Nokia (or HMD Global) is out releasing a flurry of phones to ensure that people of all income groups and device preferences are satisfied. All of this with the certainty of getting Android updates before almost anyone else. With a crowded marketplace, the Nokia range is surprisingly spread out, and also very easy to understand. Let’s take a look at the Nokia 7 Plus to see how they are doing.
The Nokia 7 Plus is Nokia 7’s big brother, but with the right tweaks Nokia has changed the game.
Design and Build
The Nokia 7 Plus is a delicious-looking phone. We had the black and copper phone to test and wow! I think I was ogling the phone so much my girlfriend started to get jealous. I honestly think it’s one of the better looking phones in the market.
The black coloured phone has a matte look and feel to it, adding a dimension of texture that I love. While this is certainly not unique to the 7 Plus, it’s a good design choice.
Both colour choices have copper accents. Another brilliant design choice. The accents are around different parts of the phones; the camera bump, the fingerprint reader, the entire sides of the phone and the Nokia Logo at the back.
Even the screen is framed with a very thin copper border. They have stopped at just the right point, any more and it would be tacky, it’s perfectly done. Great job Nokia!
The phone itself feels quite sturdy in the hand and the fingerprint scanner’s placement is quite comfortable, though on a personal note I still prefer to have the scanner up front, especially in phones like the 7 Plus where there are bezels on the front.
There is a sizable camera bump at the back of the phone. While this isn’t a great thing, the gradual curvature in the phone, where the bump is, actually looks and feels nice. Adds some more premium feel to the phone, I’m surprised more phone brands don’t do this.
Features, Specs and Performance
The Nokia 7 Plus comes with the Snapdragon 660. This is a med-tier, octa-core processor. What this means is that the 7 Plus isn’t going to be blazing fast, but it’s going to be power-efficient and so won’t be draining that battery very hard.
The phone has 4 GB of RAM and comes with 64 GB internal storage, which can be expanded up to 256 GB.
You get 2 SIM slots, with the second one doubling as an SD Card slot as well (Hybrid slot). Sad to see that they went down the hybrid route, since even the Nokia 3 supports all 3 slots, but it’s not a deal breaker.
This is the only version of the phone; simple and clean option sheet. Love that about it.
Keeping this in mind, the phone performs admirably. It’s fast for day to day tasks and can even play some major game titles well. Including one of my all time favourites, Monument Valley.
I also tried a racing game, and it worked flawlessly. The phone got slightly hot, but nothing unbearable and all the while didn’t miss a beat in the gameplay. I did notice a few hiccups here and there, but overall quite impressed.
The 7 Plus runs on Android ONE, which means that it’s gonna have a clean interface, complete stock experience, and no bloatware at all. Literally the only extra Nokia app that exists on the phone is the support app, which actually makes me feel safer with the phone.
There is someone you can chat with if you need any help or support. This also means that the phone is going to be fast. The cleaner the Android, the faster the device.
The Nokia 7 Plus has a very respectable (and even impressive) 1646 single-core score and a 5868 multi-core score on Geekbench. All of that from 4GB RAM and a 660?! Well done!
Last thing to point out is that the 7 Plus uses a USB-C port, which is no surprise since the Nokia 7 had it as well. At the price point, it’s a great thing to see, let’s keep on moving towards USB-C.
Display
Part of the reason why the phone is zippy is the screen resolution. The 7 Plus has a 6” 1080 x 2160 LCD Display. This means that the processor doesn’t have to work all that hard, a perfect idea in my opinion.
If you have seen any of my phone reviews, I am a mixed bag when it comes to resolution. Who doesn’t like a good crispy display with all the pixels in the universe. But I also don’t want to put a nuclear reactor on my phone and still it lasts only for 1 minute and 57 seconds! Ok I’m exaggerating… so I have realised, a good 1080×2160 screen is perfect. It’s also known as FHD, Full High Definition
“WHAT!” I hear you say while you gasp out loud… (GOL, could that be a thing?!). Let me explain.
There are two main benefits: better battery life and better performance. Pair these two with a decent battery, and a decent low powered CPU, all these things chalk up to… money, money, money, mooooooney. That is, the money that you will have saved up in your pocket, because these things mean a cheaper phone.
That’s what the Nokia 7 Plus is, a great FHD screen, with a decent processor and a massive battery (more on that later)… and all this at a very good price. You can tell I’m a fan of this concept.
It’s a good LCD panel with good viewing angles and will not disappoint you.
Camera
The Nokia 7 Plus has 2 rear facing cameras:
- 12 MP (f/1.8, 25mm, 1.4µm)
13 MP (f/2.6, 1.0µm) - The setup here is very similar to the Nokia Flagship: the Nokia 8 Sirocco. One is a standard lense (relatively wide angle) while the other is a telephoto lense which gives you 2x optical zoom. This also means the 7 Plus can do Bokeh… it literally has a Bokeh mode in the camera app.
Note: The pictures below are unedited but have been reduced in size and compressed.
Nokia has been partnering up with Zeiss since forever, and with the 7 Plus, it’s no different. Zeiss optics usually make for very good cameras as they are experts in the field.
The pictures in good lighting are quite fanciable. The pictures have good detail with minimum sharpening and not blowing out the highlights too much. But it does tend to mess up the shadows. Still the pictures have good contrast and for the expected customers of this phone, it’s just perfect.
If you are not a pixel pusher in terms of photos and picture quality, then cameras on the Nokia 7 Plus will serve you just fine.
With any two camera setup like this you get the normal 1x mode and the 2x mode. While 1x works quite well, sometimes the 2x didn’t do a great job, making the pictures seem over sharpened.
The low light shots on the other hand was a bit underwhelming. The primary lens actually does a decent job of taking pictures, but the secondary lens is pretty bad, and sometimes it doesn’t even seem to work in low light. So probably best to stay with the normal mode and take some pics like that.
Again, for the casual smartphone photographer it’s perfect.
The Camera app is a custom version by Nokia. If you have used any of Nokia’s Windows era smartphones, then you would be very comfortable with this app. That doesn’t mean it’s the best app in the world, which it isn’t. What it means is that you get the amazing and super easy pro mode. This can be accessed simply by dragging the shutter button up. Nifty trick!
Beyond this though, the camera is a bit confusing and does take some getting used to. However, once you get the hang of it, you can start becoming a pro photographer. It’s a good entry phone/camera to start understanding all the different aspects of photography.
The front facing camera is a 16 MP shooter, which is a big upgrade from the measly 5 MP camera in the Nokia 7. The pictures do come out a bit smoother than I would like, but it’s decent for a quick selfie.
The phone also has the PIP mode where you can take a picture with the main camera and a selfie at the same time. Not something I would use, but cool… I guess?!
Audio
The Nokia 7 Plus comes with a headphone jack, which is the best way to listen to music or watch videos. That’s because the phone comes with a measly single speaker that’s located at the bottom.
The speaker gets fairly loud, but it’s easy to block out with your hand. The sound is actually pretty decent. It would have been good to have a dual speaker setup, that would have given the phone a much fuller sound.
The Nokia 7 Plus comes with a pair of headphones in the box, shocker I know! Obviously since the 7 Plus has a headphone jack, this is the standard aux kind and not a USB-C kind.
The headphones actually look very very nice. They are black just like the phone – I hope the white version of the phones come with a white pair.
The only thing about the design is that the accents are silver, it would have been amazing if nokia had kept that copper accent going for these as well.
The headphones sound great. They are the in-ear kind and sound pretty good and fit really well and I can see myself using them for long periods of time.
The headphones also come with a one button remote which doubles as the microphone. This performs as you expect. Play/Pause, Next/Previous, Call Answering, and Voice Assistant. Overall a complete package.
I did notice something a tad bit strange though. It was a huge task putting the headphones into the phone. It kinda stuck out until I really pushed hard and heard the “click”. I’m sure this will loosen up with time, but it’s a lot tougher than it needs to be.
Battery
Let me start by saying, the Nokia 7 Plus comes with a 3,800 mAh battery. That’s 800 more than flagship average battery size now days. Even the Nokia 7 had a 3,000 mAh battery.
Here is where the Nokia 7 Plus shines. All the little pieces and hardware choices all tie in beautifully here. The FHD screen, the 660 Processor and vanilla Android, it all just works so well with the 3,800 mAh battery that this phones just keeps on going!
As a comparison, the Nokia 7 is rated to have 340 hours of standby time. The 7 Plus is more than double at 723 hours. Similarly the Talktime is 4 hours more, the music playback time is about 40 hours more. Honestly, if Nokia would have filled out the space of the phone so it didn’t have a camera bump and gave us a 4,000 mAh battery, this phone would go on for days!
GSM Arena did a battery endurance test which came up to about 84 hours!
While this isn’t the most “normal” use case for a phone, and it isn’t the highest ever, it’s still impressive.
The Nokia 7 Plus does come with a fast charger in the box, but it’s not the best thing in the world. It will get you up and running in 30 minutes, but if you want a full charge from almost 0, it will take you about 2 hours.
Software
Obviously the Nokia 7 Plus comes with Android one. This means a near stock android experience, almost no bloatware. Actually I would go so far as to say, it has no bloatware.
What you get on the phone is the standard Google Apps, a Nokia Care app and a custom Camera App. And the last one is not a second camera app, it’s just Nokia’s camera app.
With Android ONE you also have 2 other benefits. One is the performance and battery savings, because there is no custom software on-top of Android, that’s one less layer of crap the CPU has to deal with.
Two, quick updates for at least 2 years. You will be first in line for the latest version of Android when it’s out. While testing this phone I was running Android 8.1.0.
For me, this is a great reason to go with any Nokia phone since the Mid to High-end phones all come with Android one.
Other Info about the Nokia 7 Plus
The Nokia 7 Plus comes in one configuration, 64 GB, 4 GB of RAM.
The phone costs about 1,399 AED and is available in the two colours:
- Black and Copper
- White and Copper
You can get the phone in most of the popular outlets:
Axiom, Jumbo, Plugins, Emax, Carrefour, Lulu and Souq
With the Nokia 7 Plus, it was love at first sight. The phone is beautiful to look at and is great to use. I can’t imagine anyone who buys this will regret their decision.
Have you seen this phone? Did you drool as much as me? Do you think Nokia has made the right hardware choices? Do you like the concept of Android one?
