HMD’s first-ever IFA show sees the launch of two great devices, the Nokia 7.2 and Nokia 6.2; both being mid-rangers with a slew of exciting features. While Nokia 7.2 comes with the powerful chipset, Nokia 6.2 holds its ground to some extent.
First, to talk about Nokia 7.2, the phone is kind of a ‘Pro’ model out of the two. The triple-camera with a circular cutout at the back gives it a vibe of Nokia’s Lumia phones which were known for their camera prowess. And no wonder, the 7.2 also gets the same treatment. The triple sensors at the back have a normal 48MP shooter with 1/2″ sensor with better image processing technology — pixel binning cohesively working with image fusion and stacking. The camera is capable of capturing HDR shots combining up to 6 photos, while the Night Mode can stack up to 20 photos on a tripod and 10 in handheld.
Remainings are an 8MP ultra-wide snapper with 118-degree field-of-view and a 5MP depth sensor with three bokeh effects from ZEISS: Swirl, Modern and Smooth.
The teardrop notch at the front hosts a 20MP selfie camera that also makes use of 4-in-1 pixel binning technology for better selfies. Both the front and back use ZEISS branded lens.
The teardrop notch is complemented by a 6.3-inch IPS LCD display that supports 1080p+ resolution. The screen supports HDR10 with ability to convert SD footages to HDR.
Underneath the Nokia 7.2 is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset which can be seen on most of the mid-range devices, even from HMD. The chipset is good enough to run heavy games and day to day multitasking without any issue. But don’t expect it to run every task smoothly. The phone comes in two configurations — 4/6GB RAM and 64/128GB onboard eMMC storage. It also gets a dedicated slot for microSD card and has two SIM card slots.
The Nokia 7.2 runs on Android 9 Pie out of the box and is confirmed to get the latest Android 10 update. On the other hand, the phone will also get software updates for up to 2 years and regular security updates for up to 3 years.
Powering the phone is a decent 3,500mAh battery with 10W fast charging over a Type-C port. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack for you audiophiles.
Nokia 7.2 will go on sale starting from the end of September for a price of €300 for the base variant.
Nokia 6.2
A little downgrade here and there but still Nokia 6.2 has the same 6.3-inch 1080p+ display with HDR10 support and the same 3,500mAh battery with 10W fast charging. The only major difference to notice is the lack of ZEISS camera branding. If not for that, the Nokia 6.2 would be hard to tell apart from its counterpart — the Nokia 7.2, at least in terms of aesthetics.
The lack of ZEISS branding demotes the phone’s main camera sensor to a 16MP one. While it still has the ability to do the image stacking for HDR and Night Mode, it loses the pixel binning technology. The main sensor is accompanied by an 8MP ultra-wide shooter (118-degree) and 5MP depth sensor, nearly identical to the Nokia 7.2.
The selfie shooter also sees a downgrade to an 8MP shooter.
Another major change can be seen inside. Instead of a much powerful SD 660, the Nokia 6.2 has a Snapdragon 636 chipset. Although it still has the same configuration to the 660 SoC, i.e. 4+4 Cortex-A73 and A53 Kyro cores, it runs on lower clock speed. Likewise, the GPU also takes a step back.
Unlike any other smartphones with polycarbonate and aluminum body, the Nokia 7.2 and Nokia 6.2 shares a polymer composite body. HMD claims that it is twice as strong as polycarbonate and weighs lighter than aluminum.
Nokia 6.2 will start seeing the shelves from October. The phone’s 3/32GB variant will cost €200, whilst the 4/64GB version will carry a price of €250.