OS, UI and Everyday Use

This is where the ZUK Z1 really shines. Cyanogen CM12.1 is a pleasure to use, especially if you’re a power user, bent on tweaking every possible detail.

As far as visual appearance goes, Cyanogen is still sticking to its “close to stock Android but not quite stock Android” mantra. The ZUK Z1 ships with its own theme, but you can choose a custom Cyanogen theme if you don’t like it. MIUI may have a lot more themes to choose from, but Cyanogen themes tend to be high-quality designs, with a lot more consistency.

The Trebuchet launcher is one of the most powerful and customisable launchers in the Android universe. You can tweak just about anything, from the icon grid size, to minute aesthetic details. On top of that, there’s practically no learning curve. If you feel at home on stock Android devices, you’ll get along with Cyanogen nicely. We won’t waste time describing Cyanogen, but we will underscore the difference between CyanogenMod and Cyanogen OS.

We already pointed out that this is a proper Android-based operating system, not a community project. It’s published and maintained by Cyanogen Inc, not the Cyanogen community. In other words, if you played with CyanogenMod on your phone, and experienced some bugs and glitches, chances are you won’t get to “enjoy” any of them on the ZUK Z1. The OS works like a Swiss watch and we did not notice any bugs or kinks whatsoever.

We liked the Trebuchet launcher, the search-friendly app drawer, the ability to customise just about anything, and we also liked the contemporary UI design. Cyanogen OS looks and feels polished.

What’s the ZUK Z1 like to live with? Well, for starters, it’s a phablet and it’s quite big. Luckily, it’s not much bigger or heavier than your average 5.5-inch phone, despite its oversized battery. The glossy back cover feels like glass, but in reality it’s hard plastic. It looks good, but it attracts grease and can get slippery in sweaty hands.

The curved sides and back help make the ZUK Z1 a bit more manageable, it just feels a bit smaller than it actually is.

From an ergonomic point of view, the Z1 is a good design. Everything is where you’d expect it to be and you should get used to it in minutes. 

The home button, which doubles as a fingerprint scanner, feels good, although it has a bit too much travel for our taste (which is entirely subjective).

As for the fingerprint reader, we did not experience any issues whatsoever. Unlocking the phone with your thumb takes about half a second and the scanner appears to be very reliable. We tried to fool it from different angles, but it wasn’t easy. In normal use, you should get a very good hit rate. We can say that the scanner is on a par with units found in flagship devices from the likes of Samsung.

You can play around with the button layout and add a range of different functions for long-press and double-tap actions, so you can create a camera shortcut, or answer a call with the home button etc. This sort of stuff is what Cyanogen fans love, and even if you’re not one, you’ll learn to appreciate many of these tweaks.

Now for the icing on the cake. Although the ZUK Z1 is as thick and heavy as most 5.5-inch devices, it sports a potent 4100mAh Li-Poly battery. Despite the beefy hardware, the battery can keep you going for hours. Even if you are an extremely heavy user, you should have no trouble getting through the day. In a more realistic, moderate use scenario, you should get two days out of your Z1, easy.

The phone relies on a USB Type-C port for charging, which is still a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s more practical than the old micro USB standard, but you won’t find a lot of USB Type-C chargers in the wild. Luckily, the big battery means you’re not likely to run out of juice at a bad moment. Even so, it might be a good idea to invest in some cheap USB Type-C adapters, one for the car, one for the office and so on.

Lastly, we took a look at GPS performance and we can report it's good. It took us 5-7 secodns to get a lock in our office.