Nokia 7 Plus: Why you should be excited
It has been an interesting year for Nokia. Since its reboot under HMD Global's leadership, the Finnish smartphone maker has seen a strong resurgence that has helped it find some of its lost glory. India especially has been at the forefront of Nokia's comeback.
Earlier this week, the company's chief marketing officer, Pekka Rantala, reiterated this as he termed India as a crucial market, and ranked it "among the top three markets" for the company. Pekka, during the launch event, went on to claim that the company shipped over 70 million smartphones globally in the previous calendar year and grew their business by five times in the last eight months - numbers they are looking to improve on in 2018.
But the question remains how? 2017, to be honest, saw a number of important phone launches from Nokia, all at some really aggressive price points, and as such, to better them this year would take some doing. But as it turns out, Nokia's already taken its first step towards doing so, and has already launched four new smartphones in India to take the baton forward.
At an event in New Delhi, the HMD Global-led company showed off the Nokia 6 (2018), Nokia 7 Plus and its new flagship device, the Nokia 8 Sirocco. While the latter is the flagship offering that seeks to put Nokia in league with the likes of Samsungs and Apples of the tech world, it is arguably the Nokia 7 Plus, or as HMD Global likes to call it "the flagship hero for everyone" that the company appears to be banking on to drive up sales and stand out among competitors in a crucial business year.
The device has been priced at Rs 25,999. It will go up for pre-booking on April 20 and be available for sale starting April 30.
Design and display
Nokia 7 Plus is a device that the company claims is the result of the feedback it received from its users last year. A mid-range handset, this one targets the most important segment of the market from the price perspective. Part of the Android One initiative, the phone promises stock Android and timely updates for two years.
For the design, Nokia borrows from the DNA of its previous generation smartphones, but makes some important alterations that give the Nokia 7 Plus a fresh look. The first Nokia phone to adopt the 18:9 form factor, the device is adorned by a 6-inch FHD+ (2160x1080) IPS LCD panel on the front.
Although an obvious attempt at playing to the galleries, the phone's front still falls short of being truly bezel-less. However, what works in its favour is that despite this the 7 Plus doesn't feel boxy and old, but a forward-looking phone. The device's frame has been machined from a solid block of 6000 series aluminum, and at the back coated with six layers of paint to give it a premium ceramic feel.
To up the ante, Nokia's also thrown in a copper band that runs around the edges of the phone which adds to the premium look of the device and sets it apart from the competition in its price segment. Overall, the Nokia 7 Plus, when held in the hand feels like a solid device that's built to last, one that manages to look appealing while doing so.
What's under the hood?
Under the hood, the device is no slouch and comes packing a Snapdragon 660 SoC paired with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 265GB using a MicroSD. The Nokia 7 Plus is the first device to use the particular SoC in India, but if its performance on other phones is anything to go by, then expect it to be a good performer.
Announced in early 2017, the Snapdragon 660 is also the first chipset to feature the company's Kryo cores in the mid-range category and as such is more than equipped to handle performance-intensive tasks, while remaining energy efficient with the help of its four energy-efficient cores clocked at 1.8GHz.
Powering the phone is a 3800 mAh battery pack that Nokia claims can deliver up to two days of battery life.
Powerful cameras for the price
Coming to the optics, the phone packs some real punch for the price as it brings with it the same dual camera setup on board the more expensive Nokia 8 Sirocco – a 12-megapixel sensor with an f/1.75 lens, 1.4-micron pixels and Dual Pixel autofocus paired with a 13-megapixel telephoto sensor with 1-micron pixels and 2x lossless zoom. There also a 16-megapixel selfie camera on the front.
What's more is that these lenses on the Nokia 7 Plus have been developed in partnership with Zeiss optics, and comes with the bokeh mode and the impressive new Nokia Pro Camera app. There's also support for the signature bothie mode and the phone can also use the camera app to live stream on Facebook and YouTube directly. All of this, on paper at least, looks good.
However, we'd like to reserve our judgement in this department for now and talk about the phone's picture-taking prowess in depth in our full review.
Should you be excited?
Overall, Nokia 7 Plus is a device that tries to strike a sweet balance between powerful specs and looks without raising the price tag too high. It tries to marry the Finnish smartphone maker's unique design scheme, Qualcomm's powerful hardware, pure Android's convenience and Carl Zeiss' powerful optics to create a device that ticks pretty much all the boxes.
However, as is the greatest tragedy with the price segment its been placed in, the device, will see itself going up against a number of strong contenders that shine in their own right in terms of either specs, design or their extreme value for money price tags, and it is where the Nokia 7's facilities start to get exposed.
In comparison to the competition, Nokia 7 seems a little overpriced, with phones like the Oppo F7, the Moto X4 and even Xiaomi's Redmi Note 5 Pro giving the 7 Plus a good run for its money. However, what none of the other phones promise is the build quality, the unique copper-accented design, and reliability that Nokia promises, all traits that could help the phone justify its price tag and mark itself out as a worthy contender for the mid-range crown.