The Nokia 8 was the previous Nokia flagship, that came out in 2017. HMD Global has decided to give their flagship a new paint job and some other tweaks. This time it’s called the Nokia 8 Sirocco.
Design and Build
When you first look at the Nokia 8 Sirocco, you think wow! It’s got a beautiful glossy look and feel to it, with a almost piano looking finish. The beautiful glass design and sharp edges makes it look amazing and very premium. And then you pick it up… And you realise, it’s all glass and has sharp edges.
Let me explain, the front and back of the phone is covered in Gorilla Glass. And the front has an extremely curved screen that meets the back glass at a thin metallic point. This thin band around the phone actually feels quite sharp, and not in the “oh look he’s looking sharp”. No, it is sharp, and feels a tad bit uncomfortable.
Don’t get me wrong, it looks and feels super premium and I want to commend Nokia on that, but I think they took it a bit too far. If you grip the sharp band hard enough, it can hurt quite a bit. The buttons on the side are annoying, as they are barely noticeable by sight or touch and when you find them, they are so flushed with the sides that they are hard to press.
The all-glass body also makes me feel like this phone will be easy to break. I might be wrong and no, I’m not about to test that theory. It’s just a bit unnerving. Thankfully it has a case that will protect it. But then it makes the phone not look so good. Ah the first world problems.
The device we got was the black colour Sirocco… oh wait it only comes in one colour.
What’s news in the Nokia 8 Sirocco?
Before we go ahead with the rest of the review let me point out the real differences between the Nokia 8 and its new makeover version the Sirocco.
Screen – OLED Screen instead of LCD
No Audio Jack – Sad times
Rear mounted Fingerprint – It used to be front
Bigger Battery
Wireless Charging – Good addition
Cameras – Minor change for the rear, but more pixels on the front
No SD Card Slot – What?!
One Variant (128GB, 6GB) – The Nokia 8 had 2 variants and few colours, the Sirocco is only 1 model (kinda’), 1 colour.
Features, Specs and Performance
The Nokia 8 Sirocco comes with the Snapdragon 835 processor. When the Nokia 8 came out, this was the highest processor available. But in 2018, it isn’t. In Fact the Nokia 8 had the exact same processor. Why would they do this?
The Sirocco has 6 GB of RAM and comes with 128 GB internal storage. Which can be expanded up to 0 GB, because there is no SD card slot. It’s like the iPhone in this aspect.
I usually like the idea of no-complicated options in a phone, but this is taking it to a different level. The only two versions of the Sirocco are related to the SIM cards. The single sim model or the dual sim model. Remember the 2 sim model isn’t hybrid. There is no memory expansion at all.
The phone is extremely fast though. Thanks to the stock android and oled screen, things are zippy and the phone runs pretty flawlessly. Apps launch quickly, multitasking is a breeze and everything just works. So maybe the 835 in the right setup. The snapdragon 835 is still a beast.
I tried a few games on the Sirocco, and they all performed perfectly. Racing games, puzzle games and FPS. No dropped frames, cut scenes were smooth. Basically you are getting a fast phone.
The Nokia 8 Sirocco runs Android ONE, just like the Nokia 7 Plus and practically all of Nokia’s mid to high end phones from 2018 onwards. This means that you are going to get a clean interface, complete stock experience, and no bloatware at all.
As I mentioned in the Nokia 7 Plus review, the only extra Nokia app you get on this phone is the support app. Also, the camera app is a custom app, but it’s not an extra app.
The Sirocco has a very respectable 1944 single-core score and a 6641 multi-core score on Geekbench.
Display
Oh boy… it’s time to talk about the display. Unfortunately, here is where the Nokia 8 Sirocco falls short the most. Yes it is a QHD display, and yes it’s OLED. But boy, did they try to bend the rules a bit too much, literally. Pun intended.
The screen on the Sirocco is bent on the sides. No I didn’t mean curved, because that sounds a bit more gradual. It is actually bent, the gradient of the screen changes so drastically that the curves are very very pronounced.
Let me take a step back and talk about the panel itself. The Nokia 8 Sirocco has a QHD OLED panel, with a resolution of 1440 x 2560 which gives it a pixel density of approximately 534 ppi. Sounds great doesn’t it? Yeah well, unfortunately the viewing angles on this phone are appalling. Tilt the phone even a bit and you start to see the colour shift. It will get you blue, because the colours get so blue.
That’s not where it ends; the phone’s dimensions are also very strange and it looks a bit wider than most phones around. It’s only 2mm narrower than the Nokia 7 Plus, but a huge 17.5 mm shorter. Reminds me of Danny DeVito, a fun super actor in a short and wide form factor.
Because the colour shift is so drastic in the phone, the curved part of the screen is almost unbearable. When you look at a white screen you will be left wondering why the sides of the page are so skewed. The curve is so dramatic that if anything you are reading or viewing is full width, the sides are basically illegible.
The reason I am being harsh on the Sirocco is because Nokia just made a brilliant LCD 1080 panel in the Nokia 7 Plus, and completely missed the brief in the Nokia 8 Sirocco. Clearly they can do screens well, just a strange decision overall.
Camera
The Nokia 8 Sirocco has 2 rear facing cameras, quite similar to the Nokia 7 Plus:
12 MP (f/1.8, 1.4µm)
13 MP (f/2.6, 1.0µm)
Once again Nokia has the Zeiss optics in the camera just like the 7 Plus. The cameras are so similar with basically the same strengths and pitfalls, I’m just going to quote that review.
Note: The pictures below are unedited but have been reduced in size and compressed.
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.
The low light shots on the other hand were a wee 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 in the Nokia 8 Sirocco is (like the 7 Plus) a custom camera version by Nokia. The pro mode is easy to access by swiping the shutter button up. You then get the amazing Nokia Pro mode like they used to have in their Windows phones. A super easy pro mode that gives you basically all the control. Go ahead, play with it.
The front facing camera is 5 MP and can record upto 1080p. This is a bit strange since the 7 Plus has a 16 MP front-camera. The pictures were actually still quite good and I guess it serves the purpose of Video calling or the PIP/dual-sight pics (Called bothie https://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-40952362/nokia-8-smartphone-takes-bothie-videos).
Audio
The Nokia 8 Sirocco doesn’t have a headphone jack, a sad thing to see since the Nokia 8 actually did come with one. This means two things. One, you get a USB C headphone in the box and two, you need the provided dongle to use your 3.5 mm jack headphones with the phone. A minor annoyance, but something I guess we have to live with. Still not sure why Nokia did this, probably give us that curvy design. *facepalm*
The headphones in the box actually look really nice. They have the little metal accent on the headphones and wire has the braided feel (not the entire part, just the part that goes into the phone).
The headphones have the one button remote which doubles as the microphone. The entire thing feels really premium and actually sounds great.
Just like the Nokia 7 Plus, the Sirocco comes with the a single bottom firing speaker which is a bit punchier than the one in the 7 Plus, or so I think… I say that because I feel the higher price point and fancy design is giving my ears some kind of financial bias towards the sound from the Nokia 8 sirocco. Does that make sense to you?
Battery
The Nokia 8 Sirocco comes with a 3,260 mAh battery. A nice beefy battery that’s quite comparable to most flagships, that cost almost 1000 AED more than the Sirocco.
Thanks to a good processor, the stock Android experience and the relatively good sized battery, the battery life on the Nokia 8 Sirocco is actually really good. It lasts the entire day on heavy usage. If you go into a bit of a power saving mode at times, the phone will last you really really well and you can give it a quick 1 hour charge in the morning and be off for the rest of the day again.
While the battery isn’t comparable to the 7 Plus, it’s still a brilliant battery and will keep you more than satisfied.
The Nokia 8 Sirocco comes with Quick Charge 4.0, another upgrade from the Nokia 8 and this phone also comes with Wireless Qi Charging.
Android One
It seems that the entire Nokia range of phones are moving to the stock Android experience. The medium to high end phones are running Android One, while the super low end phones are running Android Go.
This is great news to anyone who wants to get a Nokia phone, there is zero bloatware. You get the basic Google Apps (not all the apps, just the basics), a modified camera app and the Nokia Support app. That’s it.
Of course thanks to Android ONE you will get the latest version of Android and when new updates come out, you would be first to get them within a very very short wait period. These are such great things. Obviously with no skin, the OS will also run super fast. So a nice tight software experience.
Other Info
The Nokia 8 Sirocco comes in one configuration, 128 GB with 6 GB RAM
The phone costs about 2,399 AED and is available in the one colour, black.
There is supposed to be a dual sim variant of the phone, however in UAE there will only be the single sim option.
The Nokia 8 Sirocco is also IP67 certified which means it’s pretty water resistant.
You can get the phone in most of the popular outlets:
Axiom, Jumbo, Plugins, Emax, Carrefour, Lulu and Souq
Have you tried this phone yet? Do you like the design choice? Can you look around some of the inconveniences? Is that price point just simply irresistible?
