The ZTE Nubia Flip 2 5G is the cheapest foldable phone on the market, and I was surprised by how much it has improved since last year, but is it worth it?
ZTE made things difficult for Samsung, Motorola, and company with the launch of its first foldable phone, the Nubia Flip, which was considered the first true mid-range model, although in some respects the cutbacks in specifications took their toll.
Now, the Chinese brand has launched its second generation foldable, the clamshell-style Nubia Flip 2 5G, which was unveiled at MWC and has been on sale in Spain since early April for a starting price of €699.
The new phone is still the cheapest foldable released in Spain in the last year, although it is €100 more expensive than its predecessor.
Is the ZTE Nubia Flip 2 5G worth buying?
Considering that the Nubia Flip 2 is much better than its predecessor in every way, from the much larger external screen to software that is now as functional as that of other brands, I think it is a much easier phone to recommend and one that is closer to its rivals.
At the same time, its mid-range performance is difficult to associate with a phone that costs $700, so you should think carefully about whether, despite its camera performing better than expected and its battery being quite decent, the clamshell foldable format is important enough to you to overlook this.
This foldable phone is a big improvement in design and screen, especially because of its exterior panel.
The ZTE Nubia Flip 2 is a clamshell phone that changes quite a few things from the brand’s first foldable phone, and most of them are improvements.
The smartphone retains the advantages of the clamshell design, with a fairly lightweight 193 grams, although I don’t find it particularly compact either when closed, at 15.8 millimeters thick, or when open, at 7.2 mm, almost the same as a normal phone.
Despite not being too thin, it looks good with its flat edges replaced by more rounded metal ones, which make it feel like a normal phone when open and much more comfortable in the hand. However, the black design of the back attracts too many fingerprints for my liking.
The hinge is also better than on the first Nubia Flip, with a greater sense of security and no strange creaking noises. The fold in the middle of the screen is barely noticeable when the phone is open, although it is not one of the most invisible, and it also feels more uniform when you run your finger over it, with no noticeable play.
But the big breakthrough is the inclusion of a much more functional external screen, in vertical format rather than round, which has been increased from 1.43 to 3 inches. It’s big enough to use the keyboard and apps such as Google Maps, not just to display notifications, and I found the 1,200 nits brightness to be good.
It is complemented by a foldable 6.9-inch OLED screen on the inside, the same size as the largest traditional mobile phone currently available, the iPhone 16 Pro Max. At 900 nits, its brightness is sufficient for most uses, but it falls a little short in sunlight, which is a shame.
In terms of connectivity, I didn’t feel like it was missing anything, with 5G, WiFi 6, and Bluetooth 5.4. It unlocks with a fingerprint reader on the side, in a convenient position, but it’s not the most accurate.
Its mid-range performance coexists with more polished software.
Internally, the ZTE phone is mid-range, so unlike most foldables, it doesn’t compete with more expensive phones in terms of raw power.
The Chinese brand has opted for a configuration featuring the Mediatek Dimensity 7300X chip, the same one chosen almost a year ago for the standard Motorola Razr 50, the only mid-range foldable phone it competes with. Added to this are 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, which I think is the minimum you can ask for from a €700 device.
Overall, it’s a phone that allows for smooth use, and I’ve even been able to play the occasional video game or even demanding ones like Pokémon Unite without too much trouble, although it’s not designed for high graphics performance, and this is noticeable.
Benchmarks show that this mid-range model is not the most powerful you can get, and it’s a bit disappointing that there’s almost no improvement over last year’s model, which opted for a Qualcomm processor.
Where I think ZTE has improved the most is in the software. This Nubia Flip 2 comes standard with MyOS 14, based on Android 14, which is a generation behind, but it has eliminated the huge number of performance issues in native apps that I noticed last year.
Although the translations are still not perfect in many cases, overall I found it to be a much more usable system than its predecessor, where in a week I only noticed some slowdowns and very occasional errors, but these are no longer the norm.
The big advantage is that you can choose any app to run on the outer screen, although you’ll have to do this manually from the settings.
In terms of battery life, ZTE’s smartphone can now boast one of the best capacities of any clamshell foldable, with a slight improvement to 4,325 mAh. In my case, it has been enough to get through every day of moderate use without too many worries.
It also repeats, and this is not great news, the 33W fast charging, which took me approximately 80 minutes to charge from 0 to 100%. However, the charger is not included in the box, so I’m afraid you’ll have to buy it separately.
A basic camera, but with good main sensors
Foldable phones tend to be more limited in terms of camera capabilities than book-style models such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the Huawei Mate X6. And as you might expect, this mid-range model is quite limited in what you can do, as it does not have a wide-angle or telephoto lens, for example.
However, the Nubia Flip 2 has a much more enjoyable camera than its predecessor, thanks to better software processing that makes it easier to get acceptable quality, especially when viewing photos and videos on its screen.
This is the camera configuration of the ZTE Nubia Flip 2 5G:
50-megapixel main rear camera, f/1.6, PDAF.
2 MP depth sensor.
32 MP selfie camera on the inner screen.
Despite the absence of a wide angle, I found it to be a good main camera for landscapes and details as long as you use it at 1x, i.e.
The zoom is acceptable up to 2x at 50mm, but 10x adds too much noise.
For portraits, the main camera surprised me with some pretty good results, with a colorful aesthetic in which HDR shines and correct figure cropping and bokeh effect.
My only complaint is that beauty mode is enabled by default and removes too much skin texture for my taste.
If you prefer selfies, you can take them with both the external camera and the secondary screen, as well as with the 32 MP front camera perforated in the inner panel.
The front camera has surprised me for the better, and with portrait mode, it ensures good video calls, which is the main use I find for it.
ZTE is usually strong in night mode, and this Nubia Flip 2 5G is no exception, with pretty good nighttime aesthetics, with more brightness in the shot and less burnt-out light sources, as you can see with the streetlights.
Video is not one of the areas where this camera excels. It has a stable mode with results that I didn’t like and that cause problems when you walk around with the camera in your hand.
