I tried one of the strangest Android phones ever and it was a breath of fresh air

It's fair to say that no one will mistake the Nubia Z70 Ultra for an or Galaxy device.

Even without Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting 'Starry Night' adorning the entire back of the special edition model I've been testing for the past few weeks, this large, stark smartphone stands out with a bold and unashamedly monolithic design.

But with the addition of the artwork on the back the Z70 Ultra, which is , is one of the strangest but most compellingly different phones I've ever tried out in almost a decade of reviewing phones, and for that I am grateful to it.

In 2025, the , and all look very similar with flat edges, flat screens, rounded corners and double or triple cameras on the back. In the case of Samsung, three tiny camera lenses try desperately to hide any sign of personality as we hurtle towards a future of truly homogenous smartphone design.

Not so with the Z70 Ultra. Its cameras are the opposite of subtle, with three lenses of different shapes and sizes on an enormous raised rectangular section. At first look, the phone feels haphazardly slapped together, and with Van Gogh's swirls on the back I was almost a little embarrassed to pull it out in public.

But once I started using the phone I came to appreciate both its bold "I don't care" design and its very accomplished camera setup. Not only that, its selfie camera is of the lesser-spotted hidden variety, but it does a better job than the pitiful one on the . The tech works by using pixels in the display to hide the lens that sits underneath the display, with the pixels fading away when the camera is needed.

The quality is not great but it's fine for video calls, and it means when you aren't using it, the display is one of those rare things on phones: completely uninterrupted.

The main camera lens is a 50MP sensor, but what sets it apart from the majority of phones is its focal length. As Basil Kronfli expertly over on Digital Camera World, phones generally have a main lens focal length of 23mm, but the Z70 Ultra opts for 35mm. This results in a more cropped image and a narrower field of view.

We've all got used to 23mm, but how many times have you snapped a photo of your mates and thought they look a bit lost in the frame so you have to take some steps forward to get closer? With the Z70 Ultra's 35mm lens, you're already cropped in that bit closer like you would be with many traditional cameras.

Not only that, the lens has a variable aperture that means it has physically moving parts, just like a real camera, that change the amount of light let into the lens. You can adjust it between f/1.4 and f/4.0 for more granular control over the look of your shots.

The former gives you a shallower depth of field while the latter does the opposite. In practice, with a sensor size less than an inch, you won't notice too much difference, but it's amazing to have so much versatility on a phone. A similar lens can be found on the .

Alongside the main camera is a 50MP ultra-wide with 13mm focal length. This can then punch in to 24mm to give you a focal length roughly what your current phone uses as standard. All these millimetre measurements are a little abstract, but in practice it makes the Z70 Ultra incredibly fun to shoot with, especially as it has a proper two-stage shutter button on the edge that's far better and simpler than the Camera Control button on the iPhone 16 series.

Add to that a 64MP telephoto with 70mm focal length and 2.7x optical zoom with optical image stabilisation - not a given for telephoto lenses on phones - and this is a very complete mobile photography package.

Given the costs £1,299, it's remarkable that Nubia is only charging £769 for the Starry Night Z70 Ultra. For £30 less than the iPhone 16 you are getting far superior cameras and 16GB RAM with 512GB storage. It even runs the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset found on the Xiaomi, and .

Corners have been cut though. Along with the bad quality selfie camera, there's no wireless charging. Then again, there's a charger in the box and the 6,150mAh battery is absolutely enormous. Nubia also doesn't state how long it'll send software updates to the Z70 Ultra, which is worrying as the company's track record is poor on this front, so don't expect updates beyond two or three years.

The software, which is called Nebula AIOS, runs on Android 15 but it's pretty unpolished, with a plain appearance and little flair. Then again, its simplicity is somewhat welcome after using the good but very cluttered Samsung One UI recently, and when the Z70 Ultra is basically a pocket camera it's nice that the software keeps out the way.

You also can't add the Discover feed a swipe away from the home screen, which you might see as a bug but I see as a feature. I've lost too many hours to mindlessly scrolling that feed, so its absence here is appreciated.

The Z70 Ultra is not a phone for the masses. It's a loudly designed, bold slab of camera tech with a phone attached, and with the Starry Night version, it's one of the strangest looking phones I've ever tested. It's rough around the edges.

But the quality of the cameras paired with the top-end specs and reasonable price make for a compelling smartphone option if you want a phone you'll never see anyone else with - and one everyone will ask you about.

You can from Nubia's UK website.