I’m sure not many people remember that ZTE showcased a bracelet-phone at IFA 2018, but they did. It was a concept device dubbed Nubia Alpha, that comes back today, via an invite sent by ZTE for MWC 2019. They’ll showcase the flexible phone there, on February 25th.
Nubia released a poster for MWC over the past week, showcasing that very same device. The renders show a sort of flexible metal bracelet, that can be both a phone and watch. It has bulges on the side, on the right housing the camera and on the left housing a button. There’s also a port on the left side for the data transfer and contact pins below for charging.
Nubia promoted this as a fitness device and seems to have implemented a vertical UI here, but we have no guarantee there’s any trace of Android here. We’ll learn more on February 25th, at 6 PM. The product has a flexible OLED screen, a body made of flexible metal and there’s a pulse sensor in the mix too. The UI is based on vertical scrolling.
Back at IFA 2018 the device was kept in a glass cube, so people couldn’t touch it. It was just a prototype and seemed far from the real thing. The MWC 2019 may be a commercial version, maybe bigger, closer to a foldable phone. It should have an eSIM in the mix.
