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Nokia 7.2: Likable But Not Lovable


Nokia 7.2 review: Likable But Not Lovable 

OUR VERDICT

The Nokia 7.2 offers premium design and solid performance at a mid-range price. It’s only the phone tries to travel above and beyond with features sort of a wide-angle camera that it stumbles.

FOR
  • Strong main cameras
  • Pleasing design
  • Smooth performance

AGAINST
  • Wide-angle camera may be a let-down
  • Slow charging
  • Unimpressive HDR


The Nokia 7.2 has all the aspects of a competent smartphone then tries to push a touch further. Its design is great, with a glance and feel that’s not too unlike the new Google Pixel 4. Though it’s lack of water resistance may be a testament to its mid-range status.

Nokia 7.2: Likable But Not Lovable


The display is big and bright, but the LCD panel doesn’t manage to stay up with OLED displays. And that’s still true when factoring in its PureDisplay mode, which converts content into HDR.

Performance is smooth across the board for the Nokia 7.2. Browsing, texting, streaming video, gaming, and snapping pictures all happens with ease.

The Nokia 7.2 tries to be special with its cameras. The first camera does a superb job altogether conditions, as does the selfie camera. There’s a wide-angle camera and a depth sensor also, but these do little to enhance the experience, only offering some ways to urge playful shots.

The whole package comes at an honest price, and competes well with most other phones within the price range.

NOKIA 7.2 RELEASE DATE AND PRICE
  • Out now within the US, UK and Australia
  • Costs $349/£249.99/AU$499
  • Different regions have different configurations

The Nokia 7.2 offers tons for the worth, though there are multiple configurations available and at the time of writing they are not all available everywhere.

In the US you are looking at paying $349 for a model with 128GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. within the UK there currently only seems to be a version with 64GB of storage and 4GB of RAM, which will set you back £249.99.

Australia has access to the highest model with 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM for AU$549, while the 64GB/4GB model are going to be landing exclusively on Telstra within the country at a later date for AU$499.

We've reviewed the US model, a version which comes with many storage and room for more with a microSD card. It’s also unlocked, in order that means carrier freedom. The Android One experience brings some free cloud storage also as a pure Android OS.

Nokia 7.2: Likable But Not Lovable


Beyond that, the planning is stellar for the worth, and its packing a correct mid-range processor. This a phone that ought to put Motorola on its heels, because it competes well with the Moto G8 Plus.

It does have competition from the market of older flagships, though, as something sort of a Samsung Galaxy S9 on discount could compared to an equivalent price while boasting many superior specs and features. The Huawei P30 Lite is additionally worthy competition in markets where it’s available.

DESIGN
  • Feels great within the hand
  • Gorilla Glass on front and back
  • No water resistance rating

You could be forgiven for thinking the Nokia 7.2 may be a costlier phone than it's . The bezels round the display could also be a tad wide but the remainder of the planning is smooth. The corner curves match well with the curves round the display, and therefore the whole handset feels great within the hand.

The frame of the Nokia 7.2 is formed of metal and a special polymer, which Nokia claims to be twice as strong as a daily polycarbonate. We’ve felt some really sturdy polycarbonate within the past, and therefore the Nokia 7.2's frame doesn’t feel flimsy. It’s going to be weak to water, though, as Nokia has offered no resistance rating for this device.

Both the front and back are covered in Gorilla Glass, while the rear features a frosted finish that creates it feel extra smooth. The texture in our hand is really like the Google Pixel 4, which may be a big plus for a phone that costs half the maximum amount.

There’s a little teardrop notch housing the front-facing camera at the highest of the display, while a round camera bump houses the three rear-facing cameras and flash. The fingerprint sensor sits slightly below the rear camera ring.

The power button lights up with a white LED. It’s a nifty effect, though could get annoying on a bedside table. There’s a volume rocker above the facility button, and a fanatical Google Assistant button on the other side.

On rock bottom of the Nokia 7.2, there’s a USB-C port (only USB 2.0 speeds though), and a narrow speaker grille. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on the highest of the phone. And, an enormous bonus, the SIM slot can house two SIM cards and a microSD card.

Altogether, the Nokia 7.2 weighs 180 grams and measures 159.92 x 75.15 x 8.25mm. It comes in Charcoal, Cyan Green and Ice colors. Those colors extend beyond the rear glass of the phone to incorporate the frame also.

DISPLAY
  • 6.3-inch 1,080 x 2,280 LCD screen
  • Supports HDR
  • Good quality but no match for OLED

The Nokia 7.2 features a big, 6.3-inch display with a 1,080 x 2,280 resolution. It’s both sharp and bright, with clear visibility in daylight. But, it’s an LCD display. For a few people, which may not matter much, as many budget handsets stick with LCD. LCD panels still look good, but once you’ve gotten wont to OLED panels, it’s hard to seem back.

Nokia 7.2: Likable But Not Lovable


HMD Global (the maker of current Nokia phones) does attempt to make the simplest of things. It uses a Pixelworks processor to convert all videos into HDR for its PureDisplay mode. And, Nokia says the device’s display offers a billion reminder color - much above the standard 16.7 million.

How Does That Translate Into Reality?

Using PureView, we see alittle boost in vibrance, but it’s almost negligible, and is never as stark an improvement because the jump from LCD to OLED.

One side-effect of the PureDisplay mode is that it drops dark spots into near-complete blackness. This has two impacts: where we'd have seen detail, there's none. Where we'd have seen compression artifacts in dark portions of video streams, there's none.

We watched the Holdo’s Sacrifice scene from Star Wars Episode 8, and therefore the shots of space looked improved. Blocky colors and hazy, gray tones of space shifted to an upscale black. But soldiers inside the Imperial’s ship lost all the small print on their dark uniforms.

The display is about nearly as good because it must be, though. At the worth, it’s hard to fault it for not being nearly as good as high-end OLED. Even the tiny tear-drop notch is straightforward enough to overlook.

CAMERA
  • 48MP main + 8MP ultra-wide + 5MP depth
  • 20MP front-facing
  • Good main camera, weak wide-angle

The cameras on the Nokia 7.2 are capable, but confusing and inconsistent. When it involves getting the simplest shots, we discover the most rear camera works best while set to 12MP and therefore the front facing camera just works well at its max 20MP resolution.

We’re impressed by the cameras in some regards. The selfie camera is crisp and produces some quality results, even in darker conditions. The 48MP main sensor does especially well in dark settings, boosting shadows to capture detail we can’t see with our own eyes (we’ll spare you the image of the toilet cupboard we took to ascertain just how well it works).

For basic functions, the Nokia 7.2 performs great. It’s when it tries to try to more advanced things that its performance gets murky. As an example, there’s a nifty Dual-Sight mode that allows you to snap or record using the front and rear camera at an equivalent time to make a side-by-side picture/video. But the rear camera quality tanks when using this mode.

The portrait mode has unique bokeh effects which will allow you to choose what proportion blur and what shapes you would like (like heart or star blur). But the camera doesn’t do an excellent job of separating subject and background, therefore the edges of subjects get hazy.

Then there’s the wide-angle camera. It’s a powerful 118-degree FoV (field of view), letting it fit tons into the shot. But the image quality is rubbish. It falls leagues in need of the standard offered by the first sensor. For a basic shot you would like to text to a lover, it'll do. But if you would like serious pictures, you’re happier ignoring the wide-angle camera.

There’s only digital zoom for the cameras also. We struggled to require an image of a pigeon because we couldn’t get close enough. And, using digital zoom, the image became a grainy mess immediately.

For video, the Nokia 7.2 supports 4K on the rear camera and Full HD on the front. But it doesn’t offer any frame rate options. The recording from the most rear and front sensors continues to seem good, while the wide-angle camera continues to allow us to down.

Two mics on all sides of the phone offer stereo recording, but they’re situated right where we’d normally hold the phone, and are easy to accidentally cover with our hands.

Quick note: the cameras come set to a lower resolution out of the box. Anyone who buys the Nokia 7.2 and doesn’t think to vary these settings might imagine the cameras are considerably worse than they are.

PERFORMANCE AND SOFTWARE
  • Snapdragon 660 chipset and usually good performance
  • 4GB or 6GB of RAM
  • Android 9 Pie, stock Android


The Nokia 7.2 may be a smooth-running phone. A Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset powers the experience, and it's an easy stock Android interface. The phone is a component of the Android One program, so it isn’t loaded up with any bloatware.

Plus, the maker promises “2 years of software upgrades and three years of monthly security updates.” However, the phone comes with Android 9 Pie out of the box, with Android 10 hopefully coming sooner instead of later.

In our Geekbench tests, the Nokia 7.2 earned a 5,910 multi-core score in Geekbench 4, putting it before the Google Pixel 3a. It earned a 1,488 multi-core score in Geekbench 5.

Nokia 7.2: Likable But Not Lovable


We played the new Call of Duty Mobile game thereon, and it run perfectly smooth at low graphics settings. Smooth enough for us to top the leaderboard and massacre enemies so easily that we ran out of bullets and had to modify to the knife until the top of the match.

The camera app can occasionally be slow to launch, but that’s the sole time we experienced a hitch. App switching is quick, and most apps launch reasonably fast.

The fingerprint reader is snappy, and combines well with face recognition for straightforward unlocking in most situations. It does struggle to acknowledge us when there’s a robust backlight behind us, though.

The fingerprint reader doubles as how to swipe down the notification shade, a bit like earlier Pixel phones. This helps make the experience even smoother, as single-handedly reaching up to the highest of a 6-plus-inch display is tough for even large hands.

Audio is loud on the Nokia 7.2. We could hear the sound from our video for battery testing even when it had been in another other room and running at only 50% volume. The audio lacks warmth, and has minor hints of reverb thereto. But it’s clean enough at maximum volume for decent listening when headphones or a fanatical speaker aren’t available.

For connections, the Nokia 7.2 has dependable 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, and NFC for contactless payments.

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