If you are familiar enough with the middle and lower tier smartphone market in Malaysia, then Ninetology shouldn’t be a foreign name to you. However, yesterday the company launched something that is slightly different from their usual offerings: an LTE smartphone.
When we said slightly, we really mean it as other than its LTE connectivity, the Ninetology U9Z1T is still essentially a mid-tier smartphone. However, being a mid-tier device doesn’t mean that it is bad product. Far from it, actually.
But first, let’s discuss the specs of U9Z1T. As you might know, the smartphone is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor which features a 1.2GHz quad-core Krait CPU and 400MHz Adreno 305 GPU. Alongside the processor, there’s also 1GB of RAM and 8GB worth of internal storage as well as the support for MicroSD card with storage of up to 32GB.
Apart from its LTE connectivity which covers both 1800 and 2600 MHz spectrums, the device also comes with a 5.0-inch IPS display which has a resolution of 1280 x 720 and 172-degress viewing angle. The U9Z1T is also equipped with a 13-megapixels rear camera, 1.6-megapixels front-facing camera and a replaceable 2000 mAh battery.
Instead of using the native Android UI, Ninetology chose to equip U9Z1T with NQ Live Launcher by NQ Mobile on top of the device’s Android 4.3 operating system. While we don’t get to explore much of its feature given the limited time that we had with the demo unit, we can tell you that it is very colourful and vibrant launcher with highly animated app drawer.
From our brief hands-on experience with the device at its launch event yesterday, the U9Z1T has certainly gives us a good first impression. The build quality of the phone is rather solid and even though the device is made from plastic, it is not flimsy or feels cheap as opposed to some of the previously released Ninetology U9 smartphone.
The matte finishing of U9Z1T gives it a premium look (to certain extend) as well although the overall design might looked too close to BlackBerry Z10 and Z30. In addition to that, the IPS display on the device is quite vibrant and bright which is hard to ignore considering how colourful the device’s NQ Live Launcher is.
Despite having only 1GB of RAM, there was no noticeable lag on the demo unit that we tested and the launcher works very smoothly. But of course, the final verdict on the device will have to wait till we are able to get our hands on the production unit to test out. Nevertheless, the U9Z1T is certainly one of better products that we’ve seen so far from Ninetology.
The Ninetology U9Z1T is available immediately for RM 899 which is frankly a bit too high considering the devices that are available within the same price point but then again, users are able to obtain it for as low as RM 699 through Ninetology’s rebate program.
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