Chinese smartphone manufacturer Nubia has taken an odd and innovative approach to avoid the accursed iPhone X-style notch. Instead of using some sort of sliding mechanism or a waterdrop notch, the company decided to reveal a handset, called the Nubia X, with two displays and only one camera setup.
The Nubia X features a 6.26-inch FHD+ LCD display that is surrounded by very thin bezels. On the rear, there’s another smaller 5.1-inch 1,520 x 720 OLED panel with dual cameras. This rear-facing display, on the other hand, is surrounded by very large bezels.
With the secondary display, users can take advantage of a dual rear-facing camera setup for both selfies and regular photo taking purposes. The phone features a 16-megapixel sensor with a f/1.8 aperture as well as a 24-megapixel sensor with a f/1.7 aperture.
This is the Nubia X, a dual-screen phone with a very high screen ratio.
Source: Weibo 字幕 GOUBA pic.twitter.com/L2So4FdzNU— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) October 31, 2018
Reportedly the camera can use artificial intelligence to analyze the subject’s ethnicity, facial features, skin tone and age to set the phone’s beautification and bokeh functionalities.
Nubia also applied its own three-level blue light filter to the OLED panel, and the company suggests flipping the device to that panel for night sight protection.
To activate the phone’s other display, users can either simply flip the phone and the Nubia X’s software can determine that the user looking at the rear panel. Or a user can tap on both side-facing fingerprint sensors — there’s one on each side of the device.
Additionally, the Nubia X features a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, up to 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a 3,800 battery and dual Nano SIM slots. Furthermore, the phone comes with Android 8.1 Oreo out-of-the-box.
The Nubia X starts at 3,299 yuan ($623 CAD) for the model with 6GB of RAM with 64GB of storage. While the variant with 8GB of RAM, 256GB storage and a blue light glass filter costs ¥4,299 ($811 CAD).
The device isn’t officially available here in Canada and lacks many of the Canadian 4G bands, so I’d skip it until Nubia launches a North American-friendly version.
