Why Nokia 8 is not worth it
HMD Global's reboot of Nokia has been in the news since it announced its foray into the Android market at the Mobile World Congress February 2017. The Finnish company initially announced three Android phones – Nokia 3,5,6 – and now has added to the list another interesting phone, and its flagship for the year, the Nokia 8.
With the device, HMD Global will attempt to recreate the buzz that only the reboot of the 3310 — the indestructible phone from the early 2000s that came with Snake installed – has been able to create till now.
The Nokia 8 is the tech company's full-fledged attempt at winning over the high-end flagship segment that defines the market.
Let's take a look at the device that Nokia has put its faith in to take on the Samsungs and HTCs of the smartphone universe.
Breaks Nokia tradition
The device is the first high-end flagship phone by HMD Global's reboot of the Finnish smartphone maker and it is nothing like the flagships that have donned the Nokia logo before. For starters, it's an Android phone, running the stock skin with no bloatware – as seen with Google's Pixel and Pixel XL.
It has a basic design which is anything but flashy. There are no sexy infinity displays or a squeezable colour changing body found on the U11. However, that takes nothing away from the phone's looks. The design draws inspiration from the iconic Lumia handsets of the past to create a handset that is wonderfully slim as it’s crafted from just a single block of aluminium. The device does not call out for attention, but it still looks and feels like one that commands your attention for more than a second.
Flagship-worthy specs
The Nokia 8 brings with it specs to match the high-end looks of the device. The phone comes packing Qualcomm's top-of-the-line 835 SoC paired with 4GB of RAM and an impressive 3,090mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0 support. It also brings with it 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 256GB. There is also a fingerprint sensor embedded into the home button up front.
Beautiful display
The smartphone at the front is adorned by a beautiful 5.3-inch Glance Screen Quad HD display with an impressive pixel density of 544 ppi. The display, Nokia claims is one of the brightest in the market and is capable of producing a maximum brightness of 700 Nits. The 2.5D display is covered with a sheet of Gorilla Glass 5 to protect it from scratches and minor falls.
Dual camera setup
Over the years, Nokia has been known for the great cameras on its phones, and the Nokia 8 carries forward that legacy. The device comes with a dual camera setup at the rear with ZEISS optics - a 13MP primary RGB (color) sensor paired with a 13MP monochrome (black and white) sensor which allows for the capture of depth of field information and helps in low-light photography.
The rear camera setup can also shoot videos in 4K and comes with phase detection auto-focus and a dual-LED flash. At the front, there's another 13-Megapixel RGB shooter – same as the one on the back.
Another interesting feature that the Nokia 8 comes with – and this is its only standout feature – is what the smartphone maker calls a “bothie”. The feature uses both the front and rear cameras that enable it to record videos using both the camera setups found on the phone at the same time.
Nokia 8 lets you stream these "bothies" as full-HD live videos to Facebook and YouTube.
The company claims to have worked overtime with Qualcomm to enable this Dual-Sight video streaming on the Nokia 8 while minimising the thermal impact of the processing required.
Pricing
The first Nokia smartphones to be launched in India after the shutdown of the Lumia series targeted towards budget users were priced attractively – the Nokia 3 was priced at Rs 9,499, the Nokia 5 at Rs 12,899, while the most expensive in the list, the Nokia 6, came with a price tag of Rs 14,999.
The Nokia 8 too is expected to be priced competitively in its price bracket. The handset will retail worldwide starting September, at a price of 599 Euros (approximately Rs 45,500). However, when it finally makes its way to India, expect it to be priced between Rs 45-50k.
This will put it in a direct tussle with most flagship devices that are retailing in the country at more than Rs 50k.
Nokia 8 comes a cropper
No confusion here, the Nokia 8 was designed to be a flagship device in the truest form of the word. It was meant to be HMD Global's answer to the Galaxy S8's, HTC U11's and OnePlus 5's of the flagship kingdom. But only, it's failed to do so. Unlike other devices in the high-end flagship space, the phone offers nothing special – except for bothie – that can set itself apart from the sea of phones being launched every day.
It neither has the sexy looks of an infinity display equipped S8, or the Pixel, nor does it have the gimmicks to wow that the HTC U11 possesses. for what it's worth, it can't even call it a truly great value for money proposition like the OnePlus 5. In all honesty, it's just another capable phone with above par specs and classy looks. And that perhaps is Nokia 8's worst indictment.
For a phone looking to take Nokia back to its glory days, the failure to not be able to stand out and create some serious buzz will go down as its biggest failure. Much to HMD Global's despair, the Nokia 8 can be put in league with the other handsets launched by them this year – handsets that have come and gone without much of a bang.
Suffice to say the much-awaited resurgence of Nokia has not gone exactly as planned, and the biggest indication of it yet is the Nokia 8 which has failed to recapture the past glories of the Nokia flagships from the days gone by.