Nokia 8

The Nokia 8, Polished Blue, 64GB (6GB RAM) runs for Rs. 34,990. It comes with a 5.3 inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen display with 1440 x 2560 pixels at 552  PPI(pixels per inch). This flagship is powered by Qualcomm MSM8998 Snapdragon 835 Octa-core processor and comes with 6GB RAM. It also has 32/64 gigs of internal storage that can be expanded up to 512GB with a microSD card. The phone runs Android 8.1 and a 3060mAh non-removable battery. It measures 151.5 x 73.7 x 7.9 mm and weighs 160gm. Further, it also houses a 13 MP primary camera, a 13 MP secondary camera on the rear and a 13MP front shooter for selfies.

The Nokia 8 isn’t actually made from steel, that’s the name of the colour, but it’s not too far off. The unibody is carved from the 6000 series aluminium making it look and feel very durable. The Nokia 8 does has both a modern USB type-c port and the more classic 3.5 mm jack for connectivity and we’re glad to move past the micro USB ports of Nokia’s other phones. There is ample internal storage, which is expandable through microSD. There is IP54 Dust and splash resistance 2 which is missing from the other Nokia phones. However, don’t get too careless since clearly the Nokia 8 isn’t fully waterproof.

Built around a 5.3 inch IPS LCD display, the Nokia 8 isn’t huge. It’s even smaller than its mid-range brother, the Nokia 6. This smaller screen size coupled with a qHD resolution makes for some nice crisp images! For outdoors this is the best LCD, scoring so high on sunlight legibility that it’s actually better than most amyloids.

The bottom facing speaker is not the loudest, but it has a pretty clear sound and leaves us wanting stereo speakers to be part of this package. At the heart of the phone is a Snapdragon 835 chipset which is also in this year’s top performing phones and benchmarks.

According to Nokia, there’s an advanced heat dispersal the system inside which should keep it cooler during heavy use. We definitely noticed this during testing – after running all the benchmarks the phone didn’t even seem warm. Plus, it’s just super snappy – it’s one of the most responsive phones we’ve held in a while!

Nokia is taking some pride in the Nokia Zeiss branded dual cameras which are both 13 megapixels and f2.0. In this setup, one of the cameras has a colour sensor while the other is black-and-white. The camera interface is proprietary and it works well. We only wish there were more options in manual Mode; there’s no shutter speed control, among other things.

Unlike Huawei’s Combination, Nokia’s dual cameras don’t provide for lossless zoom. You can stack their output to improve image quality. The cameras do work together to blur the background behind your subject. This happens automatically and produces some really nice-looking portraits. Regular daylight shots with the colour camera impress a lot with their high level of detail, moderate sharpness, and vibrant colours. There’s a wide dynamic range and the noise is kept pretty low. Black-and-white photos look just as great, but with even better dynamic range and lower noise.

At night we ended up with some nicely detailed and true-to-life colour photos as well as some low noise high contrast shots in black and white. The Nokia is really good at night but it’s still slightly behind the Galaxy S8 or the LG G6. The front cam has a 13-megapixel resolution and autofocus shots look great with the same high quality we see on the main camera. Videos can be shot in either 1080p or 4k resolution. 1080p video has decent sharpness and detail compared to other phones, but compared to its rivals, Nokia 8’s 4k video quality is just average. We do, however, appreciate the OIS. There is one big advantage with 4k recordings and that’s the audio – with three HDR microphones you can capture Ozo branded 360-degree sound.

Of course we didn’t forget to include a feature called dual side, with which you can take pictures or record video from the front and rear cam at the same time. And you can live stream this directly to YouTube or Facebook if you want to! The concept is pretty neat – you can see your face and reactions alongside. But sadly the audio and video quality take a big hit and it really feels better to stick to normal video.

Battery life is surprisingly good on the Nokia 8, it’s much better than Sony’s Xperia XE premium and the LG G6. With the quick charger the phone goes from 0 to 50 per cent in about 30 minutes, but there’s no wireless charging here through. The Nokia 8 runs on the latest Android with a Nokia overlay.

So while the whole deal wasn’t as impressive as we’d hoped, the Nokia 8 still delivers some top-notch photos and great audio recording. These days not a ton of high-quality content is being produced on phones and with devices like this coming out maybe that’s starting to change.

Overall, the Nokia 8 is a well-built smartphone that can give the top flagships a run for their money. Although it doesn’t have interesting software features, it more than makes up for that with everything else it has to offer