It doesn't fold or flip or bend — but this new Android is the wildest-looking phone I've seen all year, and it's on sale now

We live in the future of varied smartphones. Some phones let you build themselves with modular components, you can make phone calls with a device tied across your wrist, and foldable phones are becoming relatively commonplace.

Yet the phone that's most thoroughly smacked my gob recently doesn't expand like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, close down like the Motorola Razr or unfurl as the accordion-like bifolding Galaxy Z TriFold does.

Nope. The ZTE Nubia Z80 Ultra is your average, chocolate-bar-style smartphone. It has a front and back and never the two shall meet.

But, as the images have no doubt already spoiled, it has a pretty wild design flair which makes it stand out from the pack.

When it appeared out of the corner of my eye at MWC 2026, I knew I had to get to know it.

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ZTE's precedent of weird phones

It's not all (Red)Magic

I visited ZTE's stall at MWC because of precedent: the Chinese brand, little-known in the west outside its RedMagic gaming phones, has a habit of making odd mobiles.

What immediately springs to mind is the Nubia Z20, a fairly affordable mid-range Android which had a screen on either side (before Xiaomi was slapping mini-displays on the rear of its devices like they were going out of style).

It sounds like a novelty, but it was actually quite handy. I remember pinning documents like flight boarding passes or cinema tickets onto the rear, so I could easily summon them by flipping the device.

Not all of ZTE's experiments bear such fruit. I also tested the Nubia Alpha, which was ostensibly a wrist-mounted smartphone, but it was hugely chunky and just didn't work well.

But as a phone journalist who sees countless mobiles every year, I still appreciate the novelty of a wild mobile with something new to offer, which is why I checked out the company's MWC booth looking for a winner.

Perhaps I should've found it in the company's first folding phone, its third flipping phone, the suave Neo 5 GT gaming phone, or its compact Astro gaming tablet. But it was hard to pay attention to any of these when Van Gogh was staring at me.

Meet the ZTE Nubia Z80 Ultra Starry Night

Starry-crossed lovers

ZTE's "normal" phone at MWC was the Z80 Ultra, its recent flagship (no, there's no non-Ultra version; how dare you ask?) which was released at the tail end of 2025.

It's a pretty impressive device, coming from a company which often offers solid-spec phones that don't always work as well as you'd expect.

I'm talking a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, 7,200mAh battery, 80W wired and wireless charging, three rear cameras (50MP main, 50MP ultrawide, 64MP periscope at 2.7x zoom), under-display front camera, 6.85-inch AMOLED screen, and IP68/69 protection rating.

But as well as coming in white and black models, there's a third color option: Starry Night. The handset says "Designed by Nubia" on the back, but this was very clearly inspired by the Vincent van Gogh painting of the same name.

This version of the phone is bedecked in swirling galaxies, like in van Gogh's famous canvas, with several on the rear and another obstructed by the main camera lens.

I appreciate how the design extends all the way to the edges of the phone, not being capped at one specific back area, and has plenty of details with flecked pain-like silver streaks and dotted constellations.

The phone also glistens in the light as you move it from side to side. This seems to be thanks to a reflective coating, rather than from any of the painterly elements themselves.

But it's still a neat touch, and I spent longer than I'd care to admit letting this pattern dance in my hands.

But is the Nubia Z80 Ultra worth buying?

Van Gogh to the shops?

I was captivated by the look of the ZTE Nubia Z80 Ultra. It's the kind of thing I'd love to take for a spin, put down on a table at a bar and see everyone's eyebrows raise. Such a reaction is one of my favorite things about testing tech.

But is it actually a phone worth putting money down for? It costs $829 for its sole 16GB RAM, 512GB storage configuration, so it's not cheap (though it undercuts similar-spec flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra).

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If you're the kind of person who clads their phone in a case to protect it, the Starry Night phone might not be worth picking up. ZTE sells phone cases to emulate the design which you could just buy instead.

The Z70 Ultra also had a Starry Night model, so maybe you could acquire that cheaper device instead.

I'll confess that I didn't test it for a full review. I just picked it up at MWC and played around with it. But when I've used ZTE phones in the past, they often had stellar hardware but failed to tie together the experience with useful software or features.

No matter how many megapixels a phone camera works, if the app is janky or post-processing doesn't fix a picture much, it's hard to recommend.

They often tend to be blocky to hold, and ZTE's insistence on using under-display selfie cameras means self-portraits are often a little muted.

But when it first came out, Android Police's tester commented on how impressed they were with the device, so maybe it's a winner.

If you're tired of the old "Samsung or Apple" dichotomy, it's certainly a third option worth considering. It's on sale now, through Nubia's website.

Nubia Z80 Ultra

SoC
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5
Display type
AMOLED
Display dimensions
6.85-inch
Display resolution
1216 x 2688

Battery
7,200mAh
Charge speed
80W
Front camera
16MP
Main Camera
50MP
Wide-Angle Camera
50MP
Telephoto
64MP (2.7x)
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