Nubia X Preview – Creative alternative to the notch

There are of course other solutions to this ‘problem’. For example, in recent months we have seen several phones that slide the camera up out of the housing, such as the Oppo Find X, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 and the Vivo Nex S. Later this year, we expect many phones to be released where the notch is nothing more then a small round bite out of the screen, purely for the camera. The Chinese Nubia, formerly part of ZTE, but now a manufacturer that stands on its own two feet, proves that there is another route to take. At CES we came across Nubia’s latest smartphone: the Nubia X, which has no notch and does not allow anything to slide out, but solves this problem in a completely different way.

The front of the Nubia X is pretty much all screen, with bezels above and below that are slightly wider than those on the side. That delivers a simple and sleek look when you first see the phone. The Nubia X does not have a front camera, but a phone with which you cannot take decent selfies has no chance in advance, especially in Nubia’s home country of China. In principle, you don’t need an extra camera on a phone to take pictures of yourself, the technicians at Nubia must have thought. The only reason we have front cameras is so that when we use the camera on the back of the phone to take a picture of ourselves, we can’t see the screen.

Reverse the solution

So instead of placing an extra camera next to the screen, why not put an extra screen next to the camera? That’s exactly what they did at Nubia. On the back of the phone is a 5.1″ OLED screen below the main camera. Whether you’re taking photos of a landscape or of yourself, you use the same camera combination with a 24-megapixel and a 16-megapixel model. viewfinder , depending on the situation.

It’s a creative solution, which is more impressive in practice than it sounds on paper, due to the way the screen is incorporated into the housing. Where we are normally used to a screen looking black when it is off, you hardly see the screen on the Nubia X when it is not activated. It is completely hidden in the blue, mirrored back of the phone. If you sit with your nose on top of the housing, you can very subtly see the edges of the screen, but during normal use the screen seems to disappear completely.

To achieve that, Nubia simply used colored Gorilla Glass on the back, instead of the transparent glass we know from normal phones. While it may seem very fragile to put a screen on the back at first, phones with glass on the front and back have become commonplace in the past year. In terms of finish, the Nubia X is actually no different from a modern iPhone or Galaxy phone. The big difference is of course that a big scratch or crack on the back of your glass housing does not cause any practical problems and with the Nubia X it may mean that your screen no longer works.

Operation in practice

The software implementation of the two-screen system is well put together. Nubia gives users several options, with the option to automatically switch screens when you rotate the phone being by far the easiest. This is the position you probably use if you mainly use the second screen to check the composition before taking a selfie.

You can also activate this mirror mode manually by touching both fingerprint scanners. Indeed, the Nubia X has two fingerprint scanners, one in either side of the phone. Because there is a screen on both the front and back and the manufacturer wanted thin screen edges, there was little room left to place a fingerprint scanner. A modern scanner that sits in the screen was probably too expensive, especially if it had to be done in duplicate, so Nubia opted for two scanners on the sides. This way you can unlock with the same finger no matter which screen you are using.