Back in 2013 when Nokia was bought out by Microsoft, we all knew deep down that it would either propel Nokia to the top or mark its grave. Truth of the matter is that Nokia continued to fall victim to the Android and iOS onslaught and the once titan of the phone industry was slowly losing its place of dominance. Back when Android was announced, Nokia was still using its very popular Symbian for its devices. Symbian was a very special OS for modders and tweaking enthusiasts and even with the low end specifications of the Nokia phones, they were still brilliant performers.
The fact Nokia didn’t change with time and initiated its partnership with an OS, which had the lowest market share, marked the start of the end of Nokia. And although Nokia did sell android phones for a short amount of time before its demise, it was heavily restricted in functionality as Microsoft didn’t want it to perform better than its Windows phone OS. Nokia’s now are made by a Finnish company named HMD Global which is made up by former Nokia employees and as a part of a licensing agreement, it manufacturers device under the Nokia Brand Name.
HMD Global’s first device under the Nokia Brand name is simply called the Nokia 6. It’s a lower mid-range device, designed to cater to the budget segment of smartphones. It’s priced around the Rs.15000 mark and let ussee if it has what it takes to resurrect its image.
Performance:
The Nokia 6 isn’t really meant to be an all-out brute performer and we clearly see Nokia’s logic behind the choice of its parts. You see Nokia’s of old were infamous for their awesome battery life, smooth performance and their robustness. And we can clearly see a few of the traits endowed upon the Nokia 6. For instance the Nokia 6 is powered by a low end Snapdraon 430 CPU which is an octacore CPU comprised of A53 cores clocked at 1.4 GHz. It may not seem like a terribly powerful CPU but the A53 cores are meant to be incredibly battery efficient and it shows. The phone may not be able to the graphics crunching thanks to its Adreno 506 GPU but it’s enough for most tasks. Also included in the phone is 3GB of ram which means that you can do a decent amount of multitasking without facing any form of lag or slowdown. Overall though, the CPU isn’t really befitting the asking price point but it isn’t all bad.
Design and Display:
The Nokia 6 really carries forward the Nokia legacy of making tough, well-built robust devices as evident from holding the phone in the hand. It is largely built out of Metal and feels nice to hold it in hand. Other than that, it is an ergonomic piece of design as the bezels are really narrow and most of the front facia is covered by the screen. Other than that it has a fingerprint sensor embedded into the home button and volume and power buttons are located on the right hand side. The antenna bands can be clearly seen along the sides but are impeccably blended along with the rest of the design. The phone can be purchased in a range of colours including Silver, Arte Black, Matte Black, Tempered Blue and Copper.
Coming to the display, it has a Full HD 1080p 5.5 inch IPS display with a Gorilla Glass 3 to protect it from accidentally breaking or scratching. The display is nice and vivid and the colours are quite lovely. It has a pixel per pinch (PPI) ratio of 401 which is really excellent.
Software:
Software wise it comes with Android 7.1.1 Nougat right out of the box which is great and there are even plans for it to receive an Android 8 update. The UI on the phone is pure stock Google and even the launcher is stock Google which means that swiping to the right brings up the Google Now interface which can be personalised based on your preferences. The phone also comes pre-installed with Google Assistant which means that it can understand voice commands like the Google’s Pixel phones. You can also find the usual Google apps that you’d normally use like the Maps, Mail and so on. It’s nice to see that Nokia hasn’t messes around with the UI as designing a brand new UI is an expensive process but not at all necessary as Google’s own UI does the job impeccably. The Nokia 6 also has Dolby Atmos audio which makes listening to music a lively affair.
Camera and Storage:
The cameras in the Nokia 6 comprise of a 16MP shooter as the primary camera. It is a decent camera for all purposes and produces some really good images given that the lighting conditions are good. The camera is capable of recording 1080p videos at 30FPS which isn’t bad but phones in a similar price bracket offer much more if you’re interested in some really decent camera outputs. The rear camera also has a dual tone LED flash and many shooting modes such as HDR, Auto focus, Face detection, touch to focus, exposure compensation and also ISO control.
The front camera is also very decent at 8MP and clicks some decent selfies given that the lighting conditions are good. It has a wide aperture of F2.0 which is useful for covering large groups of people.
Storage wise, it has 32GB of internal storage with additional expansion of up to 128GB should the need arise which too is pretty good.
Battery and Connectivity:
The Nokia 6 comes with a 3000mAh battery which isn’t the biggest in the price range but considering its design, it’s pretty darn impressive that they managed to somehow cram in such a big-ish battery. This coupled with the energy efficient CPU means that the Nokia 6 will probably last you a day easily with moderate levels of usage, although it must be said that everyone’s mileage may vary.
Connectivity wise, the Nokia 6 comes packed to brim with 4G, 3G and 2G connectivity and support for Indian network bands.
Other than that it has WI-Fi 802.11, b/g/n, GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS support and Bluetooth version 4.1 support. So it doesn’t really miss out on much although the faster WiFi 802/11 AC adapter would’ve been a nice addition.
Final words:
With this device Nokia did make a great return to the smartphone scene. Sure it isn’t really the fastest phone out there (that is actually coming out later this year) but there is little to complain about the device. It packs a solid build quality that might as well easily take a fall or two and many external reviewers are actually vouching for the build quality on the phone. The Nokia 6 Price in India is Rs.14999.
