Review: Nokia 6
ThisĀ NokiaĀ is still designed in Finland, itās still made like a tank, but the actual firm behind it is HMD Global and all the manufacturing is in China. So take the āNokiaā branding with just a pinch of salt. Thereās little DNA here from the classicĀ Nokiadesigns of the past, though some visual clues have been taken from phones such as the Nokia N9 (running Meego, so thatās the fourth OS mentioned in the last two paragraphs!), Lumia 800 and Lumia 920.
As a smartphone, the ā6ā is well styled, I was enormously impressed by how solid it is, with slab aluminium sides and polished chamfered edges. Itās heavy too, at almost 170g, almost in phablet territory with a 5.5ā screen.
The fingerprint sensor, down the bottom, is 100% accurate, but the specification here means that it takes a second from placing your thumb to theĀ Nokia 6Ā being unlocked and the display powered up. Is a second too long? Not for the target market, though anyone exposed to flagships (think iPhone 7, Google Pixel) will notice a difference.
Around the perimeter is a welcome 3.5mm headphone jack, all metal volume and power buttons, a speaker aperture (of which more later) and⦠a microUSB charging and data port.
Thatās right ā microUSB on a Ā£200 smartphone in 2017, rather than the now ubiquitous USB Type C. It feels very out of place and my theory is that theĀ Nokia 6design was actually finalised at least 18 months ago, back at the tail end of 2015, when USB Type C was still only on flagships (the Lumia 950 and 950 XL famously launched with this, among the first smartphones with āCā). The delays HMD Global faced getting theĀ Nokia 6Ā to market have left it with this single anachronistic spec point. Most users wonāt mind, of course, microUSB jacks and chargers are everywhere still ā and, to be fair, itās just about the only major disappointment in theĀ Nokia 6. For the price.
On the back is the reassuring āNOKIAā logo, just as on the Symbian phones and Lumias of old, plus a very āNokiaā vertical raised camera island. I suspect that the raising is purely cosmetic, since thereās no reason for this pretty average phone camera to need the extra thickness. Iāll come back to the camera later on.
The display is IPS LCD and 1080p resolution. With the RGB stripe (i.e. all pixels represented, unlike on AMOLED screens), the screen is extremely crisp and decently bright, though I noted that contrast levels werenāt brilliant in the sun.
The top earpiece is used as a ātweeterā and piped the left channel for any stereo audio. This is ā absolutely ā aĀ hackĀ of the highest order. The results when watching Netflix or similar are a definitely imbalance in the sound, with 90% of the volume coming from the bottom firing main speaker and 10% from the earpiece. Much of the time this doesnāt really matter, but just occasionally somethingās supposed to be happening in the left channel in terms of music or effects and⦠you can hardly hear it. With proper stereo now on the HP Elite x3 and Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro (etc.) a mainly-right-channel hack just doesnāt cut it.
Still, for sat-nav, podcast and speakerphone use, the speaker combination is absolutely fine and pretty loud.Ā Also on the audio front is a FM radio aerial built-in, not something you get on every phone nowadays, and indicating theĀ Nokia 6ās potential markets, in countries where data isnāt ubiquitous and where FM radio is still a major source of news and entertainment.
You also get support for 5GHz Wi-fi and for NFC, the former meaning that HMD has gone the extra mile in terms of licensing all the Snapdragon 430ās capabilities, and the latter meaning that Android Pay is a āgoā.
Imaging was always going to be a let down after the best ofĀ NokiaĀ cameras in the Symbian and Windows Phone worlds, of course. And it is. The 16MP f/2.0 main camera shoot in 12MP in 16:9 and results are generally OK. The Phase Detection Auto-Focus regularly got confused by some of my arty macro shots, but youāll have no issues for regular shots. In low light, results are distinctly āmehā, though not overly noisy, so thereās some effective noise reduction at work, even if details are then not as clear as youād like. Again, think of the price, though ā results are inline with this. Just donāt see the word āNOKIAā and think āgreat cameraā!
Although thereās no physical shutter button on theĀ Nokia 6, a tap on the volume up button also takes the shot and you quickly get used to this arrangement. Importantly, the squared sides of the phone mean that keeping a grip while snapping is very easy.
Video capture is at 1080p but thereās no software or hardware stabilisation (OIS), so results are unremarkable. The front cameraās 8MP, by the way, and also not worth dwelling on.
The Snapdragon 430 chipset in here is paired with 3GB RAM and theĀ Nokia 6chugs along happily in this configuration, without ever really seeming speedy. The target market wonāt mind and games work just fine. 32GB of internal storage is backed by microSD support, though you do have to sacrifice the optional second (2G-only) nanoSIM slot for this ā not a big deal for most users, I suspect.
The OS here is vanilla Android 7.1.1, with nothing fancy added. Because of this, I suspect, itās trivial forĀ NokiaĀ to keep things up to date, with the August security updates from Google only days after the Nexus and Pixel phones, with Google Assistant available out of the box, and with the official Google Pixel launcher. If youāre thinking of switching to Android from Symbian or Windows Phone then start with something āstockā like this ā itāll break you into Android very easily.
Android is an easy transition from Symbian, with many similar UI and OS concepts, though itās unlikely anyoneās coming straight from the latter to the former ā but it will still seem familiar to AAS readers who have been out of touch with the phone world recently. Android is also pretty accessible to anyone used to Windows 10 Mobile, given the latterās UI convergence with the rest of the world recently ā think hamburger and āā¦ā menus, for example.
Moving straight to this Android-poweredĀ NokiaĀ from Windows Phone 8.1 is more of a culture shock, though at least the massively better stocked application store is a sweetener. Any application that youāve ever heard of is available here. Every shop, every service, every bank, you hardly need to touch the Chrome web browser ā though that too is excellent and arguably better than Edge on Windows 10 Mobile and certainly superior to Web on Symbian and IE on WP8.1, of course.
Battery life was good in my tests, with the 3000mAh battery working with the comparatively low end chipset to easily get through a day. In theory thereās fast charging, compatible with Quick Charge 3.0 ā this comes with the Snapdragon 430, though in my tests I couldnāt get theĀ Nokia 6Ā to acknowledge any of my fast chargers, so perhaps thereās a software update needed to enable this.
Overall, theĀ Nokia 6Ā is an unremarkable smartphone, almost every component is a downgrade from the Lumia 950, for example, it performs and is in the same realm as the Lumia 650, though I have to give props to Nokia/HMD for the terrifically solid construction and design. Itās a phone I kept picking up, it feels like a serious tool, and itās a damn good start to the reinvention of theĀ NokiaĀ brand.