If you've never heard of the Nuu brand, don't feel bad. The Dallas, Texas-based company usually puts out unassuming phones at rock bottom prices, specializing in a market that's rather underserved here in the United States. But this time around, Nuu is shaking things up and delivering something truly... new (get it?)... for this price segment.
The Nuu B40 5G is a $299 phone with dual AMOLED displays. The 120Hz 6.7-inch display up front does what you expect and looks good doing it, but it's the 1.6-inch "Vista Display" on the back that holds the real parlor trick of this phone.
It sports a passing resemblance to the new Xiaomi 17, but at a significantly lower price and with an official Amazon listing coming later in November. For now, you can sign up for the early access promotion at Nuumobile.com and get $100 off in celebration of the launch until November 3. Yeah, that means this thing is just $199 if you buy it now. Here's what to expect.
Nuu horizons
The Nuu B40 5G's design looks like most phones that came out of the Galaxy S8 era. It's got curved glass on the front and a curved plastic back that tucks into the plastic frame. The company did a good job making the back feel more like glass than anything, and the sides feel like a sort of matte aluminum that appears more premium than it might actually be.
The star of the show is the new 1.6-inch display placed inside the camera island around the back, flanking the dual 64MP camera sensors. You can activate the display by double-tapping it and swiping through the available cards to perform actions.
In total, there's a "homescreen" of sorts that includes 10 different designs, all of which feature a digital or analog clock. Some designs also include a pedometer, the day and date, or a battery percentage indicator.
Notifications come straight through here and provide smartwatch-like glanceable information that you can easily see if you like to keep your phone face down on a table. Swiping through the stack of cards shows a compass, music player, and camera. There don't appear to be any additional options here, which is a little disappointing, but Nuu may add more in a future update.
The camera feature allows you to easily use the main rear camera as a selfie camera, giving you access to better camera hardware than the front-facing one. By the way, that secondary rear camera is a pretty useless 2MP macro camera. Nuu doesn't give a way to switch to it using the smaller Vista Display, which is fine by me. Meanwhile, the primary camera is easy to see even on the tiny display, making it a good way to capture group photos with slightly improved quality.
As for Nuu's software, it's about as unassuming as you could get, featuring a very AOSP-like build of Android 15 with a select few features added on top. Everything you would expect from a "pure" version of Android is here, and there aren't even any preinstalled bloat apps to speak of; just the Nuu app that gives you access to Nuu's customer support team and warranty info, should you need it.
Category |
Nuu B40 5G |
|---|---|
Primary display |
6.7-inch 120Hz AMOLED, FHD+ (1080 x 2400), 394 PPI |
Secondary display |
1.6-inch AMOLED |
OS |
Android 15 with Android Enterprise support |
Processor |
MediaTek Dimensity 7025 |
GPU |
PowerVR BXM-8-256 |
RAM |
8GB |
Storage |
256GB |
Battery |
5000mAh |
Charging |
33W wired |
Main rear camera |
64MP |
Secondary rear camera |
2MP macro |
Selfie camera |
16MP |
Connectivity |
5G (U.S. compatibility), Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 5.2, GPS, Dual physical SIM |
Dimensions |
162.4 x 73.9 x 8.4mm |
The experience is impressively snappy, given the surprising price tag of the phone. Games like Minecraft run just fine, and actually look quite good thanks to the 394 PPI resolution density of the display.
Geekbench 6 scores of 959 single-core and 2304 multi-core put it about on par with the Samsung Galaxy A54, which sells for around $250 these days.
That 6.7-inch AMOLED display uses DC dimming above 30% brightness and 720Hz PWM dimming below that. Most of the company's other AMOLED-equipped phones use a 1920Hz PWM rate, so seeing 720Hz is disappointing, but the display is far more eye-friendly than any Samsung Galaxy phone on the market, at least.
At $299, I'm not sure there's enough truly good added functionality brought on by the rear display to merit buying it over a comparable Samsung Galaxy phone, especially with the likelihood that this phone will only get one major Android update (to Android 16).
But at $199, this phone's a steal, and I'd easily recommend grabbing at least one as a good backup phone or a great first phone for your kids.
