Nokia 8 review: return of the Finnish flagship

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This was published 6 years ago

Nokia 8 review: return of the Finnish flagship

By Tim Biggs
Updated

For the first time in a very long time, a Nokia flagship phone is worthy of consideration alongside the latest from Samsung, LG, Sony and Apple.

After testing the waters with a trio of low-to-mid-range Nokia phones, HMD Global has produced a very confident handset that respects the Nokia heritage but doesn't pander to nostalgia, and one that makes sense as an Android phone. Sticking close to the same playbook that Google used to produce its Nexus and Pixel phones, the Nokia 8 is a solid performer that has its own character but doesn't go in for desperate gimmicks or proprietary software.

The Nokia 8 has a simple, professional look, with a camera bump that evokes the brand's past.

The Nokia 8 has a simple, professional look, with a camera bump that evokes the brand's past.Credit: HMD Global

Hardware and design

Anybody hoping for the kind of neon plastic bricks Nokia was known for with its Windows Phone line will be disappointed, as the 8 is almost business-like with its discrete lines and generic colour scheme, but some semblance of the old Nokia is there. The tall glass-covered and Ziess-branded camera array on the rear, for example, brings the popular 920 to mind, and the rounded body is very Lumia.

​With soft aluminium and silky glass, the Nokia 8 certainly feels like a more premium device than HMD's previous offerings, and it's slim enough to fit nicely in the hand even if its bezels make it physically bigger than competing phones with larger screens. It's a quietly confident design that doesn't have a lot of wow factor but that grew on me after a few days of carrying it around.

The Nokia8 in steel (above) and tempered blue.

The Nokia8 in steel (above) and tempered blue.Credit: HMD Global

The 5.3-inch quad-HD LCD panel here packs in a lot of pixels for its size and is sharp and bright, with excellent readability in the sun. Like the one on the Nokia 6 the screen is too blue for my liking, but unlike the 6 I couldn't find any options to correct this to something warmer in the 8's settings. This niggle aside, it's a very nice display indeed.

Under the hood the Nokia 8 proves HMD has what it takes to hang with the market leaders, featuring the Snapdragon 835 processor and 4GB of RAM, both standard for 2017 flagships. The screen is also coated in Gorilla Glass 5, and charging and connectivity comes via a USB-C 3.1 port, both luxuries not included on the cheaper Nokias. Rounding out the spec sheet is IP54 certification — i.e. it's splash resistant, but don't dunk it — and 64GB of storage with microSD support for up to 256GB.

The machine's design itself has some quirks, but they're more things to get used to than outright negatives. For example the fingerprint scanner is accurate but feels very low. The top and lower bezels make the phone quite tall and reaching for the very bottom with your thumb requires a daringly insecure hold. It also starts buzzing the second anything brushes it while the phone is locked, attempting to communicate your fingerprint wasn't read but usually making it seem as though you have a message when you don't.

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I was quite pleased with the battery life on the Nokia 8, which generally ended a 16-hour day of heavy use with around 20 per cent of its charge remaining.

Taking 'bothies' in Dual-Sight mode sounds like a fine idea, but I doubt it will catch on.

Taking 'bothies' in Dual-Sight mode sounds like a fine idea, but I doubt it will catch on.Credit: HMD Global

The rear of the phone sports two 13MP cameras, one colour and one monochrome. These take fantastic, vivid colour photos and sharp, high contrast black and white shots. You can choose to use both cameras at once so the phone can stack them for better contrast and low light performance, but honestly I couldn't tell the difference between these and just using the colour sensor. Certainly the latest phones from HTC and Huawei make a better argument for dual-lens arrays, but it's hard to complain when every shot I took with the 8 turned out looking pretty great. There's another 13MP shooter on the front for selfies.

Video capture goes up to 4K resolution, but the vision looks a bit more stable at 1080p. Audio on recorded video is very good thanks to tech from Nokia OZO, makers of 360 degree cameras and audio equipment.

Software

As HMD promised, the operating system powering the Nokia 8 is almost entirely vanilla Android. This means smooth performance, no branded features or apps, no bloatware, lots of Google-powered goodness and — one hopes — swift access to new updates.

The most immediately noticeable difference between the software here and a clean install of Android is a subtle coat of blue and white paint. System icons — like 'settings' and 'phone' — are all blue circles, and accents like sliders are blue as well. Otherwise the default apps are all Google's, with no generic alternatives.

You use Google Photos as your album, Chrome as your Browser, Gboard as your keyboard and so on, unless you choose to download something else. As with the Pixel there is no on-screen button to access the app drawer, you just swipe up. Swiping right from the home screen gets you Google Now cards, while holding home pulls up the Google Assistant.

A clean and uncluttered operating system is something I very much appreciate, and in this case it lets you customise what you like and leave the rest to Google, which is a major strength of Android. It must be said, however, that Nokia's few original contributions to its version of Android are all pretty bland.

As on some phones from Samsung and LG (and on Nokias, back in the Windows Phone days), the Nokia 8 features and always-on display. Called Glance, it's motion activated and lets you see the time and whether you have any notifications without actually waking the device. Unfortunately the 8 features an LCD screen, not OLED, so any time the screen displays anything the entire panel has to light up. Potential battery impact aside, I found it annoying to have the phone light up like a great glowing grey rectangle every time I moved it, and I turned this feature off fairly early on.

The camera app is wholly of HMD design, and — despite being a bit sluggish when you're using the colour and monochrome cameras simultaneously — offers exactly what you'd expect, with the addition of customisable watermarking options and instant native video streaming to YouTube or Facebook, which should be handy for streamers.

I found the much-hyped Dual-Sight, or "bothie" mode, which captures images from the front and rear cameras simultaneously, to be a bit of a letdown though. The idea is solid — streamers often inset their reactions in videos, and who wouldn't want to get a shot of the perfect sunset on one side with you and your friends' smiling faces on the other — but the reality is awkward. To get a good crop on your face you need to hold the phone with arm outstretched, the familiar selfie pose, but this is a garbage stance for taking decent video. A dedicated streamer wanting to make use of this mode could probably do it with a short selfie stick, but even for spontaneous Facebook Live posts or quirky travel shots it's not the best.

Should I get one?

At a recommended retail price of $899, the Nokia 8 is maybe a little pricier than I would have expected, but still below most flagships from the dominant players.

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Unlike a lot of other Android smartphones, the Nokia 8 doesn't really have any big headline-grabbing features. It doesn't have the biggest screen or crazy curves, it doesn't have cameras with optical zoom or snap-on peripherals, and it doesn't offer a lot of bespoke software. The Dual-Sight camera mode might appeal to some, but for most it's just a fun extra.

But if what you're after is a no-nonsense, fast and well put-together phone, this one is right up there with the best of them.

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