The just-released Z40 Pro is Nubia's flagship product of the year.
As the first manufacturer to "work the whole work" on mobile phone images, taking pictures can be called the DNA of its products for the Nubia Z series. However, at present, everyone is focusing on the image and competing for the quality of the picture. Compared with the mainstream photo flagships, what new highlights and imaging experiences will the Nubia Z40 Pro bring this time?
35mm lens imaging is really "humanistic"
Let's take a look at the Z40 Pro's highlight: imagery.
The Z40 Pro is equipped with rear triple camera specifications, specifically: 64MP main camera (IMX787), f/1.6, OIS, full pixel focus, 50MP ultra-wide angle lens (116° wide angle); 8MP periscope telephoto lens, OIS. All three lenses have excellent hardware qualities, and there is no so-called "counting lens".
The biggest highlight is undoubtedly this 35mm main camera lens, which is also the first smartphone equipped with a 35mm main camera.
Usually, the main camera of the phone is a wide-angle lens of about 26mm. The 35mm focal length is actually closer to the perspective of the human eye in imaging, which is convenient for showing the connection between people and the environment, and giving the work more humanistic atmosphere. This is also why it is called a "humanistic lens", and many image masters love to use this focal length.
Carrying such a "non-mainstream" lens on a mobile phone is certainly risky. It requires re-adjustments to the optical structure and design of the lens, which means higher technical barriers and higher hardware and software costs.
Z40 Pro(左),iPhone 13 Pro(右)
But the benefits of a 35mm lens are also clear.
The first is that its viewing angle is relatively more concentrated, and it can bring more obvious depth of field information than ordinary wide-angle lenses. When shooting some still life and portraits, the main camera of the Z40 Pro can obtain a clearer subject and a more obvious picture of background bokeh.
In addition, the 35mm lens has a small distortion, and when you take some photos with a clear sense of perspective with the Z40 Pro, you will find that the edge of the sample is stretched even smaller. When shooting portraits, the 35mm lens will also make the character's facial features and body more natural and beautiful.
The 64-megapixel main camera performs well in good lighting conditions. Compared with the iPhone 13 Pro, its detail performance is not inferior at all. And in the face of high-light pictures, its built-in AI and HDR algorithms can autonomously adjust the light and color of the finished picture. For example, the skin tone position of Xiao Yu's face, nubia Z40 Pro is relatively natural.
However, because the 35mm lens is more narrow in the framing range than ordinary mobile phones, it is relatively not suitable for showing some large scenery, architecture and other photographic scenes. Fortunately, the Nubia Z40 Pro is also equipped with a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, which is prepared for these "big scenes".
This ultra-wide-angle lens is also quite good in terms of imaging performance, especially the detail expression has certain advantages over ordinary ultra-wide-angle lenses.
The Nubia Z40 Pro also comes with an 8-megapixel periscope zoom lens that supports 3.5x optical zoom. In terms of imaging, the picture quality performance of this telephoto lens is still reassuring. In some environments where the light is relatively harsh, it can also have stable picture quality.
Based on this telephoto lens, the Nubia Z40 Pro also introduced the function of telephoto macro, and there are still quite a lot of gameplay.
But the Nubia Z40 Pro still has some improvements in imaging: first of all, the three cameras need to improve the consistency of color performance and white balance control.
The design is very different from the previous generation
The Nubia Z40 Pro differs little in design from the previous generation. Most of the details of the fuselage, the line treatment and the feel of the real machine, Z30 Pro users will feel very familiar. Including the design of the rear mirror group, the biggest change is the reduction of one camera. At the same time, the new 35mm portrait focal length lens is highlighted. That particularly eye-catching "Little Red Circle" seems to me to be a tribute to the classic "Little Red Circle" of Nubian mobile phones.
The feel of the Z40 Pro is quite outstanding.
This phone is not strictly thin and light, after all, it has a large 5000mAh battery and an 8.46mm body thickness. But when the Z40 Pro is in your hand, you will feel very handy. This is because the lateral width of the fuselage is only 72mm, coupled with the curved treatment of the edges on both sides, the burden on the palm of the hand is much smaller when holding. This kind of hand feel, combined with its 199g body weight, can even bring some light and thin mobile phones to the feeling.
The use of mature technology and design is the common practice of many mature mobile phone manufacturers. But the Z40 Pro still has some areas that can be improved and enhanced, such as the handling of the R corner of the screen. The Z40 Pro has a relatively stiff side angle, but the screen R angle arc is relatively large. Personally, I think there will be a sense of visual disharmony, but the positive recognition of this phone is also relatively high.
In addition, Z40 Pro also launched a "gravity version" this time, its special feature is to support magnetic wireless charging, which is also the first Android mobile phone to support magnetic wireless charging. Nubia's launch of this feature is not surprising, after all, their various charging accessories are now very popular in the market, and many friends, including me, like it.
Performance highlights a "stable" word
Like the Snapdragon 8 flagships launched this year, the Z40 Pro also emphasizes the optimization of heat dissipation. There are 9 layers of heat dissipation material stacked on the fuselage, and it is also equipped with the industry's first graphene phase change heating plate. I'm looking forward to its performance.
According to the measured data, the performance of the Z40 Pro is indeed very stable. In terms of running scores, the Antutu platform can easily win 1 million+ results. On the Geekbench5 platform, its performance also hovers between a single-core 1200 and a multi-core 3500.
From my experience, the current Snapdragon 8 flagship in the performance of the float is still relatively large. Even in the most familiar Antutu results, although the Snapdragon 8 official announcement results are more than 1 million. But judging from the running score of many models we have experienced, there are still many flagships that occasionally fall below 1 million.
The Z40 Pro score is relatively stable, whether it is AnTutu or GeekBench, its running score performance does not have much fluctuation range in the end, reflecting a good performance tuning level.
Reflected in the actual game performance. Taking the highest quality "Original God" as a reference, after half an hour of game testing, the average number of frames measured was 46.6 frames. From the perspective of screen performance, the situation where the frame rate changes greatly is mainly concentrated in the second half of the game. Occasionally, the frame count will fall below 40 frames, but it will soon be able to pull back to about 50, which is the upper mid-range level in the current Snapdragon 8 flagship phone.
The Z40 Pro is very cautious about the super core calls of the Snapdragon 8 platform. The supercore has a maximum frequency of around 1056MHz throughout the game, and most of the time it runs at 853Mhz. The three big cores are relatively positive.
Under such a performance scheduling strategy, the Z40 Pro has good heat performance. After more than an hour of testing the protosthesis, the maximum temperature on the back of the fuselage was around 46 degrees. And thanks to the blessing of the mobile phone's good heat dissipation system, after exiting the high-load scene, the temperature can drop rapidly over a period of time, which proves that the heat dissipation structure inside the fuselage plays a key role.
Overall, the Z40 Pro is currently on the upper middle in terms of gaming performance. The high frame rate modes of "Glory of Kings" and "Peace Elite" are guaranteed to be easy to perform. If you encounter a mobile game with relatively high performance such as "Original God", if you want to get a high-frame picture of more than 55 frames, you may need to lower the picture quality by one stop.
If you have a high demand for games, consider Nubia's wide range of cooling accessories. For example, with the Red Devil's turbo cooling back clip to use, it will be of great help to the temperature control performance of games and mobile phones.
In other respects, the Nubia Z40 Pro is equipped with a large battery of 5000mAh, and the battery life performance is excellent. In our use cycle, there is basically no worry about the power problem, and there is no problem with heavy use throughout the day.
Write at the end:
At present, the flagship mobile phone is fiercely competitive in the matter of taking pictures, and under the premise that the experience in other aspects cannot open the absolute gap, taking pictures has become the key to competing in the strength of software and hardware and opening up the differentiation of product experience.
In the matter of doing a good job of taking pictures, in addition to spelling CMOS and spelling algorithms, we are also currently beginning to compete in the design of mirror groups and fight for self-developed ISPs. In the end, these practices compete with the technology, resources and innovation strength of each company, and the big factories have obvious advantages in these aspects.
For products such as the Nubia Z series that started with photography, how to maintain the characteristics and experience advantages of their own products at this stage has become a problem that requires the product team to make a serious choice. As can be seen from the Z40 Pro, Nubia has not lost its traditional advantages in the innovation of image technology.
The bold introduction of the 35mm main camera reflects the product team's thinking on the differentiation of mobile phone images. From the perspective of effect, it does bring a lot of differentiated image functions that other mobile phones do not have.
Overall, the Nubia Z40 Pro is still one of the most fun camera phones on the market. Rich and diverse imaging functions, a variety of innovative camera gameplay and a unique 35mm lens make this phone very suitable for some users who like to take pictures.