360 Mobiles had a big day today as the company
announced the successor to the 360 N5 model that was released just a few months
back. The new model, called the 360 N5S, comes with pretty good upgrades as
compared to the earlier generation model. The company seems to have given
priority to the design and the front camera in this new version, which makes it
a great overall mid-ranger.
The 360 N5S ditches the
traditional all-metal body in favor of 2.5D curved glass. So, you have 2.5D
glass on both the front as well as the back with an aluminum alloy frame to
keep things sturdy. Note that the back of the N5S has a mirror line finish
which makes it look a lot like the Honor 8. The phone comes in Blue as well as
Black colors and there’s a good chance that you might confuse the N5S with the
Honor 8, especially its blue color edition. The fingerprint also lies on the
back of the phone.
So, the phone is similar to the dimensions of its
previous generation model but with a thinner 8mm body. However, the phone’s
weight has increased significantly, as it weighs 170 grams, much higher than
the metal clad 360 N5′ 156-gram weight. The buttons also have a textured
pattern to make sure that you can easily find it.
360 N5 was a pretty powerful mid-ranger. The company
has made a smart decision to keep most of the basic hardware intact, which means
the 360 N5S specs include the same Snapdragon 653 octa-core chip, 6GB of RAM,
64GB of internal storage and MicroSD expansion slot that support up to 128GB.
There’s a standard 5.5-inch 1080p panel on board.
Now note that for some reason, probably to keep the
weight and thickness lower, the 360 N5S comes with a smaller, 3730 mAh battery
on board. The previous generation model had a 4000 mAh battery, so cutting down
the battery capacity, even by a small figure isn’t something that we would have
liked to see. However, the company claims that you still get 1.5 days of usage
from the device. Further, the phone supports 9V / 2A fast charging, which
should give you about 45% charge in 30 minutes. That’s pretty good.
The front camera has received the biggest upgrade,
now featuring a dual camera setup. The front setup is a combination of a 13MP
CMOS Samsung sensor with f/2.0 aperture and a 2MP secondary sensor with f/2.4
aperture. The secondary sensor is responsible for additional depth of field
data to ensure you can capture good looking selfies with background blur. The
presence of PDAF (0.1s focus) on the front camera setup should further ensure a
clear and focused shot.
Coming to the rear camera, the 360 N5S comes with a
standard 13MP f/2.0 sensor. It’s same rear sensor as the N5 model. So, the
setup supports 4K as well as 1080p videos.
On the software side, the 360 N5S comes with 360 OS
2.0 UI which is based on Android 7.1 Nougat. The company seems to be focused on
making the UI as clutter free and simple as possible. So, the new OS omits
unwanted apps and brings features such as split screen multi-tasking (with
transform / drag drop), multiple apps (open 2 copies of the same app) etc.
The phone comes with a notification light as well.
Now, you’ll see a Nubia-like red circle on the phone’s home button, which is
also a breathing notification light.
The phone will go on sale on June 2 on the official
i360Mall in China for 1699 Yuan (US$ 247). There seems to be just one memory
version 6GB RAM + 64GB ROM and two color options: blue and black.