Nokia 7 Plus review: Born to revive Nokia brand

Nokia brand came back last year when HMD was honored with the rights to make Nokia branded mobile phones. This time HMD went with Android. This year, they announced a strategic partnership with Google as their phones(Nokia 3 and above) will be Android one devices with 2 years of Guaranteed Android upgrades and 3 years of Guaranteed monthly security patches. Last year they launched Nokia 2, Nokia 3, Nokia 5, Nokia 6 and Nokia 8 ranging from 7000 rupees to 36000 rupees. Thats not all. This year in February, Nokia launched some interesting devices. Out of which, the most attention grabber is Nokia 7 plus. I bought it from Nokia site and lets review it.

Build:

When it comes to build, Nokia 7 plus is one of the best built devices out there. There is no Antenna line and beautiful copper ascent flows through side of the mobile, camera border and fingerprint border. Made out of Series 6000 Aluminium, it has uni body design.By the way, my favorite color is the white one. Also, it does not have an ugly notch or it does not have any special curve. Yet, it feels really nice. When I say Nice, I mean to say its just mind blowing. The mobile is fantastic to hold and feels really solid.

Rating: 10/10

Screen:

Here is something interesting. Its the first mobile made by HMD to have 18:9 panel. The display is crisp and vibrant. The black is really deep for a Full HD+ LCD panel. The direct sun light visibility is average which could have been better. The screen is protected by gorilla glass 3. There is nothing much to complain.

Rating: 8/10

Externals:

The mobile retains a 3.5mm jack. The mobile has Type C port and a loud mono speaker. The 3.5 mm jack is pretty average. The only con which I feel is the hybrid slot. Nokia should have gone for a dedicated slot. There are multiple mics which give depth or 3D feel while recording video. Nokia calls it Ozo Audio. Nice Nokia ! 

Rating: 9/10

Internals:

The mobile is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 which is a powerful chip. The raw power is almost par with 820 chip. The GPU is powerful too. The Kryo core and 14NM chip means, for intense tasks also, the mobile remains cool. It ran through everything I threw at it except PUBG which shows some frame drops in highest graphics setting. The DDR4 RAM of 4GB seems to help the performance. The mobile has great RAM management. It has 64 GB of internal storage which is expandable via Hybrid slot. The performance is quite snappy. Well I can say its the Mini Pixel. But, is it hardware only? No. Its actually the software which compliments the 660. Well, lets see about software now.

Rating: 9/10

Software:

The phone comes with pure vanila android 8.0 out of box and it got updated to 8.1 as soon as I connected to Wi Fi. I have also got May security patch in mid of May. The software is just great. I never saw any stuttering in regular usage though there are some room for UI improvement like the quick switch gesture and google cards swiping. If you want further speed and snappy experience, you can just drop down the animation speed to 0.5X and the phone just flies through. There is also guaranteed software support for 3 years. Here, Nokia just shines.

Rating: 10/10

Battery:

The mobile comes with 3800 mah battery and its a no brainier that with a 660 chip inside the battery has too much capacity to last you a day's time. Let it be intense gaming or complete day with 4G, I consistently got SOT of 5 to 6 hours on mobile data. On Wifi, the SOT hovers around 7 hours. Please note that I use only one sim which is 4G and I am a very heavy user. Each day I play 30 mins of games like PUBG, watch contents on youtube and vodafoneplay for an hour, Browse around 1 to 2 hours and of course social media usage is more than 1 hour. So, with that, each day I ended up with 30 to 40% of power left inside the battery. So, for all users it ll last at least 1 full day including idle drains in night. Also, the phone comes with Quick charge 3.0 and can charge your phone from 0 to 50% in 30 to 35 mins. 

 

Rating: 10/10

Rear Camera: 

The phone has dual camera set up towards back with one as primary shooter of 12MP and 13MP for 2X optical zoom. The camera performs just outstanding in day light. The details are great. There is no focus haunting issues either which we saw in Nokia 8. The mobile is great for macro shot. If you use google mod pixel app, the camera becomes more sharper but the default camera app shoots brighter image. I personally like the google mod pixel app as its nearer to actual condition. During low light, the default camera app struggles a bit by over saturating the object's face. But the photos are bright and loss of detail is minimal. The depth sensor simply useless during low light as the camera is meant for 2X zoom. A lot of times, 2X zoom simply fails during low light. But, for 25k, the camera pair is pretty good. For better low light photos, one should use google pixel mod camera app. It changes the detailing dramatically with its HDR+. It is also to be noted that Auto HDR of default camera app is amazing. It really creates a difference when you shoot photos in day time. Overall, the camera is descent and may be like oneplus 5T or even Honor view 10, but do not expect samsung galaxy series photo standard.

The mobile can click 4K at 30 fps and 1080p with 60 fps. The EIS+Gyro stability is great. The video looks sharp and quite accurate. The 2X optical zoom comes handy here too. Nothing to complain here.

Rating: 7.5/10

Front camera: 

The front camera of the mobile is just better than rear camera. The images shot with the 16MP shooter are sharp and has great detailing. The front portrait mode works surprisingly well. Even its not like Pixel's. But, if you do not compare side by side, you will feel the selfies are brilliant. The front camera is also quick to focus. If you want a selfie mobile, you should definitely look into this one. In low light also, it can take good portrait pictures and the level of details is good. The 1080P video recording is quite good. But, the cropping is too much due to EIS. Anyway, overall, Nokia has done a great job here.

Rating: 9/10

Extras:

When I seriously felt Nokia should have thrown at least IP54 water resistant, the mobile does not have such protection. There is NFC and Nokia ozo audio support. Unfortunately, there is no notification LED. Nokia has thrown an Ambient display replacing that. Nokia has an inbuilt app to monitor the device performance and gives warranty info. The mobile supports dual 4G VOLTE which is seriously a plus for a country like India. The face unlock is hidden inside the smart lock option in settings as trusted face. Its quite average as it seems its a native google feature. The bothie feature in camera is quite handy for Vlogging. 

Rating: 8/10

So, whats the verdict?

Overall Rating : 9/10

So, Do I recommend it? Hell Yah ! 

Lets see the most advantages, the mobile has 18:9 display, a powerful processor, Dual Zeiss cameras which perform really well, Android one, a strong build, Dual 4G VOLTE, All necessary sensors, Good audio quality and finally Nokia branding with after sales support. Many may argue it could have been 2k cheaper, but lets be practical, 20k to 30k is totally plagued and Nokia 7 plus shines there.

So, next question Do I recommend over Honor 10 or Nokia 8? Well, depends !

If you are a performance lover go for Nokia 8 or Honor 10. Both are good options. But, Nokia 7 plus holds good in styling, a great display and seems to be a very balanced option from brand to performance.

So, here is another one, Do I recommend over Redmi Note 5 pro ? Yes, if you have budget.

Thats it folks. Let me know your views.  Nokia 7 plus available in Nokia's own site and may be in Amazon. 

Be Kind. Keep Smiling.

Love

Ashis

For feedback, write to ashisiniter@gmail.com