You know when you're looking for a new smartphone and you're trying to find that sweet spot
of fantastic price with a lot of good features? Well I think I've found a new contender. This
is a new dual screen smartphone and today we're going to find out how durable it is.
This video is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends. Raid has sponsored a few of my durability
tests now, and this game has been downloaded over 10 million times in the last 6 months.
Now I'm not much of a gamer, but over 300,000 near perfect reviews in the PlayStore is pretty
impressive. The game is free to play and you can collect over 400 champions while gathering
orks, knights and elves to discover different locations within the game. In Raid Shadow
Legends you have the ability to personally customize your champions, choosing artifacts
and creating unique builds for each one of them. Plus the new fraction wars feature is
live right now. The game is growing pretty fast. Finally there's a new rewards system
for new players. Get daily log in rewards for the first 90 days of the game. I'll put
a download link down in the video description and if you're a new player, you can get 100,000
silver, plus a new free epic champion: Lightsworn. All that treasure will be waiting for you
for the next 30 days with that link in the description. Huge thanks once again to Raid
for sponsoring this video.
And now it's time for the durability test. Let's get started.
[Intro]
It's always fun when unique pones comes across my desk. In a sea of rectangles that all pretty
much do the same thing, it's nice when there's something that breaks out of the normal mold.
This Nubia Z20 is definitely unique. Yeah, we've seen dual screen phones before with
the Nubia X and the Vivo Nex. But each time a new version comes out, it improves on the
previous and gets better. This Nubia Z20 is for sale right now for $550. Half the price
of current flagships. Twice the screens, half the price....you can't complain about that.
Nubia's calling this phone “back to back brilliance” because it has fully functional
screens on both the front and back of the phone. The screens can mirror each other or
act like dual monitors – each running it's own app. Music on one side, social media on
the other. You know, multitasking.
The main screen, which is the larger of the two, does have a preinstalled screen protector.
Once that is off we can start with the scratch test. As we know, phones can be made of different
materials protecting and covering that display. Plastic, like we saw in the Galaxy Fold which
scratches at a level 2 or 3. Glass would start scratching at a level 5 or 6. And sapphire,
like we saw in last year's Duraforce Pro 2, starts scratching at level 8 or 9. This time
around, since there is tempered Gorilla Glass 5 on the front, we start to see scratches
at level 6, with deeper grooves at level 7.
I'll peel off Mohs scale and flip the phone over to the back screen. And once again, Nubia
has been nice enough to protect this side of the phone with a pretty substantial screen
protector as well. Double the screens, double the scratches. While the larger front screen
is a full 1080p resolution, this smaller rear panel is 720 and still protected by that same
Gorilla Glass 5, giving us scratches at a level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7.
When the screen is turned off it blends in pretty well with the black colored back glass
of the phone. It doesn't really draw attention to itself when it's turned off.
Flipping the phone around again to the front, there is a tiny earpiece slot in the top bezel
with a little metal grill inside. There are a few sensors under the glass up here as well,
but no front facing camera. All of the bezels are pretty small and there is no notch anywhere
to be found. The sides of the phone are made from metal, along with the metal volume rocker.
Moving up towards the top of the phone there is a unique concave design in the frame. This
curved indention is also mirrored on the bottom hinge. The recessed side buttons are a fingerprint
scanner and also screen switching buttons where you can manually switch the screen from
one side of the phone to the other without physically rotating it.
The dual SIM card tray does have a rubber ring around the opening, but does not have
an SD card slot. There is no official IP rating on the Z20 so we'll have to check out the
water resistance from the inside ourselves during the teardown. At first I thought the
concave curve at the bottom next to the USB-C port was kind of weird, but it's actually
a really good spot to rest your pinky when using the phone one handed. There is no headphone
jack, but I mean there are two screens so I'm not going to complain too much.
Now the cameras are where things get interesting. You don't need to spend $1000 to get a triple
camera setup anymore. This Nubia Z20 has all 3 perspectives: the 16 megapixel ultra wide
lens with a 48 megapixel camera in the center and a 3x optical zoom 8 megapixel sensor on
the side combined with dual colored LED flash on the left and a single LED flash on the
right. Now you might have noticed that there is no front facing camera on this phone. Nubia
was able to get rid of that notch and front facing camera by just using the rear cameras
and screen to take selfies. The rear cameras are usually better quality anyways so it's
a win-win. Plus like we saw at the beginning of the video, Nubia does include a pretty
decent plastic case in the box, and the secondary screen can be utilized through this case.
I'm impressed. The quick response time flipping between screens is also very impressive.
One thing that Nubia is bragging about on their website is a synthetic sapphire glass
camera covering which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Sapphire is a crystal, and glass
is glass, and while both are transparent, they are extremely different materials. Glass
scratches at a level 6 and sapphire would scratch at level 8 or 9. And as we can see,
this camera lens is scratching at level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7,and even
heavier marks at level 8. So it's not pure sapphire and they should probably call it
something else in the future. Like I said earlier, this 6.4 inch main screen is 1080p.
It has small bezels around the sides. Nubia was able to cram two screens into such a thin
device by using OLED panels. You can see the white burn marks start to appear after about
20 seconds and not recover. LCD panels would have turned black under my flame but then
usually do recover. OLED panels are much thinner than LCD panels, which means that by using
AMOLED displays on both sides of the phone, Nubia was able to free up a lot more space
inside for the other components. The back screen is 5.1 inches. I'm still surprised
at the response time between screen switches, it's pretty awesome. And it's already finished
switching sides before I'm even done rotating the phone.
Now it's time for the bend test. The $600 OnePlus 7T I tested last time didn't fair
too well. The back panel flexed and cracked. This time around with the $550 Nubia Z20 bending
phone has almost no effect. When bent from the other front, everything is still solid.
Even with the recessed screen switching button/fingerprint scanner on the side of the phone, the metal
frame is still completely solid with no kinks or cracks in the metal or the glass. This
thing is built like a rock. If you're looking for a phone with a lot of screen real estate,
a dual screen phone like this Nubia Z20 is currently a much more durable option than
a folding phone, at least for the time being.
I'm definitely a fan of where the technology is headed. This is probably the best bang
for your buck mid-range smartphone on the market right now.
Would you rather have a front and back dual screen phone, or a folding phone? Let me know
down in the comments. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter and thanks a ton
for watching. I'll see you around.