Nubia Watch hands-on: 4-inch flexible display offers a glimpse of our wearable future

Apple, Samsung, Garmin, Fitbit, and other folks compete for control of your wrist with square and round smartwatches with displays smaller than two inches. The Nubia View offers a one of a kind selection for wearables with a huge four.01-inch AMOLED adaptable exhibit.

The Nubia View is more of a bracelet than a watch because the 2.5mm wide exhibit addresses the best of your wrist and then wraps down possibly side, midway down on my wrist. So, it is bulkier than other smartwatches, but not as huge as many common watches I have witnessed on wrists. It truly is unquestionably more of a principle wearable than anything that is simple for everyday dress in.

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The Nubia View is at the moment on Kickstarter with just more than a week left in the campaign. At the time of this posting, it had more than $188,000 pledged, considerably exceeding the $ten,000 intention. There were however some $199 pledges offered with a lot of $229 openings. The whole retail price tag will be $398.

Technical specs

  • Display: four.01-inch 960×192-pixel resolution adaptable AMOLED (244 ppi) produced with Schott glass
  • Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon Use 2100
  • Storage: 32GB of inside storage for up to 2,000 tunes and hundreds of topo maps and action info
  • Water resistance: IP54
  • Connectivity and sensors: Bluetooth four.one, GPS/GLONASS/BEIDOU, optical HR, compass, accelerometer, gyroscope
  • Battery: Up to seven days with 425 mAh battery
  • Proportions: forty one x fourteen.2 x 125mm and ninety eight grams

An extension piece for the silicone band is integrated in the package, hooked up through a speedy-release pin, that I employed to suit my wrist. The initial band piece is for smaller wrist sizes.

The tiny, magnetic charging puck has a microUSB port with an integrated USB-A to microUSB cable to demand up the Nubia View.

Components

Obviously, the most putting function of the Nubia View is the four.01-inch very long adaptable AMOLED touchscreen that wraps close to your wrist. one/2 inch on each individual finish of the band flexes and adjusts to match the curvature and size of your wrist. The rest of the exhibit is flat on the experience and then curves down at each individual finish of the best, with the body maintaining it rigid as it transitions from the experience to the side of your wrist.

Colours are vivid and vibrant on the exhibit with crystal clear textual content. The touchscreen is responsive and will work in conjunction with the solitary hardware button on the ideal side of the Nubia View to accessibility and control applications and configurations.

The watch sides and back again are produced of aluminum and stainless steel substance with a superior quality suit and end. The Nubia View feels like an high-priced piece of jewellery, but can be acquired at a acceptable price tag in the course of the Kickstarter campaign.

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An optical coronary heart rate sensor is discovered on the back again and is employed with a focused coronary heart rate application, when functioning out, and when sleeping.

View software program

The to start with point you see on the huge lovely exhibit is the watch experience and this is one location exactly where Nubia put in some time on growth. thirty watchband experience solutions are offered to decide on from with each individual featuring a one of a kind look and some with numerous types of info. You can also down load more solutions from the Nubia Use application or add your preferred image and produce your possess personalized watch experience, while I could not get this aspect of the Nubia Use application functioning on this examination machine.

Another way to present off the exhibit is by selecting a marquee that offers a dynamic exhibit. For illustration, a matrix impact can be picked out with personalized textual content. This is more of a demonstration of the know-how with little exercise use.

Swipe down on the watch experience to accessibility speedy controls. Tiny icons are present to toggle actions these kinds of as GPS, Bluetooth, raise-to-wake, brightness amounts, ability-save, and more.

Swipe up on the exhibit to see your notifications. The notifications that will show up on the Nubia View are managed in the smartphone application.

Swiping ideal or left, as nicely as pressing in on the solitary button, will open up up the application launcher. Substantial icons are present for connect with, messages, sporting activities, overall health, coronary heart rate, configurations, barrage/marquee, compass, schedule, clock, lookup telephone, and songs.

Accessible sport modes include outdoor walking, indoor jogging, outdoor jogging, and free of charge exercise session. I analyzed the outdoor jogging manner a handful of situations more than the previous few of weeks. Although jogging the exhibit will present energy burned, coronary heart rate, pace, length, and period. The very long exhibit assists you see all of this info at the moment devoid of the require to scroll. At present, only metric info is presented so I had to accomplish some conversions in my head to relate to my normal instruction metrics.

The Nubia View will also keep track of your techniques, coronary heart rate, and nightly snooze, which show up when you open up up the overall health application.

To use the songs application and stream songs to Bluetooth headphones you require to transfer MP3 documents right to the watch. There is no integration with any songs company so this functionality is of restricted use in present day earth of membership songs solutions.

Smartphone software program

The weakest connection in the Nubia View experience is in the smartphone software program. The watch software program is fantastic for standard notifications and overall health info, but there is nothing at all you can do with this info further than see it on the watch and in the application. Even then, viewing in the application is really restricted and is an location ripe for critical advancement.

The smartphone application is referred to as Nubia Use and is offered for the Iphone and Android smartphones. The main display screen, personal status, shows your phase count, coronary heart rate, and snooze along with relationship status and Nubia View remaining battery proportion.

The other exhibit, my configurations, lets you see particulars of the watch, deal with notifications, and deal with sync, songs, and shots (I could not get this to perform at all).

There is no way to sync your captured overall health info to any company, these kinds of as Strava, or see the info by week, thirty day period, or other frequency. You are not able to see the info to keep track of traits, run reports, or do a great deal with it other than see it in the application.

On the lookout at the standard pedometer purpose and info, I could not see anything other than the present-day working day. There are arrows at the best of the web site that point out I could see previous days, but this would not perform in the application so there are evidently features that require perform.

Day-to-day usage experiences and conclusion

The Nubia View is an fascinating know-how demonstration for adaptable displays and the hardware is a great deal far better than I expected. It is extremely nicely produced, has a superior-quality look and come to feel, and has specifications that present it ought to stand up nicely to the features.

When I went jogging, it took many minutes for the GPS receiver to decide on up a signal. This is expected the to start with time you use a machine, but for subsequent operates in the exact location I however ended up standing on the corner and stretching for pretty some time ahead of I could start out tracking my jogging. The Nubia View appears to have completed rather nicely tracking my jogging info, as compared to focused GPS sporting activities watches, but I could not go back again and review all of the particulars later because of the restricted software program on the telephone.

Regardless of its size, the Nubia View is snug and I slept with it for many evenings to keep track of my snooze. I would not snooze with it just about every night time if I wasn’t screening it out, but with the very long battery lifetime you could unquestionably do it if it was snug adequate for you.

With some perform on the software program side of factors, the Nubia View could serve as a capable wearable with a concentrate on featuring people a doable glimpse of the upcoming of wearables. If you can get if for about $200, then you may perhaps get worth out of it, but it is not genuinely a simple wearable ready to acquire on the likes of Fitbit, Garmin, Apple, or Samsung.