a smartphone for those who want an iPhone, but have only 140 USD

Visually, the Nubia V60 partially resembles the world’s most popular smartphone, especially in gold, but only visually, and that’s thanks to the camera set. Of course, this budget model has many compromises, but not everything is as bad as expected. The hero of the review still has several strengths worth mentioning.

Pluses:

lightweight and stable firmware, but there are ads; good memory subsystem; competitive price; good battery life in games; IPS screen with 392 PPI; package;

Minuses:

weak camera and video recording without stabilization; fast discharge when idle; poor screen viewing angles; weak and not very stable processor; strange sensor behavior in some programs;

Technical specifications of the Nubia V60

Package and packaging

Nubia V60 is packed in a two-layer box with colorful patterns. The company doesn’t care about the environment like some European manufacturers, at least judging by the packaging. Inside is the smartphone itself, a SIM card clip, paper documentation, a USB Type A > USB Type C cable, a white 22.5W power supply, a transparent case, and a protective film (not glass).

The film with the factory defect could not be glued because it was curved and dry in that place, i.e. the lower part did not stick. Well, the beginning of the acquaintance with the device turned out to be negative because this defective protective coating only wasted time and nerves.

Design, ergonomics, interfaces of the Nubia V60

The smartphone is large, heavy (the kitchen scale showed 212 grams), and of medium thickness. The bezels could be smaller, but it’s not critical. The golden-colored back panel vaguely resembles an Apple iPhone, although this style is now being used by other Android smartphone manufacturers, especially in the budget segment.

The right panel has a bright red power button with a built-in fingerprint scanner (works stably), just above the volume key. On the opposite side is a slot for a micro SD card and two SIMs. Below is a 3.5 mm jack, USB Type C 2.0 and a loud but flat speaker.

The sound quality is not the best:

Nubia V60 is for big men’s hands because after compact flagships it feels bulky, especially in the case. The body is plastic, it gets dirty easily, and the cameras stick out only slightly.

In general, the device feels like a budget device, but there are no complaints about the build quality. The design seems to be standard, but the red button adds at least a little charm. The ergonomics are far from perfect, as this is an affordable smartphone with large bezels, considerable weight and thickness (especially in the case).

Display

In the table of technical specifications on some sites, the refresh rate of the screen is 90 Hz, although here it is 60 Hz. This is actually an advantage for a budget smartphone, and we’ll explain why. Typical 90/120 Hz displays in cheap smartphones do not give a smooth feeling due to regular lagging, frame rate drops when scrolling, etc. (typical Android Experience).

The Nubia V60 doesn’t have perfect smoothness, but it’s important that the FPS drops in the interface are insignificant, not as noticeable as the transition from 120 Hz to 30 Hz. Therefore, in this case, the 60 Hz screen is literally an advantage. Another plus is the use of an IPS panel because the cheapest OLED matrices are just terrible.

The 6.72-inch screen with a resolution of 2400x1080p gives a very high PPI (392). The image is soft, the brightness margin is average, and the minimum backlight level is not too low (I would like it to be lower for night use). The problem with the Nubia V60 screen is the viewing angles.

The macro module takes good close-up photos, but with some monochromatic textures, there is a problem with focusing. However, there are also unfocused photos with the main 50 MP lens. Almost every third photo is blurry due to poor focus.

The detail of the photo depends heavily on the lighting conditions and the user’s patience, literally. The pictures seem to be good if you hold the smartphone still long enough. Minor vibrations can ruin the photo.

There are numerous bad photos, sometimes too many. Many failed photos were not included in the gallery. The photos were taken in the daytime and in the evening, the weather was cloudy, without direct sunlight, and the lighting was below average. The difference between normal and night modes is immediately noticeable.

Night photos are very bright, sometimes even good. With a tripod, the quality will be slightly better. In general, there is enough clarity if there is at least a little street lighting. You won’t be able to pull out the phone and take a night shot in a split second, like the flagship solutions.

The maximum video resolution is 1080p at 30 frames per second. During the day, the quality is acceptable, but stabilization is lacking. Walking fast makes the picture shake, the bitrate is low, which makes the «image blurry.

At night, the situation is even worse, so when shooting video in low light, you should always use a flash. It doesn’t shine far, but at least something will be visible in the footage. Finally, we should praise the face recognition system for unlocking, which works stably and quickly here.

Work productivity

Inside the Nubia V60 is a Unisoc T616 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 256 GB of storage. The processor is far from the popular T606, but it’s more trotting. Better stability was expected from a low-cost chip. Of course, some failed Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagships (up to -50% performance) is far from it, but the level of performance is quite different.

In the summer of 2024, several smartphones of a similar class were tested, and they showed a more stable result in stress tests, although the hero of the review was tested at a room temperature of 18 °C. The back panel heated up to 33-34 °C. In the summer heat, you can expect 38-40 °C, especially if you hold the phone in your hands and not just put it on a table.

In benchmarks, we get results that are hard to surprise a current user. It’s good that at least the Single Core in Geekbench scores almost 450 points, and that’s all we need. In the browser, the smartphone is slow, so it’s better not to run desktop versions of program sites. The tests were repeated several times, selecting the best results.

An outdated Antutu test shows that the GPU is the weak point of the smartphone (we’ll check it in games) because the memory is fine. 8 GB of RAM allows you to switch between several programs without rebooting, and turning off/on an additional 12 GB of paging file does not affect anything, literally. In general, the RAM management of this model is not bad because on some Android smartphones lightweight applications restart for no reason.

The built-in drive has as much as 256 GB, but the speed is not the best. We get the SATA 2.0 level (250 MB/s) for writing and reading when only half of the storage is full. If you fill 200+ GB, the speed will drop even more. If necessary, you can install a micro SD memory card, but it’s unlikely that anyone will need it with this phone.

A smartphone in the provincial area of Prykarpattia delivers from 1 Mbps to 40 Mbps in a 4G network. The connection is highly dependent on the operator and coverage. Wi-Fi in the home network is stable, but the phone shows slightly worse results in terms of performance.

Game performance

You shouldn’t expect smoothness in the best games with such hardware, but you can still play something. In Call of Duty Warzone, we have a slideshow, it’s impossible to fight enemies, and CarX Street has too low an FPS. In Disney Speedstorm, the smartphone also barely breathes.

Simple games like Brawl Stars, Oceanhorn, PUBG, Asphalt Nitro 2, Real Racing work adequately. I even managed to play an interesting open-world game Undawn, with 20-30 FPS. All casual games run at 60 FPS. You can switch between video games because there is enough RAM to run at least 4-5 games at the same time.

Young gamers will find something to do with Nubia V60. At least this smartphone holds the battery for a long time in gaming sessions compared to x86 consoles, and most Play Market fans don’t need high-quality graphics, but rather gameplay.

Great mobile gaming:

Nubia V60 software

The smartphone runs on Android 13 with ZTE’s proprietary MyOS shell. The firmware is lightweight, takes up little storage space, and is similar to the original Android system. There are ads, but in small quantities, not as aggressive and intrusive as those of competitors Xiaomi or BBK.

On the other hand, the system has fewer features than the firmware of the mentioned brands. For example, there is no game overlay with a frame rate counter, program cloning, etc. But there’s FM radio, a built-in memory cleaner (how can you do without it?), support, file manager, notes, and more. There is also an imitation of Dynamic Island from the Apple iPhone.

Several partner apps are pre-installed, and Google’s news feed has been replaced with its own, which is full of content for Asians and Arabs. Almost all of the news offered is completely uninteresting to any Ukrainian. It is immediately clear that Asia and Africa are the main target markets for this device. Fortunately, this feed can be turned off entirely, but not replaced with Google Discovery.

By default, the system interface looks bad, primitive, but you can change it in the settings so that the menu resembles the original (the only normal) Android without giant 1×1 centimeter square icons, and in a sloppy style.

In general, the firmware is stable, has few bugs, offers good RAM management, but the manufacturer does not promise anything about updates. Probably, the Nubia V60 will remain on Android 13 for the rest of its life. In general, among the huge Chinese zoo of smartphones, this one has relatively adequate software, although there are poorly translated pieces of text, as if through an automatic translator.

Autonomy and charging

The smartphone charged from 2% to 100% in 1 hour and 43 minutes, but you don’t have to wait for a full charge. You can put the phone down for 30-40 minutes and get a nearly 70-80% charged battery.

The hero of the review has an average level of autonomy, judging by the PC Mark 10 tests. The smartphone lasted 7 hours and 1 minute with 100% screen brightness, 12 hours and 6 minutes with 50% brightness, and 16 hours and 44 minutes with the lowest possible backlight. So, the display is the main power consumer.

In the most demanding video games, Nubia V60 holds the charge very well – in three hours the smartphone has been down to 50% with the maximum screen brightness. That is, in economy mode and in simpler games, the smartphone will last up to 10 hours, which is many times longer than any portable console in the Steam Deck style.

While the Nubia V60 holds a charge well under load, a serious problem is discharging during idle time. With an active SIM card and mobile data enabled, the smartphone loses 5-7% of its battery overnight. This is too much because properly configured models of other brands lose 1-2% during the same time.

Experience using the Nubia V60

And so the two-week experience of using yet another budget smartphone for all occasions is coming to an end. Which will be hated by owners of any flagship, but praised by those who switched from another inexpensive smartphone, especially one with bad firmware.

Weak camera, but adequate battery life in games, slow processor, but plenty of memory, not the latest Android 13, but relatively stable and optimized firmware — the Nubia V60 left mixed feelings and ambiguous impressions, a strange aftertaste.

On the negative side, I note the strange behavior of the touch screen in some programs:

This doesn’t happen too often, but it’s become quite annoying after 14 days of use. On the one hand, this is not a bad budget phone, but on the other hand, I would not switch to such a miracle of technology after the old flagship of 2018. Which still performs better than the 2024 model of this price segment, literally in everything except battery life.

Perhaps young mobile gamers will be 100% satisfied with the smartphone, but for me personally, it simply does not fit into the criteria for choosing a mobile phone because of its weight, design, and dimensions.

Price and competitors

The official cost Nubia V60 in the Allo store is 5800 UAH. The hero of the review has an incredibly large number of competitors, so the comparison table does not include all potential analogues from this price category.

Motorola Moto G24 Power has a huge battery, a lot of memory, and balanced characteristics. The price for the 8/256 GB version is about 6000 hryvnias.

Samsung Galaxy A05s Although it doesn’t have much memory, it offers a better display and exemplary software (the best after the original Android). The price is 5800 hryvnias.

Finnish «selfie phone» with pure Android HMD Pulse Pro also has 8/256 GB of memory, although the processor is slightly weaker and there is no charger included. But the price is only 5200 hryvnias.

Available Realme C61 is very similar to the hero of the review visually, and the inside is not much different. Still a good option from BBK for 6000 hryvnias.

Infinix Hot 50 has the best features for the money, if you look at the numbers in the table. This model has a 120 Hz display, a productive chip, and costs only 6000 hryvnias.