INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Nokia made a comeback to the smartphone market last year, with brand custodian HMD Global launching a wide range of smartphones across
These smartphones used the typical Nokia build quality to play the nostalgia card very well, and also boasted of decent specifications,
stock Android, and quick updates
The company delivered with better specifications at multiple price points, and an updated design for its Nokia 7 Plus
The smartphone has quickly made its way to India with a price tag of Rs 25,999
HMD has built the Nokia 7 Plus quite well and has used 6000 series aluminium for its unibody
The edges are rounded off and the back has a ceramic coating to give it a smooth finish and hide the antenna lines
We found the back to be very smooth to the touch but did not find it slippery.In order to make the Nokia 7 Plus look distinct, the company
has opted for copper accents for the midframe, camera surround, fingerprint scanner, and its logo at the back of both the white and black
alongside the primary microphone and a speaker grille
While the speaker can get loud, the grille is tiny and is easy to muffle accidentally
The metallic buttons on the side are clicky and offer good feedback
HMD Global has opted for a hybrid dual-SIM tray, so one Nano-SIM can be swapped for a microSD card.At the back, the Nokia 7 Plus sports dual
cameras with Zeiss branding
lineup last year in terms of hardware, and faced some criticism as a result
with four clocked at 1.8GHz and the other four clocked at 2.2GHz
These are Kryo 260 cores that are manufactured on the 14nm FinFET process, with an integrated Adreno 512 graphics processor
tray.The 6-inch IPS display sports a Full HD+ resolution and has Gorilla Glass 3 for protection
It has good viewing angles and gets bright enough to be visible outdoors
Other specifications on the Nokia 7 Plus include Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi 802.11ac, GPS, GLONASS, and NFC
It also features an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, gyroscope, hall sensor, and an e-compass
to the cameras on the 7 Plus, and you get Zeiss optics at the front and the back
The dual camera setup at the back consists of a 12-megapixel primary sensor with an f/1.8 aperture and 1.4-micron pixels, plus a
13-megapixel sensor with a telephoto lens, f/2.6 aperture, and 1-micron pixels
What this means is that the phone comes with stock Android and no bloatware
patch within the test period
With no significant customisations on the Nokia 7 Plus, the UI is snappy and easy to use.There are a few gesture shortcuts, like the ability
You also have the option to double-tap the display to wake the device up.Nokia 7 Plus performance, cameras, and battery lifeThe Nokia 7 Plus
packs in good hardware at its price point
The Snapdragon 660 has a lot of grunt and can outperform the Snapdragon 625/626 processors
scanner is positioned slightly too high for our liking, and we needed to stretch a little to use it
It is reasonably fast but we have seen better in this segment
Heavy apps and games are handled well, and the Nokia 7 Plus also managed to sail through in our gaming tests
We played Asphalt 8 and Clash Royale, and even used it for navigating around town with GPS, and found that the phone could handle these
tasks without heating up.In our benchmark tests, the phone returned 137,573 in AnTuTu, 1,590 and 5,780 respectively in Geekbench's
single-core and multi-core tests
good and we found that idle drain was quite low
In our HD video loop test, the smartphone managed 13 hours and 31 minutes and we could end the day with some juice left in the tank
day before needing to be plugged in
The company seems to have worked hard on fine-tuning its new lineup and the results are evident.Starting with the camera app, HMD has kept
There are options for HDR, beautification, and Bothie feature which lets you take shots using both the front and rear cameras simultaneously
This feature is quite handy for capturing events with your reactions in the same frame
video.When taking photos with the Nokia 7 Plus, we found that it was quick to focus and got the exposure right most of the time
In daylight, the phone managed to capture good amounts of detail
Colour reproduction was quite good and most images appeared crisp
The telephoto lens offers a quick 2x optical zoom, while the phone can also do up to 10x digital zoom
This is handy when you want to capture distant objects, but we found that the secondary sensor has a slightly cooler colour temperature in
comparison to the primary one
If you like taking portraits, you will enjoy the bokeh mode
It uses the telephoto lens to blur out the background, and edge detection is quite good.Tap to see full-sized Nokia 7 Plus camera
The phone uses a slower shutter to capture brighter images and keep noise under control
As a result, you will need a steady hand when shooting in low light
Auto mode aside, the 7 Plus does offer a pro mode that lets you alter the white balance, ISO, shutter speed, and exposure.The selfie camera
is good and captures detail quite well when indoors
There's a beautification mode which smoothens faces, and you have a slider to adjust the level
Video recording maxes out at 4K for the primary camera, while the selfie camera maxes out at 1080p
things right with the 7 Plus
The company has also managed to get the right balance of performance and efficiency
The processor is powerful, yet frugal enough to get you through the day without the battery needing to be recharged
As a part of the Android One programme, the device is guaranteed to get quick software updates and security patches
However, the camera could do with some fine-tuning to improve low-light performance.There are very few recently launched models in this
