The WORST Product I've ever LOVED - Nubia Alpha Wrist-phone
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
1,983 words · ~9 min read
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Every generation or so, someone reinvents the computer.
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In the late 70s and early 80s,
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they got small enough to fit on a desk.
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By the 90s, we could fit them in our laps.
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And for the last 11 years,
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the dominant personal computers have been the ones
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that we all carry around in our pockets,
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which I guess means we're kind of overdue for a change,
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yeah?
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Introducing the Nubia Alpha,
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the wrist phone with a giant, flexible OLED display
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that wraps around your wrist.
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This might be the worst product
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that I have ever fallen in love with.
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And let me tell you why.
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Voting on the builds.gg stock cooling showdown is open.
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So head over to the two contest pages,
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vote for your favorite entered builds,
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and earn ballots towards a random draw
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for awesome hardware prizes.
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We're gonna have that linked below.
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Let's begin with the promotional materials, shall we?
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What does Nubia imagine that the Alpha is?
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Okay, we got a clock theme going on here.
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This guy's talking on the phone.
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Ooh, so many functions.
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Thanks to the larger screen and wow, video chat.
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Ho ho!
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So that looks pretty good.
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And you know what?
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I don't even think they're that far off.
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Flexible displays have been a long time coming.
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And now that they're finally reaching
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the point of commercialization,
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I really think that they're one of the best hopes
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for wearable technology
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to really take off, because if you think about it,
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up until now, the vast majority of smart wearables
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have been limited to the same sizes and configurations
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of the previous dumb wearables, like watches and glasses,
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because they're made of fundamentally
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the same metal and glass materials.
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So that puts restrictions on their designs
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that can affect everything from their battery life
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to their screen size, and even the ways
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that we can interface with them.
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So it's this last one that I'm gonna address first
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on the Alpha.
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So right now, I'm enabling a feature
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that they call Alpha Gesture.
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What it essentially does is allow you to navigate
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through the functions and menus
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without actually touching the screen.
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So it's similar to some of the hand wavy controls
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that are present on some cars,
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except that it's implemented on a device
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that by its very definition is always close enough
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that you could easily reach out
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and touch it.
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So I'm gonna go ahead and turn that off.
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And also, it didn't work consistently at all.
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With it enabled, sometimes I'd touch it,
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and then it would actually activate twice,
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once for the touch and once for the Alpha Gesture.
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For now, the thing that I like about it
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is that it's a preview of what's to come
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with like holographic displays that you can wear
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on your wrist and interact with in 3D space.
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That's gonna be pretty cool.
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Now I wanna talk about the size.
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So, yeah.
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It still goes on your wrist
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like a regular watch or a smartwatch,
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but there were a handful of things
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that immediately stood out to me,
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starting with how much information
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could be present on the screen at one time.
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Now, at four inches and quite narrow,
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the screen is not exactly panoramic,
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but it's way bigger than any other smartwatch
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that I've ever used.
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And unlike a desktop monitor
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where I've yet to find a super wide display
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that I don't like,
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this is an application where more height
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actually kind of makes more sense to me.
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So, if a text or an email were to come in,
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I don't necessarily need a bunch of extraneous space
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on the side.
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I wanna have as much of the content as possible
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right in my field of view,
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and a longer display lets me read the average text
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or even a short email without any scrolling required.
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Or, I mean, at least it would have,
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if this thing managed to stay paired to my phone
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for longer than a couple of hours at a time.
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But that shortfall actually reminds me
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of another thing I like about the interface.
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When I first put it on,
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I was trying to see something at the top of the display,
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and I found myself thinking,
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oh, gee, this is really not very comfortable.
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But you can actually adjust certain UI elements up or down
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depending on what's most ergonomic for you.
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I can kind of imagine a future then
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where my wraparound display is like positionally aware,
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and if I'm, you know, sitting at a desk,
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it could throw a discreet little notification up
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where only I can see it.
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I mean, that would be perfect for checking your text
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during a bad date or something like that.
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Now, in its current form,
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the, oh, shut up, Brandon.
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Now, in its current form,
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the Alpha falls well short of this mark,
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having no awareness of its position,
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and space other than detecting usually
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my check the time gesture
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and mostly forgetting where I left things
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and not even allowing some key UI elements
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to be moved around like entering Wi-Fi passwords.
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So this is again, something that I can kind of see
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where they're going with,
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even if the experience isn't there now.
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On the top of the experience,
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the experience of wearing the Alpha
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is really something that's gonna depend heavily on the user.
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So it can be easily resized
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by removing links from either both or one side.
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It was a touch big on me even at its smallest size though.
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So that's something to be aware of.
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And it's a little on the bulky side,
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but still lower profile than other multifunction smartwatches
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that I've worn daily in the past,
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like the Casio ProTrek.
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And I didn't have any trouble getting sleeves
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on and off around it.
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Now the always on display functionality,
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I'm always harping on smartwatches that don't have it.
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Well, it's not enabled at this time,
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but while it is still useful,
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using an older Snapdragon 2100 processor,
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not very power efficient,
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I do actually believe them
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when they say they will turn that back on in the future.
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Since after one really buggy day,
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when it died in like four hours,
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I've actually regularly gotten
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more than a day's worth of battery out of the Alpha.
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The standout thing for me about wearing it
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is definitely its value as a conversation starter.
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Thanks to its large wraparound screen,
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it's an attention grabber
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that looks more like a cool prop out of a sci-fi movie
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than something that you can actually go to a store
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and buy today.
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Personally, I love it.
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I think it looks super cool,
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but I've had others, even here on staff,
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where we're all admittedly a bunch of nerds,
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suggest that giving these to high school kids
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would cause teen pregnancy rates to plummet.
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I'm pretty sure that if 30% of high schoolers
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were wearing that,
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you would have teen pregnancy just plummet.
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Haters gonna hate, I guess,
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but I think the future really is,
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the Alpha has a lot of potential
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in terms of having these large wearable screens like this one,
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and the key word here is future.
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The Alpha does not do a great job
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of using its large screen real estate overall.
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The default watch face dedicates a shocking amount of space
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to function toggles with the bottom occupied
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by some recent apps that frankly,
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I think are just as easy to access
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by simply swiping to the side,
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few there are but the thing is that's hardly even the biggest problem with the
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Alpha. You'll find that right in the name. I can only guess they called it the
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Alpha because it hadn't got to the point where they were comfortable calling it
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Beta yet. The vibration motor is among the worst I've encountered this decade
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making it feel more like it's trying to escape from your wrist than Apple's
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tight purposeful haptic feedback. Multiple notifications from a single app
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aside from just piling on and making that noise you heard earlier will in
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some cases actually remove the first notification. So if someone sends you a
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joke in Hangouts followed by lol or an emoji or something you'll actually have
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to pull out your phone to find out what was so darn funny. There's no way at this
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time to handle media control for third-party apps so you can copy music
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files over to your watch and listen to them directly from there over like
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Bluetooth headphones but that's it.
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you
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the ringtone cannot be adjusted a feature that's been a given for a couple
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of decades now it's got this whole entire part of the interface that's
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dedicated to all these exercises that can track free workout and heart rate
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and outdoor running and all that stuff but with this glitch that registered my
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daily steps that negative 60,000 I don't know how seriously I'm gonna be taking
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any of that and finally while I'm nitpicking the camera kind of sucks
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you
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but newbie is justification for it existing at all is video chat there's
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only one small problem how is this more ergonomic than this I mean if they're
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pitching this with eSIM support in China currently as a full-on replacement for a
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phone I think the point is there is clearly a lot of work to do but I do see
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the vision with WeChat Alipay and a few other key apps someone with full support
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in China could take calls pay for their groceries and navigate around town
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without ever needing to take a phone out it's just that the experiences far too
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buggy to be ready for primetime in fact if I had a dollar for every time I saw
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this crash message over the last couple of weeks I could probably just buy
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myself a cheap phone but I guess that's the nature of the beast with these first
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concept that somehow made its way to a store shelf type products and even if I'm
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not gonna be daily driving to the store in this case I'm gonna be driving in a
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driving this thing anytime soon,
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I'm really glad that Nubia sent it over to me
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because it was certainly worth having the experience.
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The Massdrop Koss Porta Pro X headphones
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are actually based on the original 1984 Koss design.
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They've been updated to make them more modern and durable,
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but they're portable, they're on-ear,
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and they can be folded up in different configurations
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for easy storage.
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They feature oxygen-free copper voice coils
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that provide a wide frequency response
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and warm and smooth sound.
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The single-button control lets you skip tracks,
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make calls, and activate voice commands,
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and they've got a noise-canceling mic
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with Koss's lifetime warranty.
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So why don't you join the drop today
10:52
at the link in the video description?
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So thanks for watching, guys.
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If this video sucked, you know what to do,
10:58
but if it was awesome, get subscribed,
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hit that like button, or check out the link
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to where to buy the stuff we featured
11:03
in the video description.
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Also down there is our merch store,
11:06
which has cool shirts like, aw, Rip T-Bow.
11:09
It's got cool shirts and our community forum,
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which you should totally join.
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We'll see you next time.