Nokia as a customer-centric brand understood that the customers want a better display in a smaller phone with a stylish and appealing body. They launched their Nokia 8.1 to give their customers an all rounded experience in a commendable price. The Nokia 8.1 is a spiritual successor of their flagship series and paves the way for flagship models that Nokia may launch in the future. However, having said, acting as a replacement for the Nokia 7 Plus, the Nokia 8.1 had some big shoes to fill. It needed to have a good design, a large screen, a decent camera, an exceptional battery life and a killer price. Thankfully, the Nokia 8.1 managed to deliver on every single one of those points.
Design
The latest Nokia 8.1 smartphone retains the design language that we have been seeing in Nokia devices. The Nokia 8.1 however, is arguably the most expertly crafted and a lot more premium than other phones in its price range. It is available in three colours: Blue/Silver, Steel/Copper and the new Iron/Steel which has a maroon-coloured finish to it. All of this comes in a contemporary package with the precise craftsmanship expected from a Nokia smartphone. The Nokia 8.1, on the one hand it gets glass on the front and back, dual tone design, and a notched display. On the other hand it gets a solid Series 6000 aluminum frame with diamond cut edges, that shows class while at the same time does not sacrifice the overall structure of the device. The phone comes with a dual-tone design and HMD has added steel accents around the mid-frame, which covers the physical buttons, rear camera module and fingerprint sensor.
Display
The Nokia 8.1 offers a bright and attractive display, worth every penny. It gets a wide notch on the top and a chin on the bottom. You get a 6.18-inch display with a FHD+ (2246x1080) resolution, 18.7:9 aspect ratio and up to 500 units of brightness. The Nokia 8.1 is the second Nokia smartphone to come with PureDisplay screen technology for an enhanced viewing experience. The visuals are taken to another level with HDR 10 delivering higher contrast, great clarity, and over a billion individual colours to ensure images remain accurate-whether you’re in a dark room or bright sunlight. Outdoors in bright sunlight or in a dimly lit room, playing games or watching video, your display will deliver the best possible experience.
The Nokia 8.1’s stunning 6.18” Full HD+ edge-to-edge display is housed within a beautifully refined and neat footprint, so you can enjoy your favourite movies and apps on a big screen comfortably on the go, giving you even more screen than the award-winning Nokia 7 plus with its 6” display. The display on the phone is pretty exciting as it offers vibrant, vivid colours, high contrast and good sharpness that make it a delight to watch anything on it. PureDisplay also brings with it support for HDR10, which means HDR-supported content on platforms like Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video look great.
Performance
The Nokia 8.1 is a complete phone because it manages to impress not only from the outside, but from the inside as well. Equipped with Android software, Android 9 Pie, smartphone delivers the best Android experiences with the latest innovations right out of the box. The SD710 is an octa-core chipset based on a 10nm process and has a peak clock speed of 2.2GHz. While the Nokia 8.1 breezes through day-to-day tasks like messaging, social media browsing and loading apps, what's really impressive is its gaming performance. The chipset comes with an Adreno 616 GPU, which is quite remarkable. A graphic intensive game will run on high graphics by default. In comparison, the Snapdragon 660 only runs on Medium graphics settings, so this is welcome bump. Playing any game would be a smooth, lag-free experience with no noticeable drop in frame rate. This is where the Nokia 8.1 really shines. The Nokia 8.1 offers a consistently smooth user experience, loading and running apps without any hiccups and running graphic intensive games smoothly. It is the closest to a flagship-level chipset available in the mid-range segment and that is why it is the icing on the cake for its users.
Camera
Imaging excellence with flagship caliber imaging technology: The Nokia 8.1’s great low light imaging performance comes from a perfect blend of software and hardware. Its 12MP main camera with ZEISS Optics has an industry-leading 1/2.55” super sensitive sensor with large 1.4 micron pixels for precise light capture, delivering exceptionally detailed images. With its combination of Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) technology and super fast autofocus, the Nokia 8.1 doesn’t let shaky hands to stop from capturing crisp images and videos. The primary camera has a Sony sensor with 1.4 micron pixels, f1.8 Zeiss lens and a dual LED flash. A wide aperture ensures that you can capture sharp pictures even in low light conditions, allowing longer exposure times that can be manually controlled with the Pro Camera mode. The 20MP adaptive front camera lets you capture the ultimate night-time selfie, as it enhances how much light it is able to capture by combining four pixels into one super pixel. You can also shoot movies like a pro with 4K video and relive your memories as if you were still there with high fidelity Nokia spatial audio stereo surround sound recording.
Unleash your creativity with the Pro Camera UI for the ultimate control over your photos, or take your #Bothie game to the next level with AI-powered 3D personas, masks and fun filters in your photos and videos, all of which you can livestream directly without leaving your camera app. The camera app is also slick and gives importance to the Pro mode (swipe up on the shutter button from anywhere to enter Pro mode). HMD offers one of the best pro modes in a smartphone as it lets you play with the ISO, White Balance, Focus and Shutter Speed. And it works for both the rear and front cameras. The shutter speed in day time is pretty fast offering sharper images and the cameras are quick to autofocus as well. Not only do photos offer good exposure, but colour reproduction is great as well. The camera offers a good dynamic range and it even handles backlit conditions decently.
Battery life
The Nokia 8.1 houses a 3,500mAh battery, bigger than the Nokia 6.1 Plus and 7.1, but smaller than the Nokia 7 Plus which offered a 3,800mAh capacity. Despite the smaller size, Nokia 8.1 offers the same two-day battery life as the Nokia 7 Plus. There are a few factors that make this possible. Firstly, the Snapdragon 710 chipset is noticeably more energy efficient than the 660. On top of that, the phone runs a stock, lightweight Android Pie, which offers an Adaptive Battery feature that limits background apps from using up too much battery. All of this helps the phone live much more than expected. The phone will easily take you over a day on above average usage. Standby time is impressive as well, draining only 5 per cent overnight. The phone supports fast charging via an 18W fast charger bundled with the box. It takes under two hours to charge from zero to 100 per cent.
Price
For its market value, the device retails at Rs69000.
Verdict
Great build, flagship look and feel, clean software experience on Android 9, smooth performance, Zeiss optics on the camera, OIS present. This is where the Nokia 8.1 comes in as it ticks all the right boxes, offering a premium design, pure Android software, a terrific processor and some really good cameras for its price.
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