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00:00Okay, so this is definitely one of the more interesting phones I've played with this year.
00:06We've seen a whole bunch of variations from different companies of an attempt to remove the notches and bezels from the front of their phones, right?
00:14We've seen pop-up cameras, we've seen flip-up cameras, we've seen shark fin cameras.
00:18These are all just attempts to remove notches and bezels from the front, to keep that front clean.
00:24But this phone does it really differently.
00:26They have a screen on the front, as well as a screen on the back.
00:30And the purpose of this double screen is to keep the front super clean.
00:34There's no cameras on the front, you're using the same rear-facing cameras for your selfies or video conferencing stuff.
00:40It's just the same set of cameras, you're just flipping the phone back and forth to activate the different modes.
00:45Now, this phone sells for $500, like US dollars, right now.
00:50It's only available in China as of this moment, but it's supposed to come into North America sometime in September or October.
00:56Now, this phone is the Z20 by Nubia.
00:59They've launched another phone in North America recently, it was the Red Magic 3, and they also have a Red Magic 3S that's coming out.
01:05I think it's already out.
01:06But, when I first saw the press release in August, I remember thinking that this just seemed like such an eccentric way to solve that whole bezel-less, notch-less front thing.
01:15But having used this for a little bit, like, it is super cool.
01:18So, there's way more functionality to the second screen than I thought.
01:21It's not just for monitoring your selfies or video conferencing.
01:25In the commercials, they show, I mean, they have a couple examples of, like, a guy walking through some subway.
01:30He's got a map on one screen, and then he flips it around to use his subway pass.
01:33But you can also run apps on these different screens, right?
01:36You can run one app on screen one, and a second app on screen two, flip between them.
01:40You can also run the same app on both screens if you want, and just switch between different accounts on, like, say, a social media platform.
01:47Even when you're shooting video, like, you can monitor what's in frame at the same time as the people that you're filming.
01:52And it's not like this phone became super thick or super heavy because of this screen.
01:56Like, it's just, it feels like a regular phone.
01:59You can't even tell that this thing has a second screen until it lights up.
02:03In fact, when you look at the back, like, if the back is off, there's a tint on the glass.
02:08Like, this mirrored finish that really hides the fact that there is a second screen on this thing at all.
02:12Like, if you're just holding this thing up, it just really looks like a normal phone until it lights up.
02:16So, one of the ways to activate this back screen is just to launch the selfie camera.
02:20Like, if you have the back of the phone looking at you, and you just launch the camera app, it automatically goes to the selfie mode.
02:26The selfie mode has a regular focal length, as well as a really wide angle.
02:31This wide-angle selfie is, like, I love it.
02:34It's not something that everyone's gonna use, but I've always been a big fan of wide-angle lenses on my phones.
02:38And it's the same cameras for the regular, like, when you just have it in rear-facing mode.
02:43It's the same cameras, and you just have clean photos.
02:46And you also have the extra functionality of a zoom function when it's in rear-facing mode.
02:50I've noticed that you don't have zoom functionality when you're in, like, front-facing selfie mode.
02:55Now, there is one kind of caveat to this.
02:59I like to run GCam, like, Google's camera software, when it comes to phones like this.
03:03But, because of how custom this software is, in terms of, like, the flipping and the, like, all the stuff that's happening in the software,
03:10when you flip the phone around to activate the different screens,
03:13I don't know how difficult it will be to port GCam onto this phone.
03:17The stock software does it really well.
03:19Like, the auto-detection is fine, and you can even set it to have, like, a button,
03:23so that you can just switch between the back and the front screens whenever you want.
03:27But having that button on your screen just looks really unsightly to me.
03:30The automated sensors work quite well.
03:32It's actually way better than I thought it would be.
03:34But for a developer to port GCam onto this thing, so it can actually flip the screens and stuff like that,
03:39it might be a lot more difficult.
03:41So you may be stuck with the stock software.
03:43It's not that it's bad, but I always have a stronger preference for GCam.
03:47The hardware overall, though, is just really solid for 500 bucks.
03:50You're getting a Snapdragon 855+, 6 gigs of RAM, 256 storage, 4000 mAh battery,
03:56two screens, two AMOLED screens, so 6.4 inches in the front, 5.1, I believe, in the back.
04:01Like, it's just so much hardware going on here, with functionality to that hardware.
04:07Also, something I noticed, I threw my SIM card in here.
04:10There's also an earpiece on the back screen.
04:14Like, obviously there's an earpiece in the front,
04:16but when you flip it and you want to dial off the back screen, like, you can do it,
04:19and there's actually a functional earpiece at the top.
04:21I'm not sure exactly why they did it.
04:23Like, maybe so you can have some kind of reference material on the other screen,
04:26but then why wouldn't you just dial from the main screen to look at the back?
04:29I don't know.
04:30It's weird that they have, like, they actually put in an extra earpiece on the back.
04:34But hardware-wise, like, this is cool.
04:37I don't know how much this will cost once it hits North America.
04:40I have a feeling it'll probably bump up to, like, $650, which, you know, it's not bad.
04:45It's still not, like, mid-tier range, and you're getting a lot of good stuff on this thing.
04:49Point being, a secondary screen, like, there's way more utility to this thing than I thought there would be.
04:54It looks cool, the software's good in terms of the double-screen functionality stuff,
04:58and it's just a good overall phone.
05:00Now, there are kind of two things I don't love about this phone.
05:03Number one, it doesn't have a headphone jack.
05:05I know they had to stuff a lot more in this phone than your average phone that doesn't have a headphone jack,
05:09but, eh, I would have liked to have seen one on this particular phone.
05:13The other thing is that to protect this thing properly, to get a case on this thing, it's bumper only.
05:19Like, you can't have a full protection on the back, so who knows about, like, fragility?
05:23This is, like, it's just regular glass on the back, I'm sure, like Gorilla Glass,
05:26but you got to be careful with this thing a lot more than you would with a regular phone
05:30because now you have a screen on the back.
05:32But, I don't know, like, would you use this? Does this give you extra functionality?
05:36Like, at first when I saw this, I honestly thought it was really gimmicky,
05:39but having tried this thing out, I think it's pretty legit for the right user.
05:43Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
05:46See you guys next time.