The Primary Attraction of This Phone Isn’t Its Unusually Affordable Cost
A secondary OLED placed on the rear, availability in the U.S., and a price tag below $200 is quite absurd.
If the Nuu name is unfamiliar to you, there’s no need for concern. The company, based in Houston, Texas, typically releases modest phones at extremely low prices, focusing on a market that’s relatively neglected in the United States. However, this time, Nuu is making waves and presenting something genuinely… fresh (get it?)… within this price category.
The Nuu B40 5G is a $299 device sporting dual AMOLED displays. The 120Hz 6.7-inch front display meets expectations and looks great, but the real highlight is the 1.6-inch “Vista Display” located on the rear, which showcases the phone’s true trick.
It bears a passing similarity to the new Xiaomi 17, yet is priced considerably lower, with an official listing on Amazon expected later in November. Currently, you can register for the early access promotion at Nuumobile.com and receive a $100 discount in celebration of the launch until November 3. This means you can snag this device for just $199 if you purchase it now. Here’s what to look forward to.
Nuu perspectives
The design of the Nuu B40 5G resembles many phones released during the Galaxy S8 period. It features curved glass on the front and a curved plastic back that merges with the plastic frame. The company has done a commendable job making the back feel more like glass, while the sides have a matte aluminum texture that looks more upscale than it may actually be.
The highlight is the new 1.6-inch display situated within the camera module on the back, flanking the dual 64MP camera sensors. You can bring the display to life by double-tapping and scrolling through the available cards for various actions.
There is essentially a “homescreen” that presents 10 different designs, each featuring a digital or analog clock. Some designs also incorporate a pedometer, the date and day, or a battery percentage gauge.
Notifications are delivered directly here, providing smartwatch-like glanceable data that you can easily view if you prefer keeping your phone face down on a surface. Swiping through the card stack reveals a compass, music player, and camera. While there don’t seem to be any extra options currently, Nuu may introduce more in a future update.
The camera function enables users to efficiently utilize the main rear camera as a selfie camera, offering superior hardware compared to the front-facing one. By the way, that secondary rear camera is merely a 2MP macro camera, which doesn’t offer a means to switch to it using the smaller Vista Display, which is fine by me. In the meantime, the primary camera is clearly visible even on the tiny display, making it a solid option for capturing group shots with slightly enhanced quality.
Regarding Nuu’s software, it’s as simple as you could hope for, featuring a very AOSP-like version of Android 15 with a few additional features layered on top. All the expected elements of a “pure” Android experience are present, and there are no preinstalled bloatware apps; just the Nuu app that connects you to Nuu’s customer support and warranty information, if needed.
The overall experience is impressively quick, given the phone’s surprising price point. Games like Minecraft run smoothly and actually look quite appealing, thanks to the 394 PPI resolution density of the display.
Geekbench 6 scores of 959 for single-core and 2304 for multi-core place it roughly on par with the Samsung Galaxy A54, which is priced around $250 nowadays.
That 6.7-inch AMOLED display employs DC dimming above 30% brightness and 720Hz PWM dimming below that. Most of the other AMOLED-equipped phones from the company feature a 1920Hz PWM rate, so the 720Hz is somewhat disappointing, but the display is significantly more eye-friendly than any Samsung Galaxy phone available on the market.
At $299, I’m uncertain if the rear display’s additional functionality justifies choosing it over a competing Samsung Galaxy phone, particularly considering the expectation that this phone might receive only one major Android update (to Android 16).
However, at $199, this phone is a bargain, and I would readily recommend obtaining at least one as an excellent backup device or as a fantastic first phone for your children.
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