Nokia 7.2 Review: Not as Good as Other Mid-Range Smartphones On The Market
The Nokia 7.2 features everything from a professional smartphone to other couple of things. Look and feel is good, not too different from the new Google Pixel 4. Although it is not water resistant, may be because it is a mid-range smartphone by Nokia.
The screen is wide but its LED display is not as good as other smartphone’s OLED displays. However, the LED display is still appreciable when you watch videos to the HDR PureDisplay mode.
The overall performance of Nokia 7.2 is a good one. It’s easy to browse, stream video, typing and taking pictures from Nokia 7.2.
The Nokia 7.2 aims to be different with its camera feature. The main camera, like the selfie camera, does an excellent job under all circumstances. The deep sensor and wide angle camera are although included in it but they both do not bring much changes in photo.
The entire package is available at a good price and is very competitive in the price range overall with most other phones.
Price and Availability
Nokia 7.2 does offer a lot at a low cost, although several settings are available right now (not all available at the time of writing in many regions).
In the US, Nokia charges $349 for a storage capacity version of 128 GB and 4 GB of RAM. In the UK, only 64 GB of RAM and 4GB of RAM appear to be available, which will be available at £249.99. The top model with a capacity of 128 GB and of 6 GB of RAM will be available in Australia at AU$549, while the 64GB/4 GB model will be available for AU$499.
Design
You may be forgiven the fact that Nokia 7.2 is a phone that is more expensive than it looks. There may be a lot of bezel around the screen, but the rest of the layout is smooth. The curves of the corner match the curves around the screen, and the whole phone is good.
The design of Nokia 7.2 consists of plastic, a special polymer that is twice as durable as the standard polycarbonate, according to Nokia. We’ve seen some very durable polycarbonate in the past, and seems there’s no flaw in the configuration of Nokia 7.2. It may give hard time at the time of rain because Nokia did not give this system a resistance score.
The back and front of Gorilla Glass are sealed, while the back has a frosty finish that gives it a very soft look. Feeling in our hand reminds us of Google Pixel 4, which is a major plus for a half-priced smartphone.
The front-facing cameras are positioned at the top of the screen while the three rear cameras are positioned in a circular lens bump. The fingerprint sensor is under the back camera ring.
The white LED lights up the power button. It’s a nice effect, although it can get annoying sometimes. The volume keys are placed above the power button and on the other side is Google Assistant button.
At the bottom of the Nokia 7.2, there is a USB port and a narrow speaker grid (only USB 2.0 speeds). On top of the Nokia 7.2 is the 3.5 mm headphone jack. And a huge bonus, a SIM card and a microSD card can be installed on the SIM port.
Nokia 7.2 measures 159.92 x 75.15 x 8.25 mm in total, weighing 180 grams. It’s available in Charcoal, Ice Colors, and Green Cyan. The colors go beyond the phone’s back glass and spread over the remaining frame.
Display
The Nokia 7.2 has a wide 6.3 “display with a resolution of 1080x 2280. The visibility in dawn is both clear and light. But this is an LCD screen. This may not matter to some users, as there are a lot of budget handsets on LCD. LCD panels look good still, but it is difficult to look away when you are used to OLED panels.
HMD Global is trying to get the best from the situation (the manufacturer of current Nokia phones). It uses a Pixelworks processor to transform all videos to HDR mode. And Nokia claims the phone screen has billions of colors–well above the normal 16.7 million.
How can this be put into practice?
We saw a small increase in vibrancies from PureView, but it is almost insignificant and definitely not as significantly improved as switching from LCD to OLED.
PureDisplay mode has a side effect that causes almost total blackness to drop dark spots. This has two effects: there is no detail that we could have seen. There is none in the dark parts of the video streams where we could see the compression artifacts.
We watched the Star Wars Episode 8 Sacrifice scene of Holdo and the video quality was enhanced in this mode. Colors that were blurred and gray tones transformed into rich black. It’s hard to criticize quality because the high-end OLED isn’t that best.
Read More: Google’s Compact, Pixel 4-Like Assistant Starts Reaching Older Phones
Camera
The Nokia 7.2 cameras are capable of taking good pictures but are inconsistent. The main rear camera works best in 12MP when it comes to getting better shots, and the front face camera only works in 20MP resolution.
In some ways, we’ve been fascinated by the lenses. Even in darker conditions, the selfie camera is clear and delivers high quality results. In the night, the 48MP main sensor enhances the shadows to catch data that cannot be seen with naked eyes.
The Nokia 7.2 works well with basic functions. As we tried more advanced things, the quality got worse. There is, for example, a smart dual-view mode that can be used to snap or record a side-to-side image / video using both the front and rear cameras simultaneously. However, the value of the rear camera tanks is when this mode is used.
Performance
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset supports Nokia 7.2 and has Android interface. The mobile is part of Android One technology, so there’s no bloatware on it.
The phone comes with Android 9 Pie, but it’s expected that Android 10 will be updated early rather than late. In addition, the manufacturer promises two years of software upgrades and three years of regular security updates.’ The Nokia 7.2 received a multi-core score of 5.910 for Geekbench 4 in our Geekbench trials, putting it ahead of Google Pixel 3A. A multi-core score of 1,488 was received in Geekbench 5.
Battery
The battery of Nokia can be used for a whole day if used adequately as it is 3,500 mAh. But one of the weakest points is that the 24% of the battery was drained during our video power test, in which run the device for 90 minutes on maximum brightness. This is below the score compared to what we’ve seen on most other mobiles, like Pixel 3a.
Final Verdict
The Nokia 7.2 is a bonus to a pure Android experience. You may not encounter bad applications or unusual vendor customizations. The Nokia 7.2 key cameras work fantastically. A variety of pictures can be captured with the wide angle, though these are not of the highest quality. The battery is enough to get you all day long, so you can relax comfortably. Make sure you do not forget to charge at night.
Read Next: Samsung Galaxy S11 Phones Tipped to Get Bigger Screens And 108MP Cameras
