 What's up everybody, John Porter here from The Verge. We're checking out the Nubia Alpha. It looks a lot like a smartwatch, but it's a little different from what you'd come to expect. Rather than scaling everything down to a tiny smartwatch screen, what Nubia's actually tried to do is attempt to pack the entire smartphone experience into something that's small enough to fit onto your wrist. Have they succeeded? Let's find out. Now the key to making this work involves a couple of things. The first one you've probably already noticed is this screen. It's absolutely massive. It's a four-inch display and it goes further than any ultrawide I've ever seen. I kind of worked it out and it looks like it's got an aspect ratio of about 5 to 1. That's a resolution of 960 to 192 pixels. In addition to that, they've also put in what they're calling air gestures, where you can kind of wave your hand over the device and have that control. So they don't have to fill up the screen with quite a lot of air. Having a screen that big obviously presents a few difficulties. This thing is absolutely massive. It's got a stainless steel band, which means that it's quite heavy on the wrist. The screen is kind of curved around your wrist. And the nice thing about it is you can kind of swipe up and down to mean that the information is always pointed towards you at any one point in time. But then compared to an Apple Watch, where it's much easier just to turn your wrist towards you to see the comparatively small screen, I feel like it's maybe solving a problem for its own creation. You might not have heard of Nubia before. They're kind of a smaller Chinese manufacturer. It was originally a subsidiary of ZTE and they have made traditional phones. But kind of more recently, they've made these, let's call them statement pieces. There was a phone they did earlier this year, late last year, which had two screens. The idea being that like, you know, you can't just have a screen that's like, why put a notch on the front where you can just have a second screen on the back and just use the rear camera the entire time. And this seems like a similar kind of lateral thinking approach to the smartwatch problem. Now let's talk specs. This thing is packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100, which was actually Qualcomm's wearable chip from back in 2016. It's got one gigabyte of RAM and eight gigabytes of onboard storage. Now one thing this smartwatch, smartphone, phone, and smartphone, I'll work it out at some point. One thing that it has is a five megapixel camera, which not a lot of other wearables come with. And it's also on your wrist, which is a little bit weird, but it does mean you can film other people like that, so long as you don't get your finger in the way of the lens. So it's got this massive screen and then you can do lots of things with it. You could send messages, you can do voice calls. And then it defaults to this T9 dialer, which is lovely and retro and fun, but actually writing a longer message is something you'd have to practice. Now this will come in a couple of different colors and a couple of different versions. There's black and there's gold, which will pay a small price, premium fall. But the two different versions are actually quite interesting because as well as a Bluetooth version that pairs to your phone like a traditional smartwatch, there's also an eSIM version, which you'll be able to use as more of a standalone device. Now, if you want the Bluetooth model, that's going to set you 449 euros in Europe when it will be available from April. But if you want to hold out for the eSIM model, that's not coming to the West until Q3 and it will cost you an extra 100 euros. That'll be 549 euros. If you really want to splash out, you can go for the gold model, which also comes with eSIM functionality and will cost you 649 euros. And that will also be available in Q3. Over the past 12 months, we've seen some pretty interesting ideas about combining different form factors. We had Apple and Google kind of trying to combine elements of like the tablet and the laptop into one super device. And it's almost as though Nubia kind of looked at this and went, what can we combine? And decided that the smartwatch and the smartphone were kind of fair game. I mean, does anyone need this? Probably not. Does anyone want this? Maybe. But is it really cool? Yeah. Thank you so much for checking out the Nubia Alpha Smartwatch NWC 2019. Where we've also covered all of the biggest announcements. You can keep up with them by subscribing to us at youtube.com slash The Verge, or just reading about them on our website at theverge.com. See you guys.
 What's up everybody, John Porter here from The Verge.
 We're checking out the Nubia Alpha.
 It looks a lot like a smartwatch,
 but it's a little different from what you'd come to expect.
 Rather than scaling everything down to a tiny smartwatch screen,
 what Nubia's actually tried to do is attempt to pack the entire smartphone experience
 into something that's small enough to fit onto your wrist.
 Have they succeeded? Let's find out.
 Now the key to making this work involves a couple of things.
 The first one you've probably already noticed is this screen.
 It's absolutely massive. It's a four-inch display
 and it goes further than any ultrawide I've ever seen.
 I kind of worked it out and it looks like it's got an aspect ratio of about 5 to 1.
 That's a resolution of 960 to 192 pixels.
 In addition to that, they've also put in what they're calling air gestures,
 where you can kind of wave your hand over the device and have that control.
 So they don't have to fill up the screen with quite a lot of air.
 Having a screen that big obviously presents a few difficulties.
 This thing is absolutely massive. It's got a stainless steel band,
 which means that it's quite heavy on the wrist.
 The screen is kind of curved around your wrist.
 And the nice thing about it is you can kind of swipe up and down
 to mean that the information is always pointed towards you at any one point in time.
 But then compared to an Apple Watch, where it's much easier just to turn your wrist towards you
 to see the comparatively small screen,
 I feel like it's maybe solving a problem for its own creation.
 You might not have heard of Nubia before.
 They're kind of a smaller Chinese manufacturer.
 It was originally a subsidiary of ZTE and they have made traditional phones.
 But kind of more recently, they've made these, let's call them statement pieces.
 There was a phone they did earlier this year, late last year, which had two screens.
 The idea being that like, you know, you can't just have a screen that's like,
 why put a notch on the front where you can just have a second screen on the back
 and just use the rear camera the entire time.
 And this seems like a similar kind of lateral thinking approach to the smartwatch problem.
 Now let's talk specs.
 This thing is packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100,
 which was actually Qualcomm's wearable chip from back in 2016.
 It's got one gigabyte of RAM and eight gigabytes of onboard storage.
 Now one thing this smartwatch, smartphone, phone, and smartphone,
 I'll work it out at some point.
 One thing that it has is a five megapixel camera,
 which not a lot of other wearables come with.
 And it's also on your wrist, which is a little bit weird,
 but it does mean you can film other people like that,
 so long as you don't get your finger in the way of the lens.
 So it's got this massive screen and then you can do lots of things with it.
 You could send messages, you can do voice calls.
 And then it defaults to this T9 dialer, which is lovely and retro and fun,
 but actually writing a longer message is something you'd have to practice.
 Now this will come in a couple of different colors
 and a couple of different versions.
 There's black and there's gold, which will pay a small price, premium fall.
 But the two different versions are actually quite interesting
 because as well as a Bluetooth version
 that pairs to your phone like a traditional smartwatch,
 there's also an eSIM version,
 which you'll be able to use as more of a standalone device.
 Now, if you want the Bluetooth model,
 that's going to set you 449 euros in Europe
 when it will be available from April.
 But if you want to hold out for the eSIM model,
 that's not coming to the West until Q3 and it will cost you an extra 100 euros.
 That'll be 549 euros.
 If you really want to splash out, you can go for the gold model,
 which also comes with eSIM functionality and will cost you 649 euros.
 And that will also be available in Q3.
 Over the past 12 months,
 we've seen some pretty interesting ideas about combining different form factors.
 We had Apple and Google kind of trying to
 combine elements of like the tablet and the laptop into one super device.
 And it's almost as though Nubia kind of looked at this
 and went, what can we combine?
 And decided that the smartwatch and the smartphone were kind of fair game.
 I mean, does anyone need this?
 Probably not.
 Does anyone want this?
 Maybe.
 But is it really cool?
 Yeah.
 Thank you so much for checking out the Nubia Alpha Smartwatch NWC 2019.
 Where we've also covered all of the biggest announcements.
 You can keep up with them by subscribing to us at youtube.com slash The Verge,
 or just reading about them on our website at theverge.com.
 See you guys.