HMD Global is slowly and steadily increasing its presence in the Indian market with brilliant quality products. The brand Nokia which was once the market leader with its phones like 1100, 3310, 6600 etc kept on dominating the market till the advent of smartphones. Their downfall started probably with their strategy to avoid installing Android in Nokia phones and go with Windows OS. This strategy made this mobile phone giant to disappear from the market. But now Nokia is back on the track.

HMD Global recently added another mid-range smartphone Nokia 8.1 to its lineup, which is priced at Rs 26,999. Nokia is in partnership with Google to develop all Nokia smartphones (after Nokia 3) under Android One program. HMD Global boasts of being the company with the most number of Android One smartphones. This means you get stock Android experience with the durable Nokia hardware, what else do you want?

Look and Feel

The phone Nokia 8.1 is a good looking phone with notch design and 2.5D glass. The body is said to be crafted out of metallic frame but has glass back. The glossy glass back is quite slippery and attracts fingerprints, installing a soft protective case to overcome these problems. Protective case does not come inside the box.

Display

This phone comes with 6.18-inch  Full-HD+ IPS-LCD Puredisplay touchscreen with 2280×1080 resolution, 18.7:9 aspect ratio and 408-PPI pixel density. The display on this device supports high-quality HDR10 for the better viewing experience.

RAM and Storage

The phone has a 4GB LPPDDR4x RAM installed in it, which is sufficient for your daily multi-tasking. Internal storage capacity is 64GB with the option of expanding with an external storage memory card. The storage is expandable up to 400GB externally, so no worries.

Processor

This Nokia 8.1 smartphone is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 710, which is an Octa-core processor. The graphics processor on this phone is Adreno 616, which can be used in playing games and other tasks.

Android One

Like all other recent Nokia phones, Nokia 8.1 is also an Android One device and provides its users stock Android experience. The Android One program from Google enables the smartphones to receive security updates and software upgrades directly from Google. This makes the phones future-ready and usable for long period of time. This is the main reason why customers prefer buying smartphones covered under this Android One program. Nokia 8.1 comes loaded with Android 9.0(Pie) version of Android.

Camera

The rear camera on this phone is a dual-camera setup like most other phones of current times. The primary sensor of this rear dual-camera setup is a 12MP sensor with f/1.8 aperture, 1.4-micrometer pixel size and the secondary sensor is a 13MP sensor. This rear camera is loaded with features like Optical Image Stabilization(OIS) and Phase Detection Autofocus(PDAF). You can record 4K videos with this rear camera. The front camera is a single camera with 20MP shooter having f/2.0 aperture and 0.9-micrometer pixel size. This front camera can record videos to up to 1080p resolution.

Battery

Nokia 8.1 comes bundled with 3500 mAh battery, which is sufficient for a normal user. If you are a heavy user, the battery may drain within a few hours but thanks to 18W Fast Charging, you can charge the battery quickly.

Price

The phone has only one version with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. This version is available for Rs. 26,999 on Nokia website and Amazon.

Should you buy it?

Yes, this phone is definitely worth buying because of its stock Android experience and durability of Nokia hardware.

Read Also: Nokia 6.1 Plus and Nokia 5.1 Plus smartphones from Nokia