Is Nokia 8 Sirocco worth buying?
After rising from the ashes like a phoenix, of late, HMD Global-led Nokia has seen an upswing. Since its reboot a year and a half ago, this market leader from a bygone era has been steadily working towards finding its way back into what it believes is its rightful place – a seat at the high table of the smartphone industry.
To be honest, the company has been cautious in its efforts to do so. In its first year of adopting Android as the preferred driver for its hardware, it chose to tread carefully and restricted itself to populating its line-up with only budget and mid-segment flagship devices.
2018, till now, has been more of the same, with Nokia announcing an Android Go warrior, Nokia 1, alongside its budget and mid-segment offerings – Nokia 6 (2018) and 7 Plus. However, what's also been added to the mix this year is a touch of elegance, class and some ambition in the form of one finely crafted package that Nokia likes to call the 8 Sirroco.
The device sees Nokia marry a unique design scheme with high-end hardware to create what is a truly premium device in every sense of the word. With the reported Nokia 9 waiting in the wings, this one may not be Nokia's flagship entry for the year. But until the "flagship" comes along, the 8 Sirocco will remain Nokia's best phone to date. And for good reason.
At Rs 49,999, this is also the most expensive phone from Nokia to date and is being marketed as a special edition of the Nokia 8 that currently retails for as low as Rs 27,000. There is no denying that the phone has the charm to make you swoon over it, but what cannot be denied is that it also has its flaws. So is the Nokia 8 Sirocco worth its salt? Read on to find out.
Design
To begin with, let me make one thing clear. The Nokia 8 Sirocco is definitely a device that's been crafted to impress at first sight. It's among the most beautiful smartphones you can get your hands on right now and arguably Nokia's best-designed smartphone to date. Created using a thin stainless steel frame sandwiched between sheets of curved glass on the front and the back, the phone is an absolute gem to look at.
Another striking feature about the phone's design is just how sleek and slim it is. At its thickest, the 8 Sirocco is an impressive 7.5mm-thick, but around the sides where the curved glass melts into the steel frame, the phone shrinks to a meagre 2mm, making it look incredibly thin.
The phone's volume rocker and power button have also been positioned on the steel frame in such a way that they don't protrude much and Nokia has also done away with the 3.5mm jack to maintain the phone's sleek profile.
Compact in design, the 8 Sirroco is easy to carry and its chassis is machined from a block of stainless steel – which Nokia claims is 2.5 times stronger than 6000 series Aluminium. This, married with the smooth Corning Gorilla Glass 5, gives the phone a worthwhile heft, and it feels pleasant to hold.
However, the design choices also come with their own shortcomings. For instance, the closely packed buttons on the device may not work for all as they take some getting used to. Because of being so slim on both the sides, the phone develops slightly sharp edges which could make it uncomfortable to hold it for long durations.
Another issue with implementing such a compact design is the placement of the speaker, which, to be honest, isn't great and could be a cause of irritation while playing games or watching movies on the device.
Nokia's decision to machine more than 95 per cent of the 8 Sirocco's body out of glass does make the phone look like a work of art, but on the flip side, it also makes it seem fragile. Glass on the back makes the phone more prone to picking up fingerprint smudges.
Such fears can be alleviated by using the silicon cover that Nokia ships in the box. However, be warned; using the silicon cover will come at the cost of hampering the phone's looks.
Display
A central aspect of the 8 Sirroco's design is its infinity style curved display that affords the phone a unique look that only a handful of phones can rival. The curved 5.5-inch pOLED display also gives the illusion that there are close to no bezels on the phone. However, that's far from the truth.
For what it's worth, the 8 Sirocco sports enough bezels, but the curved display on the device masks the display's 16:9 aspect ratio and gives the phone an edge-to-edge look.
At a time smartphone makers are taking the easy route and slapping easy-to-procure, tall 18:9 panels on their phones, Nokia's efforts in crafting a display that affords the user the experience of an 18:9 panel without having to deal with the stretching and cropping of videos that come along with this unusual aspect ratio should be lauded.
The Quad HD (2560x1440) display, with a pixel density of 534 ppi, is adequately sharp and produces vibrant and punchy colours, but when it comes to brightness, the 8 Sirocco leaves a little to be desired. This can be problematic as prolonged use under sunlight also drains the phone's battery fast. Despite this, overall, it is one of the better-calibrated displays out there in the market to watch movies and consume other multimedia content on.
The pOLED display also doubles up as an Always-On-Display, which neatly highlights important information such as notifications, the phone's clock and battery percentage without having to awaken the phone's display.
Specifications and performance
Although Nokia insists on calling the 8 Sirocco a special edition phone from the Nokia 8 line-up, in all honesty, it is a completely new phone altogether, one that has very little in common with the boxy handset introduced last year. Despite retaining the generation-old Snapdragon 835 SoC, the phone finds itself upgraded with an extra 2GB of RAM and double the storage of the Nokia 8 announced in India last year.
In terms of performance, despite not being equipped with Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon 845 SoC, the phone performs well. Yes, the 8 Sirocco does lose out to phones that sport the newer SoC in synthetic benchmarks, but that's the only aspect where we find it lacking.
The bump up to 6GB RAM and HMD Global upgrading the 8 Sirocco to an Android One device makes it run blazingly fast and rival any flagship device when it comes to performance in real-world usage.
Apart from improving performance, being part of the Android One family sees the 8 Sirocco running on the latest Oreo version — Android Oreo 8.1 out of the box. This guarantees it timely security updates for at least two years as well as two major Android updates in Android P and Android Q in the future.
The phone also brings with it a number of other interesting features as well as a fast fingerprint scanner and Face Unlock capabilities (the latter had been taken away with an update but has been brought back, having been refined by HMD Global).
Overall, the 8 Sirocco performs as a flagship should and during my time with the phone, it was a joy to use as it showed no lags, hang-ups or stutters.
Cameras
As was the problem with last year's Nokia phones, optics is where things start to go downhill for the 8 Sirocco.
Although Nokia has bumped the cameras on the 8 Sirocco and equipped the device with a Zeiss branded 12-megapixel+13-megapixel dual camera setup at the rear with 2X optical zoom and the ability to shoot images with depth of field effects, its cameras still fail to impress. Part of the problem is the lack of Optical Image Stablisation (OIS) on the phone, while the rest can be attributed to Nokia cutting costs with the lenses.
Case in point: the interesting fact that HMD Global has used the same camera setup on the 8 Sirocco that it also used on its mid-segment offering, Nokia 7 Plus.
Having said that, in bright daylight, the camera still performs well and captures images with vivid colours and enough details. However, it is in low-light scenarios that the frailities of this setup truly start to expose themselves. Lack of detail and high noise are among the issues that hamper camera performance in dark surroundings.
But that's not where the problems end. Despite making a smartphone which could give any flagship a run for its money, HMD Global has decided to hold back by cutting down on the front camera of the device from the Nokia 8 last year. As a result, the 8 Sirocco now comes only with a 5-Megapixel camera on the front.
In terms of features, the 8 Sirroco's camera comes with Live Bokeh and a Pro Mode. On the device, the latter lets users manually tweak the ISO, White Balance, shutter speed and exposure to their liking. There’s also the Bothie mode that captures both front and rear images at the same time.
Battery
The device gets its juice from an above-par, 3,260mAh battery pack that backed by the energy efficient 835 SoC and improvements brought in by the Android 8.1 Oreo helps the phone last easily a day when subjected to moderate-to-heavy usage. Though its not in the same league as the Nokia 7 Plus, which easily gets through two days of use without needing to be recharged, the 8 Sirocco's battery life is still impressive as it gives about five hours of screen on time (SOT) despite the power-hungry QHD display on board.
The phone also brings with it fast charging tech that promises 50 per cent charge in about 30 minutes. Nokia has also equipped the phone with wireless charging; however, like most other phones, the charger for this will have to be procured separately by the user.
Verdict
Apart from being a definite upgrade on the model from 2017, the device is arguably Nokia's best Android smartphone to date and comes with a beautiful design that is art in itself. It's clean, easy to use and looks beautiful without trying too hard.
The 8 Sirocco is also a statement of intent from Nokia, one that tells the world that the HMD Global-led smartphone maker can also build devices that only a few in the industry are capable of.
But away from the rivalries and the marketing blitzkrieg, the phone is equally a reminder to us all that smartphones are not a sum of their internals. It takes users back to much simpler days when craftsmanship in design paired with real-world performance — not synthetic benchmarks — made a smartphone the real winner.
With Nokia 8 Sirocco, HMD Global is trying to tell its audience that more than being the fastest or the most powerful, what makes a premium flagship a device to covet is how it looks and performs in real-world situations.
However, despite 8 Sirocco's sheen, it is hard to justify the phone's Rs 49,999 price tag that puts it in direct competition with the Samsungs and Pixels of the tech world. At the current price point, with its frailties — such as below-par camera setup and its lacking-in-paper specs — the 8 Sirocco is greatly exaggerated.
At even Rs 7,000-8,000 less, the 8 Sirocco could have become the king of the mid-range flagship segment in the country, and become a runaway winner there. But having said that, with its silky looks, and the promise of pure Android backed no-nonsense performance, the 8 Sirocco will still find many takers.
As such, the phone comes highly recommended to those looking for a device that looks and feels absolutely premium and is not really concerned with industry-leading imaging prowess, or the "fastest" processor in town.
But even if you decide the phone is not for you, it won't likely bother the Finnish smartphone maker much. The 8 Sirocco is Nokia upping the game in the premium flagship segment.
And that is probably Nokia's endgame with the device: to be finally back and trading punches with the big names even if that means not selling a million units of this phone.