For its price of ₹16999 it's a killer deal. We are waiting for the Z9 to debut in India and we'll be getting you a hands-on video review of it.
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Image courtesy: GizmoChina