Nokia 7 plus Review

Nokia came back into the smartphone market in 2016 as HMD Global bought rights to the Nokia brand. Since then, it has been successful in selling hundreds of thousand smartphones worldwide. Now, for the year 2018, Nokia is entering the mid-range smartphone market, with a phone that looks to compete with the likes of Huawei Honor 9, Motorola G5S Plus and even OnePlus 5T. Nokia 7 Plus packs some impressive hardware and stock android experience at a midrange price point, but is that enough for Nokia to get hold of a highly competitive midrange smartphone market of 2018? Let's find out.

First thing that you'll be reminded of looking at Nokia's new midrange device is Google Pixel 2. The front of the phone looks quite similar to the Google flagship, however, at the back, it most certainly carries Nokia's design language. Nokia 7 Plus is carved out of a single block of aluminum which is covered in a special ceramic coating, made to look elegant by its copper edges. You won't find antenna lines on the device as the ceramic coating provides a passage to cellular signals making the phone look clean and smooth. The six layers of ceramic coating also render the phone to have a matte finish to it, making it feel grippy in your hands. Sides are straight and sharp with a colored accent running around them, which also goes around the phone's camera, screen and the fingerprint scanner, adding a smart look to the device.

Nokia 7 plus is big in size, having a minimum bezels display, similar to the one found on Google Pixel 2. This makes it almost impossible to use the phone with one hand. The back of the device doesn't feel metallic, but still feels premium due to the ceramic feel to it. There's a dual camera setup at the top middle of the back of the device, with a fingerprint scanner right underneath it. The fingerprint scanner placement is done right by Nokia, as your index finger reaches the scanner with comfort and ease. Same can be said about the power button and volume keys found on the right side of the phone, as they are fairly easy to reach. The Nokia logo rests below the fingerprint scanner and is accented with a copper tone, making the phone look really stylish.

At the bottom of the device, you'll find a single bottom firing speaker, and a USB Type-C port. There's no headphone jack to be found at the bottom of the phone, but unlike Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia has included a 3.5mm headphone jack at the top of Nokia 7 Plus, which is a much welcome addition. Sadly, there's no waterproofing on Nokia 7 Plus so you'll have to be careful using it around water or under rainy conditions.

Nokia 7 Plus is a beautiful phone, which feels good to touch. The large display makes it feel big, but the grippy ceramic coating prevents it from feeling like it will slip out of your hands. It seems like Nokia has paid attention to details with accent coloring and a solid build, making the phone look much better than most mid-range smartphone devices in 2018.

Display on Nokia 7 Plus is big and one of the best you'll find on a midrathnge smartphone in 2018. It is a FullView, 6-inch IPS LCD Full HD panel with a resolution of 2160x1080 and having a pixel density of 403 ppi. Nokia joined other manufacturers with the 18:9 aspect ratio for the display and quite frankly, it looks really good.

The big 6 inch panel is sharp and delivers beautiful color reproduction with almost zero color shifting. Viewing angles are great for an LCD panel and screen legibility is good, even under bright sunlight. This is due to the fact that screen has a brightness of 500 nits which means you will not have problems using the phone outdoors during the day.

You won't find an always on display as it is not an OLED panel, but Nokia has included an Ambient Display feature which lets you preview notifications without turning on the screen. You can also adjust the display scaling options as well as the font size, and you get a blue light filter that can be configured to kick in at a specified time. As there's no physical notification LED to be found on the phone, you can wake up the device by just tapping on the screen.

Display on Nokia 7 Plus comes with its merits and issues, it is not as bright or sharp as displays on Samsung Galaxy devices. Nor is it as punchy and bright as Sony Xperia XZ2's LCD panel, but within this midrange category, there aren't many phones which come with a better display.

Nokia's midrange smartphone comes packing with a great hardware combination. It is powered by Snapdragon 660 processor coupled with 4 GB of RAM and Adreno 512 GPU. It comes with the only storage option of 64 GB but you get a MicroSD storage expansion of up to 256 GB incase 64 is not enough.

While Nokia 8 Sirocco is powered by Snapdragon 835, Nokia 7 Plus gets a mid-range Snapdragon 660. This is how Nokia keeps the price of the phone down, but Snapdragon 660 is more than able to cope up with fairly demanding tasks like gaming and multitasking. The Snapdragon 660 chipset is an octa-core processor, with speeds up to 2.2GHz. Results of such a high CPU clock-rate is that you get performance that's on par with flagships from just a few years ago. For CPU-intensive tasks, Snapdragon 660 is equivalent to that of the Snapdragon 821, but Adreno 512 GPU isn't quite on the same level as Adreno 530 in the Snapdragon 821.

Overall, phone performed impressively fast and smooth. Stock Android works like a charm with Snapdragon 660, as it is the most powerful midrange processor available right now. Opening up apps and games, I noticed that the midrange smartphone from Nokia gives a Google Pixel 2 vibe as the interface is pure Android and there's no lag or glitch while using apps. A lot of people normally don't care about haptic feedback on a phone, but the vibration motor on the Nokia 7 Plus is one of the strongest out there. Call quality is decent, but there are times (particularly when you're outside) when you feel that the earpiece doesn't get loud enough. Same can be said about the single built-in speaker which is not really loud and just gets the job done.

You won't find wireless charging or waterproofing on Nokia 7 Plus but it comes with features you'd expect from a midrange phone including a rear mount fingerprint scanner, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi ac, an LTE Category 12 modem, VoLTE, NFC, FM radio tuner and USB-C with fast charging. It even has a 3.5mm headphone jack and Nokia OZO audio(3 mics) so that should make a lot of people really keen into this beautiful and powerful smartphone by Nokia.

One of the most impressive features about this phone is its battery. The massive, 3800 mAh battery on Nokia 7 Plus enables you to use the device for up to 2 days on moderate use. Nokia claims that you get a screen-on time of up to 14 hours with this huge battery, however, in my testing of the device, I got around 6-7 hours of screen-on time which is still the highest I have ever gotten from any smartphone.

Phone also supports fast charging and takes around 60 minutes to get the battery percentage from 0 to around 78, which is quite impressive for a battery of this capacity. It's clear that HMD also optimized the phone to be as solid as possible when it comes to battery usage, because Nokia 7 Plus manages to deliver two days' worth of usage consistently.

As Nokia 7 Plus is designed to suit Indian smartphone market, this is a great choice by Nokia to make sure it provides one of the best battery usage and experience available on any smartphone right now, as for many South Asian consumers, battery life is one of the biggest concern while choosing a smartphone.

Another impressive thing about Nokia's new midrange device is its dual-camera setup. Rocking two 12 MP sensors with an f/1.75 aperture and an f /2.6 aperture respectively and a 16 MP front camera, the Nokia 7 Plus excels at the camera department. Once again, Nokia has gone with Carl Zeiss optics which should make photography with Nokia 7 Plus fun and easy.

Not only does the phone have Carl Zeiss optics, but HMD has also brought its Bothie feature which shoots images from both the front and rear cameras simultaneously. There's a pro mode as well and phone offers three microphones through which you'll be able to record 360-degree audio. Pro mode is similar to the one in old Nokia Lumia devices, with option to tweak white balance, ISO, shutter speed and enable manual focus. Talking about focus, it is disappointing to see no OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) on Nokia 7 Plus's cameras, however, you'll get the advantage of EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) which stabilizes images and videos using software. It's not as good as OIS, but can come handy in making rather shaky images and videos composed and stable.

During the camera test, photos taken in daylight were full of detail, with high color accuracy and wide-dynamic range. Nokia 7 Plus had no issues focusing on subjects in photos and camera shutter was quick and snappy. Even in low light scenarios, camera did good, lighting up dark scenes quite well. Some photos did come out to be grainy, but camera performed better than most phones in this category.

Telephoto lens on the phone helps you get 2x zoom just with a press of a button on screen, also giving you the ability to trigger Bokeh effect. Photos taken with Bokeh effect came out good with accurate blurring of the background. Nokia has a "Live Bokeh Mode" on Nokia 7 Plus, which lets you adjust the amount of blur you want to see on the background. Personally, I found this feature very useful as sometimes you want to keep some detail in the background apparent in photos. Camera uses super sampling which essentially means that it combines four pixels into one, creating an image with more details and as less noise as possible.

Nokia 7 Plus does well shooting videos as well. The phone can capture videos up to 4K at 30 fps with the rear cameras, and up to 1080p 30 fps with the front selfie camera. For the first time ever, Nokia has introduced video recording using the front camera with an aspect ratio of 18:9. Not only this, but Nokia also gives you the control over its three mics on the device, letting you choose which mic or mics you want to use to record audio while capturing videos. You have the option to use either both, front mic and noise-cancelling mic or just the front mic, in order to suit your audio needs. For people who shoot vlogs indoors, the best setting is to choose the front mic and for outdoor scenarios, using both mics would give a better audio experience.

Videos shot from the rear cameras come out to be sharp with good color accuracy and saturation. There were issues with stabilization especially while recording at 4K, but other than that, camera performed fairly well, and at places, quite better than the competition.

Camera app is similar to the one found on Nokia Lumia phones, with clean interface and variety of options to choose from, especially with the pro mode. Nokia has delivered its fans and customers in the camera department, as it intends to gain back the crown of best camera phone in the world.

Nokia 7 Plus comes with Android 8.0 Oreo straight out of the box, with updates available to Android 8.1. Nokia has branded this phone as an Android One device, which means that you'll get guaranteed security updates for 3 years and OS updates for at least 2 years. It also means that the software experience on Nokia 7 Plus is similar to the one on Google Pixel phones: fast, fluid and functional. There is no bloatware on board, and only Google's own apps are pre-installed. Phone handles all apps and tasks with ease without any lag or delay. You also get few gestures, like the ability to swipe down on the fingerprint sensor to pull down the notification shade, lift to wake the display, double press the power button to launch the camera, etc.

The software, however, isn't the most stable you'd find as it keeps getting fresh updates. For example, the sound profile would automatically switch to vibrate mode for no reason, and the phone had to be restarted so that it goes back to the preferred settings. There are also glitches where videos won't play on YouTube and the WiFi would automatically disconnect, however, nothing a restart wouldn't fix. This shouldn't be a huge issue as the software is running as a non-final build and future updates will fix these issues.

If you care about fast updates, there are not many phones in midrange smartphone market which come close to Nokia 7 Plus.

Nokia's impressive new mid-ranger will be available worldwide in late April. The phone comes with a price tag of around $400, in two different colors: Black/Copper and White/Copper.

Nokia 7 Plus has a lot going for it, camera quality combined with two days of battery life makes this phone very hard to beat in the midrange segment. Phone has an interesting design, the display offers vivid colors and is readable under sunlight, and the camera is one of the best you'll find on a $400 phone today. Then there's the solid built, promise of quick updates, and the uncluttered user interface.

There are certainly other smartphones in this midrange segment which offer similar features and one might wonder, why Nokia 7 Plus should be considered over those smartphones. Well, for starters, the phone offers a big screen, promise of excellent battery life, relatively premium design and stock Android experience which makes this phone fluid and snappy. There are features such as a headphone jack and NFC which further prove to be the icing on the cake and with guaranteed updates from Google. Nokia 7 Plus comes on top of all its midrange competitors due to those features, even when it lack in some areas, such as waterproofing.

Again, the mid-range market is a crowded place right now, and there are plenty of fantastic options to choose from so only time will tell if this phone is Nokia's first major success after its partnership with HMD.