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.
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.
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.
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.
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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