The nubia Z60S Pro is strikingly similar to last year’s Z50S Pro model, so we focused on some key tests to see if something changed.
The two devices are basically the same. nubia introduced some minor tweaks to the main 35mm camera of the phone, with the Z60S Pro featuring a slightly larger sensor. The manufacturer is also adding new AI features, including Magic Eraser, a star sky algorithm and a 65:24 ultra-wide cinema format.
Hardware-wise, there is just another relatively small difference between the two devices – the chipset. It turns out that for whatever reason, the newer Z60S Pro gets a slightly older Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (the higher-clocked “AC” version) instead of the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 (again “AC” version) inside the Z50S Pro. The difference between the two chips is relatively minor and is mostly limited to a higher GPU clock speed on the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2. This results in some minor performance differences in favor of the Z50S Pro, which is almost exclusively noticeable in synthetic benchmarks.
Still, we were also left wondering how the chipset swap would affect battery life. The two phones have the same 5,100 mAh battery packs, which, combined with the relatively small chipset difference and essentially identical 6.8-inch 120Hz AMOLED displays, would suggest very little difference in Active Use Score. Indeed, after some rather extensive concurrent battery testing on both phones, just to verify our numbers, we found that the two have very similar endurance.
Interestingly enough, besides having a slight performance edge, the older nubia Z50S Pro also has a slight advantage in battery endurance mostly due to better call times. Perhaps Qualcomm tweaked the modem’s behavior inside the chipset a bit for the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2, or the tweaking was on nubia’s part. Regardless, the actual difference in endurance numbers is rather insignificant.
