Nubia Z80 Ultra Review: A Street Photography and Gaming Powerhouse

What Do Young People Love Doing Most on Their Phones? For most young people today, taking photos and playing games are absolute essentials. These two tasks are also the most performance-demanding, making it no small feat to excel at both. Typically, mainstream flagship camera phones fall short of gaming phones in terms of performance, while performance-oriented gaming phones often compromise on imaging quality. So, is it possible to have the best of both worlds?

The newly launched Nubia Z80 Ultra, marketed as a “street photography gaming phone,” claims to deliver excellence in both imaging and gaming performance. Could it truly live up to its slogan? Naturally, I had to try it myself to find out whether it’s as powerful as advertised.

Imaging: Professional-Level Dual Lenses – 35mm + 18mm

Nubia has long focused on the niche of humanistic photography, and its signature 35mm “Humanistic Eye” custom optics remain a defining feature. Recognized by photographers as the “golden focal length,” the 35mm lens continues to be the core imaging configuration of Nubia’s flagship camera phones.

The main camera features the Neo Master 5th-generation native 35mm custom optical lens, supporting 50MP resolution. It’s equipped with a 1/1.3-inch Light and Shadow Master 990 custom flagship sensor, 1.2μm large pixels, and an F1.7 large aperture, supporting DCG HDR technology and OIS optical stabilization.

The second lens is a 50MP 18mm ultra-wide main camera with a 1/1.55-inch sensor, F1.8 aperture, and a 100° field of view, supporting AF autofocus and 1.0μm large pixels, allowing macro shots at 5.5cm.

The third lens is a 64MP periscope telephoto lens, with a 1/2-inch sensor, F2.48 aperture, and OIS optical stabilization, supporting telephoto macro shooting at 15cm.

The 35mm focal length is closest to the human eye’s natural field of view. Photos at this distance capture enough environmental detail without the distortion typical of wide angles, creating more balanced subject-to-background proportions. The Z80 Ultra’s red-ring-certified lens achieves precise composition with 78% reduced edge distortion, rendering visuals closer to real human perception.

Why Not a 1-Inch Sensor?

You might ask: if the Nubia Z80 Ultra is a flagship camera phone, why doesn’t it have a 1-inch sensor like other Ultra models?

To answer that, I compared it with two other 1-inch, 50MP flagship camera phones. Their main lenses are 23mm, meaning they need to zoom to 1.5x to achieve the same framing as Nubia’s 35mm lens. When shooting in 50MP mode, their focal length becomes fixed—either 1x or around 3x—so they can’t directly output native 50MP photos at 35mm. To simulate the human-eye perspective, they must crop post-shot, reducing the resolution to 23MP.

By contrast, the Z80 Ultra can output native 50MP photos at 35mm, resulting in significantly sharper, more detailed images at the same framing.

Real-World Shooting Experience

When men take photos of women, they often focus on lighting, angles, and atmosphere, while women tend to zoom in to check details like the face, eyes, or hair. In such cases, the Z80 Ultra’s 50MP native 35mm output keeps everything crisp even when zoomed in.

Most flagship phones neglect the wide-angle lens, but Nubia’s 18mm wide-angle uses a large sensor and high pixel count. It offers impressive tension and perspective control, producing clean, distortion-free images. Its dynamic depth and large sensor make street photography vivid and easy to capture.

The 64MP periscope telephoto with an 85mm focal length excels at detail capture and natural light rendering. Backed by a generative AI model, images are clear, low-noise, and full of depth.

Photography Experience and AI Features

The Nubia Z80 Ultra includes a dedicated physical shutter button. When the screen is off or idle, long-pressing it launches the camera instantly—perfect for street or candid shots. In the camera interface, half-press focuses, full-press captures, and long-press enables burst mode. It can also be customized as a shortcut key to open shooting modes or trigger instant shooting.

For photography enthusiasts, clarity isn’t everything—atmosphere matters too. The Z80 Ultra includes 99 filters in five street-style categories, allowing diverse artistic expressions.

Professional users can manually adjust color temperature, saturation, and lighting to create their own visual styles. Meanwhile, AI-assisted shooting helps even amateurs capture professional-level photos:

• Pose Recommendation automatically suggests portrait templates and matches framing/focal length.

• Aesthetic Composition provides real-time visual guides with circular markers for optimal framing.

• Inspiration Filters automatically detect the scene and recommend suitable filters.

• Magic Suggestion offers text-based photography tips like a built-in mentor.

• Voice Guide provides spoken shooting instructions.

• AI Bokeh offers four background effects for fun or romantic portraits.

Performance: “Born to Play”

As expected from its “shoot and play” slogan, the Z80 Ultra packs top-tier hardware. It features the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Edition, LPDDR5X RAM, and UFS 4.1 storage—forming the ultimate performance trio. With an AnTuTu score exceeding 3.83 million, it truly deserves the title of performance flagship.

Its 7200mAh 4th-gen Nanhai battery lasted 11 hours and 3 minutes under continuous mixed use, suggesting nearly 14 hours of total runtime—outstanding endurance among flagships. Paired with 90W fast charging, it goes from 5% to 20% in 5 minutes, 50% in 19 minutes, and fully charged in 51 minutes.

Beyond typical flagship specs, the Z80 Ultra integrates Red Magic’s professional gaming engine, optimizing frame rate, temperature, and power consumption.

It supports:

• 90Hz ray tracing in Arena Breakout

• 144Hz refresh rate in Delta Action

• 144Hz refresh rate in League of Legends Mobile

For a gaming phone, touch response is key. The new Synaptics touch chip boosts initial touch response by 20% and micro-control precision by 20%, supporting wet-hand and glove operation.

Display and AIOS 2 Interaction

Nubia remains the only brand delivering a true full-screen phone with a seamless, hole-free design for complete visual immersion. Its 6.85-inch Sky Full-Screen features a 1.5K AMOLED flat flexible panel, X10 under-display emitter, 144Hz refresh rate, and 3000Hz touch sampling rate.

Paired with Qualcomm’s co-tuned Ultra-Clear Visual Engine, the Z80 Ultra provides a deeply immersive gaming experience.

Its Nebula AIOS 2 enables intuitive multimodal interaction:

• Ask AI questions directly about on-screen content.

• Use AI-assisted search within camera preview.

• Interact between real-world scenes and the AI camera view.

Conclusion

The Nubia Z80 Ultra demonstrates remarkable breakthroughs in imaging and performance. With its exclusive 35mm + 18mm street photography dual-lens system, native 50MP high-resolution output, and AI-assisted creative tools, it excels in both portrait and landscape photography. Gamers, on the other hand, enjoy flagship-grade performance with stable frame rates and precise touch control.

Whether for photography or gaming, the Nubia Z80 Ultra delivers an all-around experience—a true “street photography gaming powerhouse.”