Nubia Pad 3D

The Nubia Pad 3D is a cool proof of idea and that rarest of issues: an Android pill that tries one thing completely different. Its glasses-free 3D show works nicely, as does the dual-camera system used for creating 3D imagery – no less than for essentially the most half. Nonetheless, the pill itself is extraordinarily unwieldy and considerably buggy, it’s not specced in addition to extra conventional alternate options, and we nonetheless doubt whether or not there’s a real name for 3D media content material, particularly with such scant availability.

Introduction

The Nubia Pad 3D is a considerably experimental full-sized pill that includes a glasses-free 3D show as its headline part. 

Is it a worthwhile function, or ought to somebody inform ZTE and associate Leia that it isn’t 2011 any extra? That’s the yr by which Nintendo launched its 3DS handheld, which is nearly the one mainstream client system to have efficiently launched with this type of know-how. 

Moreover the Nubia Pad 3D’s core gimmick, I’ll even be in search of to determine its price as a stand-alone Android pill. A weighty activity contemplating the Nubia Pad 3D prices an eye-watering £1,149/$1199, or a barely cheaper £1049/$1099 throughout the pre-order section forward of its 11 April launch.

At that type of value, the Nubia Pad 3D is holding firm with some critical gamers within the premium pill market, together with the 12.9-inch iPad Professional and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely. You’d higher actually need a pill that may play 3D content material, is what I’m saying.

Design and display screen

• Premium however thick and heavy
• 12.4-inch 120Hz IPS LCD show
• Glasses-free stereoscopic 3D impact

The Nubia Pad 3D seems like a reasonably generic full-sized pill. Its extreme flat surfaces and darkish gray metallic rear are redolent of the Lenovo Tab P12 Professional and the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely, although the extra-thick brow housing twin 3D entrance cameras give the pill a moderately lopsided look.

Round again, the 3D digital camera module is suitably showy. It doesn’t fairly stream out of the facet body, Pixel 7 Professional type, however it’s closely tapered.

Speaking of heavy, the Nubia Pad 3D is one chunky monkey. I weighed it at 781g which, along with a thickness of 8.4mm, is moderately hefty for a pill. By comparability, the iPad Professional weighs 682g and is 6.4mm thick, whereas the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely weighs 726g and measures 5.5mm thick. Keep in mind that the Samsung spreads that load out over a a lot bigger floor space too, because of its 14.6-inch show.

The purpose is, I discovered the Nubia Pad 3D to be flat-out uncomfortable to carry and use for any critical size of time, aside from these conditions the place I might prop it on my lap. Given the necessity to have the show completely aligned for that correct 3D impact, it is a little bit of a difficulty.

In fact, all of that unwieldiness is successfully in service to the Nubia Pad 3D’s core 3D gimmick. Its 12.4-inch 3D lightfield show is able to displaying 3D content material with out the necessity for any foolish glasses. Just like the Nintendo 3DS, the Nubia Pad 3D achieves this by presenting a distinct picture to every of your eyes, creating the phantasm of depth. It tracks your head nicely, although it’ll degenerate right into a blurry mess whenever you transfer past a sure angle.

Get the suitable piece of 3D content material – ideally pretty static with a transparent topic that may stand clear from the background – and the impact might be very cool. I hesitate to name it pure although. You’re by no means doubtful that it is a neat visible trick, and to that finish, the impact is extra akin to a pop-up e-book than some immersive AR expertise.

One other side-effect of splitting the content material on this method is that the image turns into noticeably grainier and extra pixelated. It nonetheless doesn’t look dangerous, however there’s a scarcity of smoothness that may detract from the general expertise. Even when viewing 2D content material, the display screen has a surprisingly mottled texture, probably associated to that intelligent glasses-free 3D know-how.

Taken as an everyday Android pill – which is the way you’ll most likely be utilizing the Nubia Pad 3D a lot of the time – it is a 12.4-inch IPS LCD with a 120Hz refresh fee, which feels like a good if considerably mid-range spec. The 1600 x 2560 decision is aggressive with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely, however using an LCD panel moderately than an OLED will not be.

It’s a combined bag on the color accuracy entrance, with a color temperature of 6300K (6500K being optimum) and a Delta E of two.16 (with near 1 being very best). Alternatively, it covers 100% of the sRGB gamut, 82.5% Adobe RGB, and 90.1% DCI P3, which isn’t dangerous going

The display screen doesn’t get massively vivid, at 376 nits with auto brightness turned off, however that’s nonetheless higher than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely. In fact, that latter display screen’s OLED show implies that its HDR brightness potential is way increased.

3D options and cameras

• Vary of 3D-specific apps
• Movie retailer doesn’t appear useful
• Twin 16MP (rear) and 8MP (entrance) cameras

The Nubia Pad 3D is all about presenting 3D content material, however sadly (or fortunately, relying in your perspective) we’re not within the midst of a 3D increase like we had been a decade or so in the past. There’s now not a wealth of 3D content material available.

Leia’s resolution is to supply a set of pre-installed apps with the only function of supplying a gradual stream of 3D media. Sadly, one of many foremost apps right here doesn’t truly work. LeiaFlix is meant to supply a storefront for correct 3D films, nevertheless it doesn’t appear to work exterior of the US, and easily redirects you to the Leia Appstore with none rationalization.

LeiaTube pulls in appropriate 2D movies from on-line suppliers similar to YouTube and Vimeo, which brings us to one of many Nubia Pad 3D’s key tips: it will possibly flip 2D content material into 3D content material in real-time. It is a intelligent method that probably opens out that ostensibly restricted 3D library significantly, although in apply it yields combined outcomes.

The 2D browsing video that was highlighted after I first booted up the LeiaTube app didn’t actually work, with no robust fastened level or sense of perspective. Others made my eyes really feel squiffy right away, forcing me to again out inside a minute lest I lose my lunch. 

Different movies labored fairly nicely, similar to a promotional video for Taiwan, which lent actual depth and pop to its largely static footage of lanterns and monuments. Even with these, although, I wouldn’t wish to watch something long-form on this method. It’s simply too tiresome on the eyes.

LeiaPlayer provides a collection of pre-shot photos that basically sells the 3D impact, although fairly how a lot time you’ll wish to spend another person’s shot of a seagull standing on a wall is one other matter. LeiaChat enables you to render your video chats in 3D, must you actually want to.

LeiaViewer provides you a bunch of random 3D fashions that you would be able to pan round with a full 3D impact, and likewise modify the severity of mentioned 3D impact. ZTE additionally claims that there are greater than 50 3D video games able to undergo the Leia Appstore, however all I might discover was a pair of demos.

The Nubia Pad 3D’s foremost 3D celebration trick, nonetheless, is its potential to create 3D content material utilizing its twin 16MP rear cameras, at the side of some intelligent Al-powered 3D seize software program. I’m impressed by how nicely this function works. Take an image utilizing the default LeiaCam app, and hitting the picture preview will immediately (nicely, with a slight processing pause) supply it in full 3D. 

The dual cameras will routinely depth-map every little thing in view, with a bit of display screen within the nook exhibiting a warmth map of the way it sees the world. The brighter the thing, the nearer it’s to the digital camera. It really works a bit like focus peaking.

The outcomes often left me flat-out impressed, with gadgets at varied factors within the scene standing out to varied levels. In sure photos, the person leaves on a plant had their very own depth profiles. I quickly realised that you just shouldn’t have something too near the digital camera, nonetheless, because it’ll solely tackle a distractingly unfocused look.

I’d like to inform you about how this pill performs with 3D selfies utilizing its two entrance cameras, however the LeiaCam app repeatedly and persistently hung for me every time I attempted to change over. It lent to a basic feeling I had that it is a prototype moderately than a totally fleshed-out product.

Moreover which, there’s one thing essentially restricted about this complete 3D digital camera endeavour. You’ll be able to’t share this 3D impact with anybody else except they’ve an identical 3D system. That in some way appears unlikely.

Efficiency

• Older Snapdragon 888 chip
• Respectable, bur removed from high efficiency
• Android 12 with ugly customized UI

The Nubia Pad 3D runs on a reasonably outdated flagship chip, the Snapdragon 888. This hasn’t actually been a going concern since 2021, nevertheless it’s nonetheless a succesful runner, and is greater than as much as the duty of outputting 3D content material.

With that mentioned, there’s a notable pause throughout varied 3D processes, similar to when changing 2D video content material to 3D, so maybe a extra fashionable flagship chip would have been so as. Even perhaps final yr’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, which powers the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely. It’s doubtless that this older chip has been used as a consequence of that expensive 3D know-how hogging a lot of the manufacturing finances. 

By way of benchmark assessments, the Nubia Pad 3D attained common Geekbench 6 scores of 1453 single-core and 3635 multi-core. Sadly, with this model of the device being so new, we don’t have numerous comparative knowledge. Nonetheless, it does appear to be fairly robust, particularly in single-core phrases.

On the subject of the GPU, the pill scored 5209 in 3DMark Wildlife and 1491 in Wildlife Excessive, which is a major drop from the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely.

This seasoned Qualcomm chip is backed by 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, with a 256GB choice additionally obtainable. There’s additionally a microSDXC slot for as much as 1TB of growth. Cheap specs all spherical.

What with this being a £1,000 (most likely) media-focused pill, you’d hope for respectable audio output. Fortunately, you get simply that with a set of 4 stereo audio system and Dolby Atmos help. It’s not going to hassle an iPad Professional of any persuasion for high quality, nevertheless it’s a lot loud and clear sufficient.

The pill runs on Android 12, which nonetheless doesn’t work as nicely on this pill format as iPadOS. The customized UI that sits on high of it doesn’t actually do something to enhance issues both.

Nowhere is that this extra obvious than when scrolling left from the house display screen, which brings up an unoptimised Google Feed that seems to have been lifted straight from a smartphone. In panorama view (which is what this pill is designed for), meaning large black borders to the left and proper.

The UI itself is essentially ugly out of the field, too, with a gaudy purple wallpaper and ugly app icons for these aforementioned 3D content material apps.

Battery life

• 9,070mAh battery
• 33W charging help
• No charger within the field

Nubia and Leia have geared up their 3D pill with a 9,070 mAh battery. That’s truly a good bit smaller than the Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Extremely’s 11,200 mAh cell and the iPad Professional 12.9 (2022)’s 10,758 mAh cell. Given the heft of the Nubia, which may shock you.

Regardless of this, I discovered that the Nubia Pad 3D lasted fairly nicely typically utilization. An hour of Disney+ streaming sapped 10% of a cost, which is definitely a bit of higher than the Tab S8 Extremely managed. Equally, a 20% drain from an hour of stable gaming (COD Cellular, should you’re questioning) with a Bluetooth controller connected seems to high Samsung’s pill.

In fact, The Galaxy Tab S8 has a bigger, extra vibrant show to output to. Nevertheless it’s nonetheless fairly robust. 

The pill solely helps 33W wired charging, which isn’t too speedy whenever you’re speaking about such a large battery. You solely get a USB-C lead within the field, too. 

Utilizing a charger from one other model I discovered that the Nubia Pad 3D would go from 0 to 14% in quarter-hour, and as much as 28% after half-hour. A full cost took a shade beneath 2 hours to finish, which is a good outdated time.