BARCELONA—Call it a teaser. At Mobile World Congress today, ZTE showed off the Nubia Z9 Max, a metal-and-glass, Qualcomm Snapdragon 810-powered phablet with a highly manually configurable camera.

ZTE has a strong presence in the U.S. as a maker of "affordable premium" phones for carriers (it says it's our No. 4 manufacturer by sales). But we don't get the Nubia line in the states because it's ZTE's line of high-end, unlocked phones, and the company focuses on carrier sales in the U.S.

That's going to change, just a little, said Felix Fu, the head of the Nubia brand. The company has experimented with selling some phones through Amazon, and is going to make some of its new Z9 line available direct in the U.S. These are premium phones, not low-cost phones—think Samsung, not Xiaomi, he said —and the vast majority of the company's business in the U.S. will continue to be through carriers.

But more options are better, and the Z9 Max looks like another good option. This Qualcomm Snapdragon 810-powered phablet has a 5.5-inch, 1080p LCD screen and a 16-megapixel Sony camera. Fu said it's not going to be the highest end model in the Z9 line—the smaller Z9, which will be unveiled next month, will have capabilities this one lacks, he said.

The Z9 Max feels heavy, solid, and premium. It's a big glass-and-metal sandwich, with a hint of color on the back coming from a red camera ring. The glass back attracts fingerprints, as glass backs often do. The phone's version of Android is very heavily skinned with ZTE's Nubia UI, which changes the look of all of the built-in apps. But the model I saw was Chinese, and so it had a lot of software on it we don't see in the West.

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The Z9 Max's fanciest feature, which Fu showed off at length, is a highly customized camera app with many manual functions. Combined with the Sony camera module, that makes for some really creative photography. Fu showed how the camera can separate its focus and exposure points, create virtual depth of field, and control virtual aperture, to an even greater extent than the Pro Camera app on Microsoft's phones.

Not Just Nubia
The Nubia camera app is ZTE's best, but you should also expect those kinds of camera functions to filter into other ZTE phones in the U.S., ZTE USA CEO Lixin Cheng said.

"Nubia will always be the best available camera, but gradually, we will evolve those into our mobile line in the US," he said.

While ZTE is successful in the U.S., it's challenging because carriers are still the gatekeepers. Carrier approval requirements limit ZTE's freedom in design, and the unlocked, open-sales market is only about 5 percent of the U.S. market, Cheng said.

"Drop tests and radio performance really limit the industrial design, so that's why we can't have complete freedom," Cheng said. "But we're taking on that challenge, and with new materials, we'll be able to do more."