ZTE Nubia 5 (Unlocked)

Pros Big, beautiful 1080p display. Thin, light, and solidly built. Relatively affordable and unlocked.

Cons Buggy, overwrought software. No LTE. Bottom Line The ZTE Nubia 5 is an affordable, well-built, and well-equipped unlocked Android phone, but its half-baked Android skin really holds it back.

By Eugene Kim

On paper, the ZTE Nubia 5 ($449 list) has all the trappings of a high-end device with a beautiful 5-inch 1080p display and fast quad-core processor. And in person, it even has the look and feel of a premium device—until you turn it on. There's no denying the raw potential here, but ZTE's gaudy Android skin does all it can to cripple what could have been a top performer. As far as unlocked options go, the Nubia 5 offers strikingly similar specs to the Sony Xperia ZL for nearly half the price. But it just seems like ZTE went down a checklist of features, without regard to the overall experience—the whole here ends up being less than the sum of its parts.  

Design, Features, and Call Quality
ZTE has crafted a really handsome phone in the Nubia 5. It makes you wonder how so many more-expensive handsets from more-established manufacturers can look and feel so cheap. At 5.43 by 2.7 by 0.29 inches (HWD) and 4.51 ounces, it's thinner, lighter, and narrower than the Xperia ZL, which was already impressively compact for packing such a large screen. There's a brushed metal rim around the Nubia's edges, and its soft touch plastic back feels sturdy. Volume and Power buttons are on the left and right sides, respectively, while the SIM card tray and 3.5mm headphone jack are on the top panel. On the bottom is a centered micro USB port with capacitive buttons for Menu, Home, and Back navigation below the display. It's bad enough that ZTE forces this non-standard Android setup, but it's made worse by the fact that the Home button is marked by a large circle while the other two buttons use identical single red dots. Once you're accustomed to the placement it's fine, but it will likely be confusing at first.  

The 5-inch, 1080p display is impressive considering the relatively low price. Text looks sharp, viewing angle is superb, and colors look vivid without being oversaturated. Brightness is simply average, though, and I had some trouble seeing the screen in bright, direct outdoor light.  The bezels around the display are pretty minimal, making it more comfortable to use the phone with one hand—I could reach completely across the display with my thumb, but still struggled to pull down the notification bar.

The Nubia 5 is an unlocked phone that supports GSM (850/900/1800/1900MHz), UMTS (2100MHz), and HSPA+ 21.1. I tested using the phone with a T-Mobile SIM card in New York City. Call quality was generally good, with clear audio coming through the earpiece and strong reception. Volume could be a bit louder, though, and the speakerphone was too weak to hear over moderate street noise. Transmissions through the mic sounded full and defined, but noise cancellation struggled to block out ambient noise. I also noticed a good deal of pesky static on calls made with the Nubia 5. While it can't access T-Mobile's faster HSPA+ 41 network, in my tests, the Nubia 5 still turned in a respectable 5-6Mbps down and 1Mbps up. That's in line with the results we saw in our Fastest Mobile Networks survey, but it can't touch LTE speeds that can easily exceed 10Mbps.

There's 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi here, but only on the slower 2.4GHz band, which is disappointing. Also onboard are Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS, both of which worked fine in my tests. Inside is a sealed 2300mAh battery. We're testing the Nubia 5's battery life now, and will report here when we get our results.

Performance and Android
The Nubia 5 is powered by a quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 processor with 2GB RAM. It's the same setup found in phones like last year's Google Nexus 4, but performance on synthetic benchmarks was curiously inconsistent. That bore out in real world usage as well, however, as the Nubia 5 suffered from buggy software and generally sluggish performance. During testing, the home screen routinely had to redraw all of its elements when waking the device from sleep or even simply after exiting an app. There was noticeable lag between pressing an app icon and launching that app. The recent apps page was also unusually slow and buggy—trying to quickly switch between multiple running apps can be pretty frustrating. Gaming performance is one of the Nubia 5's stronger points, as it was able to produce moderately smooth and playable frame rates in games like Need For Speed Most Wanted.

The most likely culprit for the frustrating performance issues is ZTE's Android skin. The Nubia 5 runs a heavily modified version of Android 4.1.2. I can deal with the dubious cosmetic changes and themes, but some modifications to key Android features leave me scratching my head. ZTE removed the app drawer entirely, opting for an Apple-esque approach that puts all of your icons on a home screen instead. You can still hide them away in folders, but it ends up making things look more cluttered. The recent apps screen represents running apps as cards that you swipe through horizontally. It looks nice enough, but you can only see two at a time. The whole deal wouldn't be that bad if it wasn't so clearly saddling the Nubia 5 with annoying levels of lag.

Multimedia and Conclusions
The Nubia 5 supports MP3, FLAC, AAC, OGG, and WAV audio files, but couldn't play back WMA. For video, there's MP4 and H.264 support, but no DivX, Xvid, or AVI support out of the box. There's no microSD card slot and of the 16GB total onboard storage, you get 9.04GB free.

ZTE makes some lofty claims when it comes to the Nubia 5's camera prowess. Beyond the 13-megapixel sensor, the lens is apparently made from sapphire and features an F2.2 aperture and Konica-Minolta 5-piece design. On the software side, ZTE baked in independent focus and exposure points. You can have the camera focus on one area, while setting the exposure based on another area in the frame. I actually really like these two features, but image quality was still a bit too inconsistent in both good and low-light scenarios. The Nubia 5 had some trouble finding and maintaining focus, which often led to blurry images, and indoors, the camera struggled with grainy shots. Under ideal lighting and with a steady hand, I was able to capture some pretty impressive shots, but for every great one, I'd also get a handful of disappointing images. Video capture reaches up to 1080p, but showed inconsistent and choppy frame rates regardless of lighting. Video detail is decent, but the frame rate issue and lack of stabilization make the footage pretty jerky. I'd rank the Nubia 5's camera toward the top of what I've seen with other Android smartphones, but I think ZTE's SLR comparisons are far too ambitious.

The ZTE Nubia 5 has so much potential, from its beautiful display, solid design, and fast quad-core processor. Throw stock Android on here and I think ZTE would have a serious contender on its hands, especially at this price point. It's nearly half the price of similarly equipped, unlocked smartphones like the $759.99 Sony Xperia ZL. As it stands, though, the Nubia 5's half-baked software is a big drag on what would otherwise be a well-equipped and affordably priced unlocked option.

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ZTE Open (Unlocked)

Pros Very inexpensive for an unlocked smartphone. Robust Web browser.

Cons Unfinished software. Dim screen. Poor camera and GPS. Bottom Line We're giving the unlocked ZTE Open with the Firefox OS huge points for its very reasonable price, but the software needs more polish before it's consumer-ready.

By Sascha Segan

"Remember who this phone is for," a nervous Mozilla rep told me when he sent me the ZTE Open, the first Firefox OS phone and one of the cheapest unlocked smartphones you'll find. At $79 (exclusively through eBay, where it's currently sold out), the Open isn't designed to compete with even entry-level, subsidized major-carrier smartphones. It's aimed at countries where phones never get subsidized and most people make less than $100 a week. By selling a thousand units on eBay, Mozilla wants to make the phone available to U.S. developers so they can write apps for what the organization hopes will be a growing platform.

But there could be a lot of demand for a $79, practically throwaway smartphone here in the states. It could make for a great first phone for a kid, or, say, a backup phone for international travel. So it's worth looking at this phone (and the Firefox OS) to see if it can open up a whole new category for American smartphones.

Why Unlocked?
Before I get to the real review, I should probably address why it's important that this smartphone is unlocked. After all, many smartphones are available in the U.S. for $79 with contract, or $79 plus a two-year installment plan. But owning an unlocked phone lets you use the cheapest possible prepaid services, or none at all. The Open is compatible with AT&T's and T-Mobile's networks, so you can dip into virtual carriers who use those networks, like GoSmart, Consumer Cellular, MetroPCS, ReadySIM, and Simple Mobile. (Check out the Best Prepaid SIM Cards, for an idea of some of your options.) If you're willing to put up with often-shaky customer service, you can save huge amounts of money.

Unlocked phones are also perfect for traveling, because you can pop in an international prepaid SIM like one from Telestial Passport, OneSimCard, or Maxroam, or single-country SIMs like Rebelfone sells. That way, you save huge sums over U.S. carriers' roaming charges.

Physical Features, Networking, and Call Quality
The U.S. model of the ZTE Open is made mostly of soft-touch plastic, in a striking Firefox orange color, which gives the phone some personality. I've also seen the gray international version, which looks a lot more generic. The phone is comfortable to hold at 4.5 by 2.44 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and 3.84 ounces. The volume rocker on the side and the Power button on top are small and made of slick plastic, but they're solid enough.

The phone's screen is downright depressing. It's not the low 320-by-480-pixel resolution, which is understandable at this price and size; it's that the screen is dim. It appears to be submerged a foot beneath the surrounding plastic, and has inconsistent touch response.

I was deeply disappointed by the Open's GPS, which is the oldest, slowest, and most basic kind available. There's no Wi-Fi location assistance or tower triangulation, so location services don't work at all unless you have a clear view of the sky, and the GPS chip takes a considerable time to lock in. That means that no location-based apps, including maps and Yelp, can tell where you are when you're indoors. Bummer.

The 1200mAh battery in the Open carried the phone for 6 hours, 18 minutes of talk time. That's not great, but it's not a big battery.

There are two models of the Open right now, both of which offer quad-band GSM voice calling: The orange one has 3G on U.S. and Canadian bands, but not global bands, while the gray, global one has 3G on foreign bands, but not U.S. bands. Running DSLReports' JavaScript speed test, I got around 2Mbps down on T-Mobile's HSPA+ network. On our much faster office Wi-Fi network, I saw 2.7Mbps down, so the apparent speed limitations are in the phone and browser, not the network.

Voice calling is adequate. RF reception was pretty good in my tests, and call quality was perfectly decent from quiet locations. Noise cancellation turned voice quality thin and tinny through the earpiece. Volume in both the earpiece and speakerphone are acceptable for indoor and outdoor locations.

Multimedia and Photography
According to the specs, the Open has a 3-megapixel camera. But the camera only takes 2-megapixel photos "to help current users maximize their data plans," according to Mozilla. The camera app has no apparent settings or modes at all, although there's an after-the-fact photo editor that lets you crop and apply filters. The phone records 352-by-288 videos.

Do not expect quality images here. I saw about a one-second camera delay, and soft images with color noise and lens flare all over the place. There's no front camera. You can share images directly to email, SMS, or Twitter from the gallery app.

The music player is very attractive, showing a grid of album covers and substituting brightly colored, abstract art if you don't have album art. You can sort by the typical parameters and create playlists. The phone played AAC, MP3, and OGG files without a problem, but not WMA. As for video, MP4 and H.264 video up to 640-by-480 was solid—no other formats or larger sizes, please, and certainly no DRM. There's also an FM radio, with custom preset options.

That restriction—no DRM (and no plugins)—creates some problems for Web video. The Firefox OS has a working YouTube app, but sites like Netflix and MTV.com failed to stream video because the browser couldn't handle their proprietary video plug-ins.

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