ZTE launches its Nubia brand in India with Z9 Mini at 16,999 INR – takes on Xiaomi, Honor and likes

While many companies like Xiaomi and Lenovo have taken the online-sales-only model, there are other companies  who have spun off a separate brand that will go that route. Huawei has done that with their Honor brand and ZTE has done that with its Nubia brand. This helps them cut on marketing and other costs and provide some wicked awesome specs loaded into a phone at rock bottom prices. India has become a key market for most of the smartphone makers and especially the ones that are coming from China! OnePlus, Xiaomi, Meizu et all have clearly indicated that.

Today, ZTE has officially launched its Nubia brand in India with the Z9 mini at 16,999 INR and will be sold exclusively on Amazon.in. Lets look at the technical specifications:

Display: 5″ 1080 x 1920 pixels (~441 ppi pixel density)

Processor: Qualcomm MSM8939 Snapdragon 615, Quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & quad-core 1.0 GHz and Adreno 405

Internal Memory: 16GB Flash memory + Expandable upto 128GB

RAM: 2GB

OS: Nubia UI 2.8 built off Android Lollipop 5.0

Battery: Non-removable Li-Ion 3000 mAh battery

Camera: 16 MP, 5312 x 2988 pixels, autofocus, LED flash at the back + 8MP front shooter

Form factor: 8.2 mm thick and 147 gms in weight

Connectivity: Dual Nano SIM, Dual Stand By, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, Wi-Fi Direct, DLNA, hotspot, FM Radio, APGS, GLONASS

Colors: Black, White

Price: Rs. 16,999

Initial Thoughts:

Nubia Z9 Mini comes with a good build quality and has good looks. It has a unique identity of its own, runs its own skin of Android and comes with some beautiful packaging. Highlight of the phone is the 16MP + 8MP camera duo which we hear from the the ones who’ve used it already is a damn good combo – snappy and smooth. All of this coming at 16,999INR which is actually a good deal when you go by the specs. But there are lots of other options starting from the Xiaomi Mi4i coming at 12,999INR, there is the Samsung E5 coming around the 15,000INR and also the HTC 620 coming around 15,000INR again! So it will be a stiff competition given the fact that Samsung and HTC have well established post sales service while Xiaomi is yet to make a mark in that department. We will wait until we get our hands on the Z9 Mini and be back with a detailed review, for the moment the competition is stiff and boy don’t we love it!