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

Apple, Samsung, Garmin, Fitbit, and some others contend for handle of your wrist with square and round smartwatches with shows more compact than two inches. The Nubia Watch delivers a unique possibility for wearables with a huge four.01-inch AMOLED versatile exhibit.

The Nubia Watch is more of a bracelet than a watch for the reason that the two.5mm wide exhibit handles the leading of your wrist and then wraps down possibly facet, halfway down on my wrist. Consequently, it is bulkier than other smartwatches, but not as huge as many classic watches I have noticed on wrists. It is really unquestionably more of a concept wearable than something that is sensible for every day dress in.

Also: Greatest smartwatches in 2020: Apple and Samsung battle for a location on your wrist

The Nubia Watch is at this time on Kickstarter with just over a 7 days still left in the campaign. At the time of this short article, it experienced more than $188,000 pledged, much exceeding the $10,000 objective. There were still some $199 pledges readily available with a great deal of $229 openings. The full retail price will be $398.

Table of Contents

Requirements

Show: four.01-inch 960×192-pixel resolution versatile AMOLED (244 ppi) created with Schott glass
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon Put on 2100
Storage: 32GB of internal storage for up to two,000 tunes and loads of topo maps and exercise data
Drinking water resistance: IP54
Connectivity and sensors: Bluetooth four.1, GPS/GLONASS/BEIDOU, optical HR, compass, accelerometer, gyroscope
Battery: Up to seven times with 425 mAh battery
Dimensions: forty one x fourteen.two x 125mm and 98 grams

An extension piece for the silicone band is included in the package, hooked up by way of a brief-release pin, that I utilised to in good shape my wrist. The unique band piece is for more compact wrist dimensions.

The smaller, magnetic charging puck has a microUSB port with an included USB-A to microUSB cable to cost up the Nubia Watch.

Hardware

Clearly, the most placing element of the Nubia Watch is the four.01-inch extensive versatile AMOLED touchscreen that wraps all around your wrist. 1/two inch on every end of the band flexes and adjusts to match the curvature and dimension of your wrist. The relaxation of the exhibit is flat on the confront and then curves down at every end of the leading, with the frame retaining it rigid as it transitions from the confront to the facet of your wrist.

Shades are bright and lively on the exhibit with distinct textual content. The touchscreen is responsive and will work in conjunction with the solitary hardware button on the appropriate facet of the Nubia Watch to access and handle apps and settings.

The watch sides and again are manufactured of aluminum and stainless metal product with a high top quality in good shape and finish. The Nubia Watch feels like an costly piece of jewellery, but can be procured at a fair price in the course of the Kickstarter campaign.

Also: Greatest GPS sports activities watches in 2020: Coros, Garmin, Polar, and other smartwatches

An optical coronary heart charge sensor is uncovered on the again and is utilised with a focused coronary heart charge app, whilst functioning out, and whilst sleeping.

Watch software

The initial thing you see on the huge gorgeous exhibit is the watch confront and this is just one space exactly where Nubia spent some time on improvement. 30 watchband confront choices are readily available to pick from with every offering a unique seem and some with a variety of forms of data. You can also download more choices from the Nubia Put on app or add your favorite photograph and make your have custom made watch confront, while I could not get this part of the Nubia Put on app functioning on this check product.

Yet another way to present off the exhibit is by deciding on a marquee that presents a dynamic exhibit. For case in point, a matrix impact can be preferred with custom made textual content. This is more of a demonstration of the know-how with minor practice use.

Swipe down on the watch confront to access brief controls. Small icons are present to toggle steps these as GPS, Bluetooth, increase-to-wake, brightness amounts, energy-save, and more.

Swipe up on the exhibit to watch your notifications. The notifications that will show up on the Nubia Watch are managed in the smartphone app.

Swiping appropriate or still left, as perfectly as urgent in on the solitary button, will open up the app launcher. Significant icons are present for contact, messages, sports activities, well being, coronary heart charge, settings, barrage/marquee, compass, agenda, clock, look for cell phone, and music.

Readily available sport modes include outdoor walking, indoor jogging, outdoor jogging, and cost-free exercise. I tested the outdoor jogging method a couple times over the past few of weeks. Although jogging the exhibit will present calories burned, coronary heart charge, velocity, distance, and period. The extensive exhibit allows you see all of this data at as soon as without having the need to scroll. Presently, only metric data is offered so I experienced to execute some conversions in my head to relate to my usual education metrics.

The Nubia Watch will also monitor your ways, coronary heart charge, and nightly snooze, which show up when you open up the well being app.

To use the music app and stream music to Bluetooth headphones you need to transfer MP3 data files straight to the watch. There is no integration with any music provider so this functionality is of limited use in present day planet of membership music choices.

Smartphone software

The weakest link in the Nubia Watch working experience is in the smartphone software. The watch software is wonderful for primary notifications and well being data, but there is almost nothing you can do with this data past watch it on the watch and in the app. Even then, viewing in the app is really limited and is an space ripe for major advancement.

The smartphone app is termed Nubia Put on and is readily available for the Iphone and Android smartphones. The most important monitor, personal status, exhibits your phase count, coronary heart charge, and snooze together with link status and Nubia Watch remaining battery proportion.

The other exhibit, my settings, lets you watch particulars of the watch, deal with notifications, and deal with sync, music, and images (I couldn’t get this to get the job done at all).

There is no way to sync your captured well being data to any provider, these as Strava, or watch the data by 7 days, thirty day period, or other frequency. You cannot watch the data to monitor developments, operate studies, or do much with it apart from watch it in the app.

On the lookout at the primary pedometer purpose and data, I could not watch everything other than the recent working day. There are arrows at the leading of the web site that indicate I could watch past times, but this doesn’t get the job done in the app so there are plainly aspects that need get the job done.

Each day utilization ordeals and summary

The Nubia Watch is an intriguing know-how demonstration for versatile shows and the hardware is much better than I envisioned. It is incredibly perfectly manufactured, has a high-top quality seem and sense, and has requirements that present it need to stand up perfectly to the aspects.

When I went jogging, it took many minutes for the GPS receiver to pick up a signal. This is envisioned the initial time you use a product, but for subsequent operates in the exact space I still ended up standing on the corner and stretching for very some time in advance of I could start out monitoring my jogging. The Nubia Watch appears to have accomplished quite perfectly monitoring my jogging data, as compared to focused GPS sports activities watches, but I couldn’t go again and assess all of the particulars later on for the reason that of the limited software on the cell phone.

Inspite of its dimension, the Nubia Watch is comfortable and I slept with it for many nights to monitor my snooze. I wouldn’t snooze with it each and every night if I wasn’t tests it out, but with the extensive battery everyday living you could unquestionably do it if it was comfortable enough for you.

With some get the job done on the software facet of factors, the Nubia Watch could serve as a capable wearable with a concentration on offering persons a feasible glimpse of the potential of wearables. If you can get if for about $200, then you might get value out of it, but it is not seriously a sensible wearable all set to just take on the likes of Fitbit, Garmin, Apple, or Samsung.