Categories: News

Hands-on: Ninetology U9Z1T smart phone with 4G LTE

With the growing demands for faster 4G LTE enabled smart phones, home grown brand Ninetology has finally introduced its U9Z1T smart phone. This is their first 4G LTE smart phone which costs RM899. In terms of specs, it’s very similar with the incoming Motorola Moto G with 4G LTE but comes with additional upgrades.

Read on for our first impression of this new mid-spec 4G LTE smart phone.

Let’s talk about the specs first. The U9Z1T gets a large 5″ IPS display that does 1280×720 pixels resolution and pushes a pixel density of 294ppi. This is similar with the affordable Huawei Honor 3C. Like the Moto G, it runs on a frugal and capable 1.2GHz Quad-Core Snapdragon 400 processor that’s mated to 1GB RAM and 8GB of on-board storage. If you need more space for your photos and videos, it also accepts microSD cards up to a maximum capacity of 32GB.

Considering photography is a major usage on smart phones, they have given it a more capable 13MP camera with assisted flash while Selfies are handled by its front facing 1.2MP unit. This is an improvement over the Moto G which provides average quality pics from its 5MP shooter. The bundled battery is a 2,000mAh unit which is the same capacity as the Moto G and this should provide all day usage from a single charge.

In the hands, the U9Z1T feels quite solid and its appearance reminds us of the BlackBerry Z10 especially with its clean boxy look with rounded corners and a striking white piece at the bottom. The capacitive buttons right below the screen and the off-set position of its micro-USB charging port below resembles closely with last year’s HTC One M7. Overall we quite like the design and it feels like a more expensive product. The removable back cover has a matte feel to it and it doesn’t look cheap with a slight pearl white finishing to it. Using the U9Z1T in a single hand shouldn’t be a problem as they have placed the power button on the right while the volume rocker is placed on the left.

The operating system is something refreshing as it uses a custom NQ Live launcher that’s running on top of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. It has a flat icon design and the default theme features darker colours with skinny fonts to emphasize the sharpness of its 720p HD display. The home screen effects are endless and there’s a whole range of transition effects to go crazy with. As standard, it gets its own set of phone optimisation utilities including security and privacy features.

Would we recommend it? It is a decent device with a sturdy build quality which is the best we’ve seen from Ninetology. However if you look at the marketplace, consumers are spoilt with a wide choice of affordable high-spec devices like the Xiaomi Mi 3 at RM769. The established players have also released affordable 4G LTE smart phones like the Xperia M2 and Desire 610 albeit they have smaller screens with lower display resolution. If the U9Z1T was launched 3 months ago, this would probably be a no brainer purchase.