SmarTune™ RF MEMS Antenna Tuners boost performance across all LTE bands in nubia’s borderless Z9 flagship Smartphone
SAN JOSE, Calif. and BEIJING, China – May 11, 2015: Cavendish Kinetics, the leading provider of high-performance RF MEMS tuning solutions, and nubia, the premium smartphone brand of ZTE Corporation, announced today that nubia’s new Z9 smartphone is using Cavendish’s SmarTune™antenna tuning solution to create the world’s first dual antenna tuning solution. Designing its most innovative Smartphone yet, the thin metal-frame and virtually bezel-free screen of the nubia Z9 placed unprecedented challenges on the antenna design. Using two separate tuners, the dual antenna structure in the Z9 is able to provide best-in-class RF performance across all supported LTE frequency bands.
“The Z9 sets a new performance benchmark for Smartphones, highlighted by the brilliant, borderless screen,” said Ni Fei, CEO of nubia. “Designing screens that extend to the edge of the device presents a complex engineering challenge, as it leaves little room for the antennas to work. To ensure that the Z9 delivers the radio performance, data speeds and battery life worthy of our flagship device, we developed the world’s first dual antenna tuning solution, only made possible by using Cavendish’s RF MEMS tuners.”
SmarTune antenna tuning solutions are based on small, highly efficient narrow-band antennas that use Cavendish’s revolutionary RF MEMS Tuners to shift their resonating frequency. This allows the Z9 to optimize performance across all LTE frequencies at efficiency levels wide-band antennas cannot achieve.
“Seeing early prototypes of the Z9’s borderless screen and metal-frame we knew that our teams had to bend traditional antenna design rules to achieve the required radio performance,” said Paul Dal Santo, CEO of Cavendish Kinetics. “The low-loss, small size and high performance of our RF MEMS Tuners was the perfect enabler for the unique dual antenna tuning solution in the Z9, where we used two tuners for the dual-band, single-feed antenna, enabling peak efficiencies across the entire set of LTE bands.”
About nubia
nubia is the premium brand of ZTE Corporation. It was launched in October 2012. nubia brand is independently managed and differentiated by a separate team from the ZTE brand. nubia is focused on high-end open markets, with development around the world and is favored by consumers through its differentiation on concept, design, price, advertisement, and service.
About Cavendish Kinetics
Cavendish Kinetics (www.cavendish-kinetics.com) is the leading provider of high-performance RF MEMS antenna tuning solutions for smartphones, handheld and wearable devices. Cavendish’s SmarTune devices feature a MIPI RFFE interface, have been qualified beyond 100 billion cycles and are shipping in volume since 2014. Cavendish Kinetics has offices in San Jose, CA, China, Korea, and the Netherlands.