Nubia's bezel-free Z9 smartphone is coming to the US
If I had a nickel for every "ugh, too much bezel!" comment, I'd have... well, a few bucks anyway. That's why it's good news that Nubia's borderless 5.2-inch Z9 smartphone is coming to the US next quarter at a rather tempting price. We already previewed the Z9 when it came to China last month, so here are the Cliff notes. First off, it's a bezel-hater's dream, at least on the sides -- there's nothing there but a slim metal frame, which also doubles as a touch surface. By gripping it in various ways, you can unlock the home screen, adjust the brightness and even flip it to single-hand mode, among other tasks.
It has an optically stabilized 16-megapixel f/2.0 rear camera (8-megapixel front camera) with Sony's latest IMX234 CMOS sensor that we first saw (and liked) on LG's G4. The 5.2-inch screen is 1080p and not Quad HD, but we're quite okay with that. The rest of the specs are also pretty nice: a Snapdragon 810 CPU, Android 5.0 Lollipop and a 2,900mAh battery. For all that, the price seems pretty fair. It'll arrive in the US for $564 with 3GB of RAM and 32GB storage, $645 with 4GB RAM/64GB storage, and $725 with a fingerprint reader. It's also nice to see a high-end smartphone from a Chinese manufacturer you can actually buy here -- it'll be available at "select retailers," or online in Q3 2015.
