This phone was made for the worst person you know

Have you ever wished that the annoying person playing music out loud on public transit would only turn the volume up a little? Then oh boy, has Nubia made the phone for you.

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The Nubia Music, unveiled this week at MWC 2024 in Barcelona, is all about audio. But the company hasn’t gotten there through boring, nerdy features like advanced audio codec support or built-in DAC features.

No, instead the phone takes the brute force approach: Nubia claims its speakers are 600% louder than the averageAndroid phone. It wants you to know about it too, slapping a huge rear speaker right into the rear camera module, complete with a bright red DTS X logo just to make sure you don’t miss it. The phone also supports “Various Breathing Light Effects for More Musical Fun.” I bet your Samsung doesn’t dothat.

The over-sized rear speaker is helped by what Nubia calls an “AI extreme volume algorithm,” though it’s not clear what role artificial intelligence plays in turning the volume up to 11.

In person, the effect is… tinny. Just like you’d expect from someone taking a smartphone and cranking the volume up 600%, funnily enough. Itisloud though. Even competing with the din of the MWC showfloor, the Music was capable of annoying every journalist and YouTuber I saw approach Nubia’s stand with its looping music clip — to the extent that one member of Nubia’s team seemed to spend most of their time undoing our efforts to surreptitiously hit pause.

When you’re fed up of contributing to the local noise pollution, Nubia has you covered too: the Music packs not one but two 3.5mm headphone jacks so that you and a friend can huddle round the phone together for a private silent disco without having to share your earbuds.

Nubia hasn’t said much more about the Music’s specs beyond highlighting a 5,000mAh battery, presumably needed to drive the speaker. Nor do we know exactly when or where the $149 phone will launch, but it’s a safe bet that you won’t see it in the US.