nokia 7 plus price in pakistan
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Nokia 7 Plus Review

  Irfan Arif

The portfolio of Nokia is ever-increasing, but it seems now that the brand naming is already running out of the single-digit numbers. This is because Nokia, rebranded by HMD Global, has already started adding words with the numbers, i.e. first in case of Nokia 8 Sirocco, and now with Nokia 7 plus. What’s noteworthy in the latter is that plus comes with smaller ‘p’, which means it is not going to be served as high-end phone anyway. But still it will not be as bad as you would think anyway!

The phone gets the dual camera system on the back along the front camera selfie shooter, along with which there is Snapdragon 660, which is a powerful chipset. Moreover, the 18:9 aspect ratio in the display as well as 1080p video will be great for a 6-inch display smartphone. What’s more? The whopping 3,800mAh battery, which is going to be coupled with 18W quick charging pod.

More so, in order to attract the Android lovers, Nokia 7 Plus is going to feature Android One. The unfortunate thing, however, is that Nokia 7 plus will be having single stereo speaker, i.e. unlike that of Google Pixel 2 XL. Otherwise, the device is superb vis-à-vis design, quality and build, but it still does not have waterproof capability. Let’s dig deep into this phone and find out more about the new Nokia 7 plus.

Unboxing the Nokia 7 plus

When it comes to the retail packaging, the element of brand recognition cannot be ignored. Hence, 7 plus will pretty much have the box of Nokia brand. In this year’s Nokia models, however, the boxes will come with the slide-out tray, which will be going out of the bottom. Therefore, you need to ensure that you have control on them after removal.

nokia 7 plus price in pakistan

When you open the box, the phone will be seen on the right side, and under that there will be clear plastic bumper case, which is not the poshest one though, but it will still be a great one. Whether this will be available for Pakistani market or not, is not known so far.

Then you get the 18W quick charger, which will come with Type-A port as well as the USB cable. Type-C chargers have not gone out of fashion yet, as Google Pixel phones also have them. In this regard, Type-A looks more varied these days. Moreover, you will be getting the Nokia-branded earbuds, which are quite stylish.

Nokia 7 plus Design

Nokia 7 plus is made out of a single block of aluminum belonging to 6000 series. This is something you might have noticed in this phone’s promotional advertisements, and this will also feel nice when you grab it in your hand. The ceramic-feel coating is there on its top, which will help you sense that the metal material is in there.

nokia 7 plus price in pakistan

The phone unit that we currently possess for the purpose of review is made of copper and has black color scheme. The product photos initially led us to believe that it will be tacky, but upon using it we realized that there is nothing as such; rather it is quite attractive.

nokia 7 plus price in pakistan

On the back, where we get a ceramic feel, there is dual camera bump, which has got a thick copper frame. Between the two lenses is found a ‘Zeiss’ logo, which actually indicated towards the collaboration between Nokia and the German optics specialization company. The focal lengths and f-numbers are however not mentioned like they were mentioned in case of Huawei P20 Pro. Hence, the less is more strategy on Nokia 7 plus is fine.

nokia 7 plus price in pakistan

On the right side of the cameras, there is dual tone dual LED flash. Above these camera is placed one of the three OZO mics. Similarly, beneath the camera, there is fingerprint reader installed in a circular form, which comes with the copper ring in its surroundings. In this phone, Nokia logo is also placed on the back, which matches with the color of copper. The phone features a lot more text on it than this. There will be model number, name of origin country, HMD’s address in Finland, Android One logo and regulatory markings.

nokia 7 plus

The front side of the phone will however by much cleaner. The dominating part in this side will be the 6-inch display, which will come with rounded corners, and further it will have the meaty bottom as well as top bezels, which is more like found in Google Pixel 2 XL phone. Though, this will not be OLED display.

The Nokia logo on top right corner of the phone, which is like the logos found in other phones, but we have seen that some people hate these logos. There is a selfie camera to the left side of this logo. In the center is the earpiece, which however does not have speaker. Next is the proximity sensors coupled with ambient light. There will not be any LED for notification or status.

Similarly, there is display glass (i.e. Gorilla Glass 3), which is curved towards the edges, and which is surrounded by the fine copper rim. The sides also feature a lot more copper, e.g. entire frame, which also shine in bright way.

Moreover, the power button as well as volume rocker are placed on the right side. Power button is actually placed under the volume buttons. These buttons are also made of metal, and they click smoothly. Card tray is placed on the opposite side, in which there will be nano SIM and microSD.

In the bottom side, there will be USB-C port in the center, which will have loudspeaker on its right side. On the other side will be OZO mic. On top of that is the 3.5mm headphone jack.

Additionally, the dimensions of Nokia 7 plus are 158.4 x 75.6 x 8.0 mm. These dimensions show that the phone is a bit thicker than Honor View 10. Display size wise, it seems that Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra is bigger than this phone. However, Xperia XA2 Ultra has heavy weight, i.e. 221g, which is not the case with Nokia 7 plus, i.e. 183g. Still, it will be heavy in front of Honor View 10, which is 11g lighter.

Nokia 7 plus Display

For this phone, Nokia has chosen 6-inch display featuring IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with the resolution of 2160 x 1080 pixels. Pixel density in the phone is 403ppi. The aspect ratio of this display is 18:9, while the corners are rounded. Hence, this can be said that Nokia 7 plus will come with the latest trends. However, the protection will be Gorilla Glass 3, which is still good, but compared to 4 and 5, this will not be a good choice up to the modern standards.

The maximum brightness of the display was measured to be 432nits, which is still not good for an LCD screen. As a matter of fact, it can only be considered as below average. Auto mode also does not get a boost though. The darker blacks also provide the additionally nice contrast ratio of more than just 1700:1. In this regard, the common trend was values under 1000:1, which is not seen anymore.

When placed on the sunlight, you will get very good contrast in the phone featuring LCD panel. The score gained in this case will not, however, be as good as in case of Nokia 8, but the same result was shared by Nokia 6 (2018) as well. In this regard, AMOLED screens have bigger advantage.

As far as the color contrast is concerned, simple results will be obtained, as you will not get any modes, and the accuracy will also not be so great as expected.

Nokia 7 plus Battery

Nokia 7 plus comes with a whopping battery capacity of 3,800mAh. Even most of the high-tech Huawei mobile phones come with 3,750mAh battery, e.g. Honor View 10, and even Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra also has 3,580mAh battery capacity.

When we tested the battery of Nokia 7 plus, we got the total endurance rating to be of 87 hours, which is fair though. The screen-on test showed the result to be more than 11 hours, which is good, while talk-time showed the score to be more than 21 hours. Strange thing was that Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra, which features lesser battery capacity, had more talk time and endurance rating as compared to Nokia 7 plus as well as Honor View 10.

One good thing was, however, that this phone will come with a fast charger. The phone will be 43% charged in just a matter of 30 minutes, while it will be 75% charged in an hour. Charging speed then slows down, as you will have it fully charged in just a bit more than two hours.

Nokia 7 plus Loudspeaker and Audio Quality

Nokia 7 plus will come with one loudspeaker, which will be placed at the bottom. This speaker will not be of exceptional quality by any means, and it would just be considered as a good one. There will be two notches above this speaker. The speaker will be clean, and it will provide decent sound quality.

When it comes to the audio quality, it would not be great, because there will be abnormally high intermodulation distortion as well as poorer signal-to-noise ratio. Hence, you will dearly need an external amplifier for better quality. Volume was quite high, which was good, but it was not enough to offset the quality concerns.

Moreover, the headphones had fixed both of these issues, but they resulted in another concern, i.e. the stereo crosstalk issue had arisen by a moderate amount, due to which a small amount of intermodulation distortion had emerged. The loudness, according to our tests, had also gone from high to just about average. On the whole, the performance with headphones was pretty decent, but it was not quite sufficient to meet the users’ demand.

Nokia 7 plus Software and Performance

Nokia 7 plus will come under the part of Android One program. The user will get the updates in timely fashion. The unit we have in hand for the review is running on Android 8.1 Oreo OS, while the security patch installed in it is the most recent one.

The Android will show up as soon as you wake the phone up. The clock, two shortcuts on the bottom and notification cards will thus appear on the screen. The bright display will also highlight the clock as well as notifications when you grab the phone in hand, even when it is not woken up. This would however be enabled from the settings.

The fingerprint enrollment will utilize the standard Oreo interface. The phone will be unlocked quite fast, and that will be done quickly in a reliable manner. When you unlock, there you will get the standard Android 8 home screen with the app drawer.

As far as the multimedia is concerned, it will just be dependent on Google and its default applications. For tasks related to gallery and the video playback, Google Photos will be in-charge. For audio playback, Google Play Music will be the responsible app. File Manager will also be there with the batch actions as well as the Google Drive sync. Google Calendar will come with the Nokia’s own choice of calendar.

Performance wise, Nokia 7 plus will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset, which will come with 8 Kyro 260 cores. For good graphics, Adreno 512 GPU will be a good choice installed in it. The phone will have 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage.

On the whole, Nokia 7 plus featuring Snapdragon 660 chipset will be a better phone as compared to the phones featuring Snapdragon 630 SoC. The phone will be better in performance in comparison to Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018). 7 plus will also be running cool under the higher load and will be able to bear comfortable temperatures.

Nokia 7 plus Camera

Nokia 7 plus will come with dual camera system on the back, and both these cameras are also found in newly released Nokia 8 Sirocco as well. The primary camera is 12MP, which has dual pixel sensor behind the lens of f/1.75 aperture. Secondary camera is basically the telephoto lens, which provides 2x optical zoom, whose optical length is not specified by Nokia. It will be 12MP sensor, which has aperture of f/2.6. Both of these lenses will have the branding of Carl Zeiss.

The software on this camera app is Nokia’s own, and it’s pretty good by the way. The only issue is the position of front/rear camera switch, which is the only option for the user to go for selfie mode, and which will require two hands for switching.

When it comes to the image quality in Nokia 7 plus, it turns out to be good in case of main camera. The resolved detail is fair and noise is not the issue with the cameras. The dynamic range is not much wide, as it is not enough for capturing the high-contrast images. Color saturation is however good in case of this phone.

The telephoto camera also works great in good light, as it brings the distant stuff pretty closer. The images will seem to be a little softer, and contrast will be a bit lower, the price is reasonable for this feature in the camera.

In case of HDR, there is limited dynamic range, but it is tuned in a manner that you wouldn’t be getting the shadows on the back. As a matter of fact, some of the details might be lost in case of deep dark areas, but you will be able to get brighter image quality in case of mid tones. The results, overall, are useful and no penalties are involved in their detail. You will however find the auto mode a little bit conservative. Image quality is a little underexposed in low light, but still it is able to provide good images. Quality will not be of the sort found in Huawei P20 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S9 or Google Pixel 2, but it would still be fair.

Moreover, the live Bokeh will be working in non-human subjects as well, where it will behave in a similar manner with excellent subject isolation with somewhat iffy focusing. Panorama will also work effectively in both ways, and not just left to right. Resolution will be plenty in more than 3000 pixels, where the stitching will be excellent and detail will be similar to what is found in single photos.

Now, we talk about the selfie camera in Nokia 7 plus, which is 16MP and comes with f/2.0 aperture lens. It does not have autofocus. Its plane of focus is found at a reasonable distance, which is away from the phone, and one will not be required to poke the screen with the nose in order to remain focused, which is a good thing. Selfies will give true skin tones, and the overall color rendition will be pretty great.

The background selfies, which are blurred, and that too with single camera is not a new thing, and this phone will also have this feature. 7 plus will also do that in quite a good manner.

Moreover, talking about the video quality, Nokia 7 plus will be able to record the videos of up to 2160 pixels. The phone will also be able to record the videos of 1080p as well at 30fps. There will not, however, be 60fps option. Electronic stabilization will be available, which will work in case of 1080p but not with 4K. This cannot be turned off.

2160p videos will be recordable on 42Mbps bit-rate, which is sort of a standard number. The number will be 20Mpbs for 1080p videos, which is a bit more than the average number of 17Mbps. Audio will be recorded on 256kbps. 4K videos will be recordable through main camera, and result will be quite detailed, sharp and noise-free. Color rendering will also be nice. 1080p video will also be above-average in terms of quality. This 4K video through telephoto camera will also be great, but you will be able to notice that it will give different color reproduction. The zoomed in videos will also be a bit warmer, which will be the case with 1080p videos as well.

Nokia 7 plus Competition

Without a doubt, Nokia 7 plus will offer a full package, as it has got every bit and piece that one is looking for in a phone for getting flagship experience without spending the money of flagship phone.

Few other phones available in Pakistan also offer the same specs though, e.g. Honor View 10, but they are comparatively more expensive. However, Huawei has installed the high-end chipset in its Honor View 10 phone, along with which there is 20MP camera, which is only found in high-end models.

Sony Xperia XA2 Ultra is also available on the same price as that of Nokia 7 plus, but that has one camera on the rear and also comes with a relatively slower SoC. Moreover, Xperia XA2 Ultra has got 16:9 aspect ratio in its display, as compared to 18:9 display featured in 7 plus. However, Sony’s phone offers higher battery capacity, which makes it heavy-weight though.

If there is one modern thing that is not found in Nokia 7 plus, then that’s a notch, which is found in Oppo R15, but that itself does not come with 2x zoom.

Another competitor is the Samsung Galaxy A8 (2018), which is itself a fine phone, as it has got AMOLED display and better battery capacity. However, A8 comes with only one camera on the back, yet the phone is IP-68 certified, which makes it a bit superior than Nokia 7 plus. Yet, Nokia 7 plus price in Pakistan is lower than Galaxy A8 (2018), which definitely makes the former a more viable option.

Conclusion

Nokia 7 plus is built solidly and is good-looking. It comes with the latest version of Android OS. The phone has got dependable battery life, and the camera quality is all-rounder one. However, the display could have been a bit brighter in this phone. Overall, Nokia 7 plus does not create any fuss for the user. We did not find any issues while using it, and the phone happily delivered in all of the departments.

There is one type of phones, which get famous for wrong reasons. Then there is second type of phones, which have only a couple main features and else remains the same. Nokia 7 plus serves us with the third type of phones, in which all the features are top-quality, and which come in quiet manner and dominate the smartphone market with furious vengence. The world would definitely need more of Nokia 7 plus like phones in the future!

Care to know about MPC Rating for Nokia 7 plus? – It’s 8/10.

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One Comment

  1. Wow. What a comprehensive review! I never imagined that a Pakistani website would provide such a detailed review for any mobile phone … Great Work Mpc!

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