Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition Review : Top Performance, Imaging & Battery Life

1. Introduction: The Most Powerful True Full-Screen Phone - Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition Is Here

The term "full screen" was not coined by Nubia, but Nubia is the brand that has truly championed the concept.

At the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, the concept of “full screen” emerged in the Chinese smartphone market. In an era when most phones lacked industrial design aesthetics, its arrival was like a nuclear explosion, greatly overturning people’s aesthetic standards.

Within just a few months, a large number of full-screen phones were released. However, due to the lack of a unified standard in the market, many so-called full-screen products, which overly emphasized the 18:9 screen ratio without considering the devastating impact of large bezels on the front screen’s aesthetics, were everywhere.

At that time, Ni Fei, then General Manager of Nubia Smartphones, took the lead and publicly declared to the industry that “full screen” should be interpreted as having no bezels from the front view.

Nubia has consistently adhered to narrow bezel design since its establishment in 2012. It was only in 2016 that this approach, which had been maintained for 5 years, was rebranded as “full screen.”

From this perspective, Nubia was one of the earliest brands in China to establish the standard for full-screen phones. Calling it the “pioneer of full screens” would likely find unanimous agreement among those who have witnessed this phase of smartphone evolution.

Today, with several generations of technological advancements, the form of full screens has evolved significantly. In the hottest period of 2024, Nubia once again brings its enthusiasm for full screens with the current flagship of full-screen phones: the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition .

Although the name has only added "Leading Edition" the upgrades from last year’s Nubia Z60 Ultra are substantial: the world’s unique sixth-generation under-display camera (last year’s was the fifth generation), exclusive Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (Qualcomm’s most powerful processor with a peak frequency of 3.4 GHz), exclusive AI dialect translation, and exclusive AI translation supporting WeChat calls.

As for Nubia’s renowned imaging capabilities, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition offers a high-end optical setup with 35mm cultural, 18mm starry sky, and 85mm portrait main cameras, enhanced by the Sony IMX906 flagship CMOS and the Neovision Taishan 2.0 AI imaging algorithm, ensuring top-notch hardware and software.

In this era where AI is almost a must-have, the AI capabilities of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition , supported by the Nebula AI large model, offer many practical features, which will be detailed in later tests.

Additionally, with an equivalent 6300mAh 6000mAh carbon-silicon negative electrode battery, the real-world battery life performance is also impressive.

Let’s now see if this visually distinctive Nubia flagship lives up to the name of the strongest Ultra of 2024 in our practical tests.

2. Appearance: The Ultimate Form of True Full Screen with Perfect Elimination of Front Camera

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition continues the design of true full screens. In today’s market dominated by hole-punch screens, Nubia’s insistence on this design is particularly commendable.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition features the exclusive sixth-generation under-display camera, integrating the UDC Ultra independent display chip, which makes the color transition in the front camera area more natural.

Moreover, the phone uses BOE Q9+ new light-emitting materials and custom substrates, significantly improving color display stability.

In normal use, the presence of the front camera is completely imperceptible.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition uses COP packaging technology, maintaining consistent width between the chin and the three bezels, creating a visual sense of borderlessness and making the overall display effect more unified.

On the back of the phone, the most eye-catching feature is the three large camera modules. The imaging function area extends to the edge of the phone, giving a sense of infinite extension.

The main camera at the bottom left retains the classic red ring design. Above it is the ultra-wide-angle lens, and on the right is the periscope telephoto lens.

After precise calculations, the designer has set the optimal spacing for the three cameras, ensuring both imaging experience and design aesthetics.

The bottom right corner of the camera module features the “nubia” brand logo.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition ’s “Racing Black” color option uses a custom raster racing pattern, conveying a sense of speed and power.

The top of the phone is equipped with an independent infrared remote sensor, which can be used as a remote control for home appliances, and a noise-canceling microphone is placed on the side.

The bottom has openings from left to right for the SIM card slot, Type-C interface, and speaker.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition features symmetric dual speakers.

The power button and volume keys are located on the right side of the body, with the classic red power button surface having interlaced textures, and the camera shortcut key integrated at the bottom, which can be customized.

The fast-charging adapter of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition supports up to 80W power output.

3. AI Function Experience: Nebula AI Large Model Makes Cross-Language Communication Seamless

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition features the Nebula AI large model, which has a solid foundation in text generation and can easily handle everyday writing needs.

When faced with complex problems, the voice assistant can skillfully avoid conventional responses, displaying greater creativity and flexibility.

For questions that require comprehensive searches and information integration, such as “finding snacks that don’t make you gain weight,” the voice assistant not only provides a list of accurate answers quickly but also thoughtfully includes nutritional values of various foods. This exceptional service simplifies the decision-making process and greatly enhances usability and satisfaction.

With AI bidirectional real-time translation, it’s like having a personal translator. No matter which language you speak, it can immediately understand and translate it into another language while also displaying the text, making communication simple and fast.

This feature supports not only foreign languages like English, Spanish, and French but also regional dialects such as Cantonese, Hebei dialect, Sichuan dialect, and Shanghai dialect. Whether chatting or video calling via WeChat or QQ, this function can handle cross-country communication effortlessly.

The AI recorder can turn every spoken word into text and help you with intelligent editing.

It meets all your writing needs, whether you require inspiration, condensing long texts into concise summaries, or translating ideas into different languages. This smart assistant acts as your writing partner, organizing your thoughts anytime and anywhere, making your text more fluid, content richer, and enabling easy cross-language communication.

The AI notepad is like your intelligent writing partner. Whatever you need to write, it can assist you.

If you need inspiration, it helps with brainstorming; if you need to organize ideas, it helps with outlining; if you need to write a press release, it provides support.

Additionally, it can help continue writing your story, distill key points, list tasks, expand content, streamline text, make the article more readable, and even translate it into other languages.

4. Imaging: Combining New CMOS with Classic Focal Lengths for a Unique Perspective

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition ’s imaging system continues with the classic 35mm+85mm dual focal lengths, combined with an 18mm ultra-wide-angle lens, forming a full-range triple-camera module.

• Main Camera: The new 50MP Sony IMX906 CMOS, 1/1.56-inch sensor, 1G+6P lens, f/1.59 aperture, supports OIS, with an equivalent focal length of 35mm.
• Periscope Telephoto Lens: 64MP OV64B sensor, 1/2-inch sensor, supports OIS, with an equivalent focal length of 85mm.
• Ultra-Wide-Angle Lens: 50MP OV50E sensor, 1/1.55-inch sensor, with an equivalent focal length of 18mm.

The phone also integrates a laser focus sensor and Flicker and multispectral color temperature sensors.

So how does its imaging performance measure up? Let’s take a look at some sample shots.

35mm Main Camera Sample

In typical focal length shooting, to highlight the subject, we usually choose a 1.2x to 1.5x focal length.

However, the custom Sony IMX906 main camera of the Nubia Z60 Ultra, compared to other phones' 24mm focal lengths, provides a more focused field of view.

This means you can shoot directly without zooming or cropping.

Furthermore, the new large sensor avoids overemphasizing contrast and saturation, presenting colors closer to the real world.

Night Scene Sample

The main camera of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition accurately captures light even with direct lighting, keeping bright areas bright and dark areas clear and detailed, with excellent control of noise.

The night scene samples not only capture subtle details but also cleverly suppress noise, resulting in clean and deep images.

Even a photography novice can easily capture stunning night scenes.

85mm Periscope Telephoto Sample

The 85mm periscope telephoto lens provides approximately 2.4x optical zoom compared to the main camera, but its visual effect is similar to other phones with 3.5x zoom.

This lens captures images with slightly higher color saturation than the main camera, with details in light and shadow and textures clearly visible.

18mm Ultra-Wide-Angle Sample

The 50MP ultra-wide-angle lens of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition, with its large sensor, ensures sufficient light intake and captures rich light and shadow details even in backlight conditions, easily handling various wide scenes.

Additionally, the phone’s ultra-wide-angle lens includes automatic distortion correction to avoid image edge deformation and maintain image integrity.

5. Performance and Gaming: Snapdragon 8 Gen3 Edition Runs Genshin Impact at Over 60 FPS with Ease

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen3 Edition, where the CPU's peak frequency has increased from 3.3GHz to 3.4GHz. Its AI engine has a total computing power of 73 TOPS, capable of running AI models with up to 10 billion parameters on the device, making it Qualcomm's most powerful chip to date.

The version we tested features 12GB LPDDR5X and 256GB UFS 4.0 storage. We assessed the phone's theoretical performance and gaming capabilities, with memory expansion disabled and "Awakening Mode" enabled to maximize the phone's performance.

Theoretical Performance Test

We first conducted the AnTuTu benchmark test, achieving a total score of 2,017,800 points. Compared to the Nubia Z50 Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Gen2, the comprehensive performance has improved by about 20%.

In CPU benchmarks, Geekbench 6 scores 2295 in single-core performance and 7181 in multi-core performance. Compared to the Nubia Z50 Ultra, single-core performance has increased by 21.1%, and multi-core performance has improved by 30.2%.

For GPU performance, GFXBench's six 1080P tests showed the following results:

• Aztec Ruins OpenGL: 190 FPS
• Aztec Ruins Vulkan: 194 FPS
• Car Chase Frame Rate: 142 FPS
• Manhattan 3.1 Offscreen: 212 FPS
• Manhattan Offscreen: 262 FPS
• T-Rex Offscreen: 463 FPS

Compared to the previous generation Snapdragon 8 Gen2, the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen3 shows a significant improvement in graphics rendering performance, increasing by over 60%, which greatly enhances gaming smoothness.

In storage tests, sequential read speed reached 3.91GB/s, sequential write speed was 3.0GB/s, random read was 481.95MB/s, and random write speed was 712.51MB/s, indicative of flagship-level UFS 4.0 performance.

Gaming Test

For gaming tests, we selected two representative mainstream mobile games: "Peacekeeper Elite" and the hardware-intensive "Genshin Impact." Testing was conducted in a 28°C indoor office environment, prioritizing frame rates. During testing, we recorded frame rates, power consumption, efficiency ratio, and the phone's heat performance.

1. Peacekeeper Elite

   
   
   

   We first tested "Peacekeeper Elite" with smooth graphics settings at 120 FPS. After an intense team battle, the game's average frame rate stabilized at 120.8 FPS. Frame rate graphs show that the game maintained a steady 120 FPS without fluctuation.

   
   

   Power consumption averaged around 5.4W, with an efficiency ratio of 22.37 FPS/W. Given the frame rate of 120 FPS, this efficiency is already excellent.

   After gaming, the maximum temperature on the phone's back was 43.2°C, located near the periscope telephoto lens.

2. Genshin Impact

   
   
   

   Next, we tested "Genshin Impact" under high load with the highest graphics settings and 60 FPS mode, disabling motion blur. After a 15-minute test in Sumeru City, the game's frame rate remained remarkably stable, averaging 60.41 FPS, fully utilizing the frame rate.

   
   

   Power consumption averaged only 5.06W, with an efficiency ratio of 11.94 FPS/W.

   After gaming, the maximum temperature on the phone's back was 43.8°C.

   Additionally, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition supports enhanced graphics for "Genshin Impact" via AI Super Resolution, boosting the game's resolution from below 1080P to 1116P, making the visuals clearer and more detailed. We compared this with the native graphics quality.

   
   

   Left: Native Graphics Quality | Right: AI Super Resolution Graphics

   The comparison shows that with AI Super Resolution enabled, character presentation improves with smoother contours and more detailed chest ornaments, displaying higher clarity.

6. Charging and Battery Life: Full Charge in 42 Minutes for Nearly 14 Hours of Battery Life

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition has made unprecedented breakthroughs in battery life, fitting a 6000mAh silicon-carbon negative electrode battery into a flagship imaging phone. Combined with AI energy-saving technology, which deeply optimizes nighttime power consumption, the overall battery life has significantly increased compared to the Z60 Ultra.

Alongside the increased battery capacity, the 80W super-fast charging capability has been retained. We tested the charging and battery life of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition .

Charging Test

In testing, starting from 1% battery, it took 10 minutes to charge to 33%, 20 minutes to reach 59%, 30 minutes to 83%, and a full charge was achieved in 42 minutes.

Battery Life Test

For the battery life test, we used the professional battery testing tool—Battery Dog by Fast Technology.

The test includes 20% battery tests and all test scenarios, such as CPU stress, multi-threading, AI recognition, image browsing, video playback, and web browsing, simulating real user scenarios to approximate real-world battery consumption.

During testing, to ensure uniform environment variables and accurate results, Battery Dog automatically adjusted the screen brightness to 50%, disabled auto-brightness, and set the volume to 30%.

The Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition ’s 6000mAh battery showed impressive battery life in our tests. It lasted approximately 11 hours and 12 minutes from 100% to 20%, translating to nearly 13.5 hours of full-charge battery life.

For average users, intermittent usage of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition can last up to a day and a half without recharging, offering a more convenient and long-lasting user experience.

7. Conclusion: The Strongest Ultra of 2024

Leading in performance, imaging, and screen technology, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition has made breakthroughs in these three dimensions.

Firstly, in terms of performance, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition inherits the powerful performance gene of the Red Magic 9S Pro+, with the third-generation Snapdragon 8 Edition chip delivering an exceptional 60.41 FPS in the high-load game "Genshin Impact," setting a new benchmark for smoothness in imaging phones.

Secondly, with the support of the Nebula AI large model, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition has redefined human-machine interaction with its advanced voice recognition, real-time translation, and intelligent writing functions, enhancing information processing efficiency and quality.

It transcends language and regional barriers, achieving smooth global communication and significantly improving information processing efficiency with translation tools like AI recording and summarization, offering an efficient and innovative platform for individuals and enterprises.

In photography, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition combines the new Sony IMX906 main camera with the three classic focal lengths, demonstrating Nubia's advanced photography technology and innovative shooting functions. It meets users' diverse shooting needs while showcasing professional and innovative spirit in mobile photography.

The 6000mAh ultra-large battery of the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition showed nearly 13.5 hours of comprehensive battery life in our tests. Standing at the top of its class, it balances powerful imaging and performance with exceptional battery life, which was an unexpected advantage.

While most flagship phones in this category make some compromises on battery life, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition successfully finds a balance between high performance, advanced imaging processing, and extended battery life.

Overall, the Nubia Z60 Ultra Leading Edition is the most powerful flagship phone in the 5000 RMB price range, offering the strongest photography capabilities, high playability, and the most attractive front design.