With the help of HMD Global, the Chinese company that bought Nokia a while ago, Nokia phones came back from the dead - better than ever. Some models are preying on the nostalgia while others are simply a great value option. At the high end, you have the Nokia 7 (Plus), the Nokia 8 and 8 S (or Scirocco). Well, I bought a Nokia 8 after my good old Moto Z died and I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Here are my thoughts on it.
Where to buy: https://amzn.to/2kLNV2o
Beneath that screen is a fingerprint sensor and the capacitive "Back" and "Task view" buttons. Only annoyance here is the fact that the fingerprint reader is slow at times and coming from the Moto Z, that could use the fingerprint reader as an alternative lock screen button (whereas the one here only takes the place of the "Home" button - including that long-press-Google-Assistant shortcut), it took some time to get used to it.
The phone's chassis is 151.5 x 73.7 x 7.9 mm and is a little heavy at 160g, but because of the shape, it does not feel bulky in your hands. Contributing to that great hand-feel is the 6000 series aluminium body that is available in quite a few different colours: the "polished" copper orange, "polished" dark blue and the matte "Steel" and "Tempered" dark blue. I have the polished (glossy) blue model. It's a fingerprint magnet, but damn, it looks so good (if you get to see it, of course, I don't want to risk scratching it and bought one of the ugliest cases out there). Surprisingly, HMD/Nokia managed to fit a headphone-jack on this phone (*insert mind blown meme here*). Antenna lines are there, but Nokia managed to hide them just like Apple did on the iPhone 7 on the lower and top edge of the smartphone.
The one thing that annoys me most about the design of this phone is the ridiculously long "Designed by HMD Global Oy/ Karaporti 2 02610 Espoo Finland/ Model TA-1012/ Made in China" label on the back. Not only is it written in a high contrast colour (this light beige) but there's also too much text and makes the phone look cheap.
Also present is a decent 3090mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0 support (over the USB Type C port located at the very bottom of the device).
The whole package is IP54 water and dust resistant, a convenient bonus, but this standard won't allow you to fully submerge the device in water: (As the standard specification states: IPx4 = Water splashing against the enclosure from any direction shall have no harmful effect).
Everything will set you back about 400EUR, depending on where you buy it from.
But that's not all. This screen also manages to get very bright (about 700nits) when under direct sunlight, brighter than almost every other LCD panel I've ever seen. This means that you will never have to struggle to read anything from that screen, even while at the beach. What I've noticed, however, is that the display usually takes a few seconds to get to full brightness, so content is at first not readable (this could also be an issue only with my device, idk & idc, it does not bother me). Contributing to the amazing performance is the contrast ratio.
My last phone was a Moto Z which used an AMOLED panel that I kind of liked and it took me quite a few days to get used to the greyish blacks of this LCD panel. Not that the Nokia's screen can't display blacks at all, I think that they are fairly deep, especially when compared to other phones.
Another thing to note is the slight blue-ish tone of this panel. If you put it side by side with an iPhone you will notice immediately that the iPhone's screen has this yellowish, warm hue, while the Nokia tends to colder tones. It does not bother me at all, in fact, I prefer it this way, but I recommend that you first see this for yourself before buying, as you may not find it appealing.
The display is surrounded by fairly thick bezels and, while I personally couldn't care less about this, many people prefer a bezel-less approach, no clue why Nokia chose to stick to a traditional, fairly small at 5.3" 16:9 aspect ratio screen.
Like on most of the Nokias of old there also is a Glance Screen feature. However unlike, let's say, the older Nokia Lumia 950, its implementation is poor. It will only stay on for up to 20 minutes (depending on your settings) - this is fine, if it would be on at all time it would drain the battery pretty fast as this phone uses an LCD panel - and it will only display the time, the date, your alarm and 3 types of notifications: missed calls, messages and emails - so you can't see for instance if you've got that SMS with the TAN code from your bank or another useless message from a group-chat on WhatsApp, you will only know that you got 2 unread messages and you will have to unlock your phone to see exactly where those notifications come from. This "feature" seems half-baked and not well-thought through with this implementation. Perhaps it could have been best to only show the time and the date and add some sort of notification LED or something... Hopefully, Nokia can see this mistake and fix it with future patches.
That being said, this is not a bad camera by any means (it got a 68 out of 100 from DxO Mark, if you're interested). When there's enough light, most pictures come out pretty nice, although they still look sub-par when compared with the flagships it has to compete against.
Turn down the lights, and photos start getting fuzzy. Literally. Quite often the camera can't seem to be able to focus on the object you're trying to shoot. And even if it manages, the resulting images are grainy and soft.
Selfies come out good in good lighting conditions. Just like the main camera, the selfie-shooter has trouble focusing, especially in low light, when the only thing you'll like get to see in your photos is the rather high amount of grain.
Nokia 8 videos aren't bad per se, but once again I have to point out that competing devices have moved onto the better performance. On the other hand, the Nokia 8 has OZO branded microphones which really help when shooting concerts or things that are otherwise difficult for other smartphone mics to accurately capture.
Nokia has not installed any bloatware on this handset, which is great. The launcher they use looks and feels just like the Pixel Launcher: it includes the Google Now feed if you swipe right, the app drawer is the same one and there's even the Wallpaper app from Google there. The only 2 preinstalled apps are the Camera app (I've talked about it in the section above) and a "Support" app. This app includes the phone's user guide, a way to chat with a support rep, read through FAQs, find the nearest service centre, and other related stuff - so I can't say it counts as bloatware. Nokia's also added a Files icon that takes you to the built-in file manager without needing to go through the Storage menu in Settings.
The Nokia 8 may have a Snapdragon 835 paired with 4GB of RAM, but it is not the fastest SD 835 device out there. Don't get me wrong, you probably won't notice any slowdowns unless you put is side by side a Google Pixel or a Moto Z2 Force so I would not call this an issue. All other "faster" similarly spec-ed Android devices are at least 100EUR more expensive so there really is no reason to complain.
Beneath the screen lie the fingerprint sensor and the capacitive buttons. I personally think it's placement is great, however, I find it fairly slow: if you try to wake the phone from sleep by tapping the fingerprint reader it will take a few seconds to register your finger and to unlock the phone. I've also noticed that it requires far more pressure to register a tap than any other fingerprint reader I have used.
So the specs are there, the features are well balanced, but something is missing. The Nokia 8 tick all the marks, but does not exceed anywhere. Nokia/ HMD Global played it safe with this one, perhaps they wanted to see how the world would react to a new Nokia flagship in 2017? - But this also makes this flagship feel dated from launch.
Despite the legendary-among-Nokia phones Carl-Zeiss-branded cameras the Nokia 8 fails to deliver great quality. Add to that the general inconsistency of the software (the occasional stutter) and the oddly slow fingerprint reader and this phone start getting less and less of a compelling choice over its main competitors. To make matters worse, the performance should be on par gave the silicon that's packed inside, but oddly enough it isn't.
On the other hand, all competitors, like the OnePlus 5/ 5T are more expensive than the Nokia 8, that you can often get with a significant discount these days. And despite all of its "issues", I will still carry my Nokia 8 in my pocket for the foreseeable future.
There are now not one but two rumoured handsets that are expected to outclass the Nokia 8 later in 2018, namely the Nokia 9 and Nokia 10, so perhaps the Finnish company will finally produce a compromise-free top of the line device with either of those. We'll have to wait and see.
Where to buy: https://amzn.to/2kLNV2o
The Hardware
On the hardware level, we are looking at the typical flagship of 2017: Snapdragon 835, 4GB of RAM with 64GB of onboard storage or 6GB of RAM on the 128GB variant. That storage is expandable with a micro-SD card if you need. On top of that, you have a 5.3" IPS LCD panel (the resolution is 1440x2560) protected by Gorilla-Glass 5. You also get stock Android with fast updates (the current version is Android 8.1.0 Oreo, with the April Security Update. In terms of cameras, we have 3 13MP shooters: 2 on the back, one on the front. The rear-facing cameras have the legendary Zeiss branding. One of them is a standard RGB sensor, while the other is a black-and-white (monochrome sensor). All three cameras can work together to produce what Nokia calls a "Bothie": it's basically a picture split between the image captured by the rear sensors and the one captured by the front camera. More on this soon.Beneath that screen is a fingerprint sensor and the capacitive "Back" and "Task view" buttons. Only annoyance here is the fact that the fingerprint reader is slow at times and coming from the Moto Z, that could use the fingerprint reader as an alternative lock screen button (whereas the one here only takes the place of the "Home" button - including that long-press-Google-Assistant shortcut), it took some time to get used to it.
The phone's chassis is 151.5 x 73.7 x 7.9 mm and is a little heavy at 160g, but because of the shape, it does not feel bulky in your hands. Contributing to that great hand-feel is the 6000 series aluminium body that is available in quite a few different colours: the "polished" copper orange, "polished" dark blue and the matte "Steel" and "Tempered" dark blue. I have the polished (glossy) blue model. It's a fingerprint magnet, but damn, it looks so good (if you get to see it, of course, I don't want to risk scratching it and bought one of the ugliest cases out there). Surprisingly, HMD/Nokia managed to fit a headphone-jack on this phone (*insert mind blown meme here*). Antenna lines are there, but Nokia managed to hide them just like Apple did on the iPhone 7 on the lower and top edge of the smartphone.
The one thing that annoys me most about the design of this phone is the ridiculously long "Designed by HMD Global Oy/ Karaporti 2 02610 Espoo Finland/ Model TA-1012/ Made in China" label on the back. Not only is it written in a high contrast colour (this light beige) but there's also too much text and makes the phone look cheap.
Also present is a decent 3090mAh battery with QuickCharge 3.0 support (over the USB Type C port located at the very bottom of the device).
The whole package is IP54 water and dust resistant, a convenient bonus, but this standard won't allow you to fully submerge the device in water: (As the standard specification states: IPx4 = Water splashing against the enclosure from any direction shall have no harmful effect).
Everything will set you back about 400EUR, depending on where you buy it from.
The Display
I wanted to go a bit more in-depth here because Nokia really did a very good job with this screen: despite being an LCD panel, the small size (5.3") combined with the high-resolution results in an insane 554ppi. This means that you will never be able to distinguish a single pixel, regardless of how hard you try.But that's not all. This screen also manages to get very bright (about 700nits) when under direct sunlight, brighter than almost every other LCD panel I've ever seen. This means that you will never have to struggle to read anything from that screen, even while at the beach. What I've noticed, however, is that the display usually takes a few seconds to get to full brightness, so content is at first not readable (this could also be an issue only with my device, idk & idc, it does not bother me). Contributing to the amazing performance is the contrast ratio.
My last phone was a Moto Z which used an AMOLED panel that I kind of liked and it took me quite a few days to get used to the greyish blacks of this LCD panel. Not that the Nokia's screen can't display blacks at all, I think that they are fairly deep, especially when compared to other phones.
Another thing to note is the slight blue-ish tone of this panel. If you put it side by side with an iPhone you will notice immediately that the iPhone's screen has this yellowish, warm hue, while the Nokia tends to colder tones. It does not bother me at all, in fact, I prefer it this way, but I recommend that you first see this for yourself before buying, as you may not find it appealing.
The display is surrounded by fairly thick bezels and, while I personally couldn't care less about this, many people prefer a bezel-less approach, no clue why Nokia chose to stick to a traditional, fairly small at 5.3" 16:9 aspect ratio screen.
Like on most of the Nokias of old there also is a Glance Screen feature. However unlike, let's say, the older Nokia Lumia 950, its implementation is poor. It will only stay on for up to 20 minutes (depending on your settings) - this is fine, if it would be on at all time it would drain the battery pretty fast as this phone uses an LCD panel - and it will only display the time, the date, your alarm and 3 types of notifications: missed calls, messages and emails - so you can't see for instance if you've got that SMS with the TAN code from your bank or another useless message from a group-chat on WhatsApp, you will only know that you got 2 unread messages and you will have to unlock your phone to see exactly where those notifications come from. This "feature" seems half-baked and not well-thought through with this implementation. Perhaps it could have been best to only show the time and the date and add some sort of notification LED or something... Hopefully, Nokia can see this mistake and fix it with future patches.
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| Don't mind my cracked screen protector pls |
The Camera
You'd think that this new Nokia flagship would be as great at taking photos as the Lumias of old, with it's Zeiss branding and those dual cameras. But you'd be wrong. At launch, it got some pretty poor camera ratings because of the poorly designed camera app. Right now, the camera app has been greatly improved. HMD even bought some Lumia-Camera-related (remember that app?) patents from Microsoft to build from there. And I think the software, while not being perfect, can't compensate for the hardware.That being said, this is not a bad camera by any means (it got a 68 out of 100 from DxO Mark, if you're interested). When there's enough light, most pictures come out pretty nice, although they still look sub-par when compared with the flagships it has to compete against.
Turn down the lights, and photos start getting fuzzy. Literally. Quite often the camera can't seem to be able to focus on the object you're trying to shoot. And even if it manages, the resulting images are grainy and soft.
Selfies come out good in good lighting conditions. Just like the main camera, the selfie-shooter has trouble focusing, especially in low light, when the only thing you'll like get to see in your photos is the rather high amount of grain.
Nokia 8 videos aren't bad per se, but once again I have to point out that competing devices have moved onto the better performance. On the other hand, the Nokia 8 has OZO branded microphones which really help when shooting concerts or things that are otherwise difficult for other smartphone mics to accurately capture.
Camera Samples
It would not make sense to talk about the camera of this phone without showing some proof for my affirmations. So they are.
Software and performance
"Pure Android. Always up to date" is what you read everywhere on Nokia's advertising billboards. And that seems to be no lie. Every month there has been a new update, in the second week of that month, that's true, but nonetheless, it's remarkable. Take the old Moto Z for example. It's been promised the Android 8 treatment and there's no sign of that coming in the next weeks.Nokia has not installed any bloatware on this handset, which is great. The launcher they use looks and feels just like the Pixel Launcher: it includes the Google Now feed if you swipe right, the app drawer is the same one and there's even the Wallpaper app from Google there. The only 2 preinstalled apps are the Camera app (I've talked about it in the section above) and a "Support" app. This app includes the phone's user guide, a way to chat with a support rep, read through FAQs, find the nearest service centre, and other related stuff - so I can't say it counts as bloatware. Nokia's also added a Files icon that takes you to the built-in file manager without needing to go through the Storage menu in Settings.
The Nokia 8 may have a Snapdragon 835 paired with 4GB of RAM, but it is not the fastest SD 835 device out there. Don't get me wrong, you probably won't notice any slowdowns unless you put is side by side a Google Pixel or a Moto Z2 Force so I would not call this an issue. All other "faster" similarly spec-ed Android devices are at least 100EUR more expensive so there really is no reason to complain.
Beneath the screen lie the fingerprint sensor and the capacitive buttons. I personally think it's placement is great, however, I find it fairly slow: if you try to wake the phone from sleep by tapping the fingerprint reader it will take a few seconds to register your finger and to unlock the phone. I've also noticed that it requires far more pressure to register a tap than any other fingerprint reader I have used.
The Battery
The 3.090mAh battery definitely isn't the largest available out there but paired with the relatively small and power-sipping screen, it can keep the lights on for about 5-7 hours straight or about 2 days if you don't use it that much: I charge it every other day while still being able to listen to about 2 hours of music over Bluetooth and spend about 2 hours per day chatting via WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Instagram. This is, in my opinion, a very respectable result, as many other competing phones need to be topped up at the end of every day - with the Nokia 8 you can literally forget to charge it overnight and still be fine the next day. And if you forget to charge it 2 days in a row, there's no need to worry either: The phone is shipped with an 18W wall adapter that also supports USB-PD (so, in theory, it could also charge - probably not both charge and run - a small laptop and even keep the Nintendo Switch running while docked and while you're playing Zelda). This wall adapter charges the Nokia 8 all the way up to 48% in just about 30 minutes. Great job Nokia.Conclusion
All in all the Nokia 8 is a good phone for day to day use. Sure, it does not compare with the more premium flagships out there, even if it gets respectably close to them. The build quality is great - the cold, curved metal body feels amazing in the hand.So the specs are there, the features are well balanced, but something is missing. The Nokia 8 tick all the marks, but does not exceed anywhere. Nokia/ HMD Global played it safe with this one, perhaps they wanted to see how the world would react to a new Nokia flagship in 2017? - But this also makes this flagship feel dated from launch.
Despite the legendary-among-Nokia phones Carl-Zeiss-branded cameras the Nokia 8 fails to deliver great quality. Add to that the general inconsistency of the software (the occasional stutter) and the oddly slow fingerprint reader and this phone start getting less and less of a compelling choice over its main competitors. To make matters worse, the performance should be on par gave the silicon that's packed inside, but oddly enough it isn't.
On the other hand, all competitors, like the OnePlus 5/ 5T are more expensive than the Nokia 8, that you can often get with a significant discount these days. And despite all of its "issues", I will still carry my Nokia 8 in my pocket for the foreseeable future.
There are now not one but two rumoured handsets that are expected to outclass the Nokia 8 later in 2018, namely the Nokia 9 and Nokia 10, so perhaps the Finnish company will finally produce a compromise-free top of the line device with either of those. We'll have to wait and see.
Thanks for reading folks, I hope you enjoyed this article as much as I enjoyed writing it.
All Amazon links for the products featured here are affiliate links, that means that I get a small commission for every purchase so it would be nice if you would use them.
This article is not sponsored in any way by any third party - I purchased these products with my own money. The opinions expressed here are therefore my own.
All Amazon links for the products featured here are affiliate links, that means that I get a small commission for every purchase so it would be nice if you would use them.
This article is not sponsored in any way by any third party - I purchased these products with my own money. The opinions expressed here are therefore my own.
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