Nokia's new flagship. The secret of Nokia's flagship. Why are Finns hiding their new smartphone? What the press says

Fingers crossed: a 5.7-inch bezel-less screen in a body that's smaller than the 5.3-inch Nokia. More expensive looking and compact case design. Better sound through headphones and speaker. Better rear cameras, better autonomy. And there is IP68 water resistance, and not a parody of it, like Nokia (ashamed to say, IP54, splash protection!).

The problem is that the G6 is a "brake". I never would have thought that last year's "coolest of the cool" Snapdragon 821 is a slow processor, but alternatively gifted programmers at LG have made such a shell on top of Android that the smartphone hiccups under load, like your Samsung for 15 thousand rubles or iPhone 5S on iOS 11. Nokia 8 compared to G-six is ​​a supersonic fighter! And the quality of sound recording on microphones in Nokia is higher than in LG. And operating system updates happen more often, and the system itself is not polluted with excesses. And Wi-Fi works faster and catches networks at a greater distance from them.

And yet, if it weren’t for the “lags” in the LG G6 with or without reason, one could say that it is better than Nokia in everything, and not be mistaken.

conclusions

Nokia 8 is very difficult to evaluate objectively while you have its nameplate in front of your eyes. It's like comparing the faces of Lindsay Lohan/Mickey Rourke before and now. You can answer all this “and you yourself try to go through so many difficulties that they overcame!”, But the mood will not improve from this. Everyone knows perfectly well what difficulties Nokia went through, but here we have its best mobile phone, and it is not only not up to iPhone-Samsung, but also inferior to Chinese creations. Is it really the same Nokia, the revival of which the Bolsheviks have been talking about for so long?

But it is worth covering up the famous logo - and, know criminality Well, it's a good smartphone! If ASUS, Meizu or ZTE were written on it, everyone would praise it, and they would do it right. Because almost all criticism boils down to "Nokia's flagship must be better, on par with the iPhone 7 and Galaxy S8 at least!".

But Nokia 8 is what it is. "With soul", but sloppy execution. With a cool screen, but a strange color rendition. With a small diagonal IPS-matrix in a very long and thin body. Good cameras controlled by "brainless" automation. And an abnormal battery charge even without load.

For the first (and she is the first, let's be frank) attempts to create a flagship smartphone from scratch - not bad. Because until 2016, the flagships of Huawei, if you remember, were also a pleasure “very amateur”, and now, you see, they have worked on the bugs and are breathing in the back of Samsung.

If Nokia 8 drops in price to 30-32 thousand rubles, you can take on the role of the fastest smartphone with fashionable and funny modifications in the cameras. But for 40 thousand here and now, the “Chinese premium” and cheaper flagships win compared to Nokia in almost all disciplines, except for processor performance. We hope that HMD Global will draw conclusions, work on the bugs, and by the time the new flagship Nokia 9 is released, a real Connecting people is waiting for us.

Fingers crossed: a 5.7-inch bezel-less screen in a body that's smaller than the 5.3-inch Nokia. More expensive looking and compact case design. Better sound through headphones and speaker. Better rear cameras, better autonomy. And there is IP68 water resistance, and not a parody of it, like Nokia (ashamed to say, IP54, splash protection!).

The problem is that the G6 is a "brake". I never would have thought that last year's "coolest of the cool" Snapdragon 821 is a slow processor, but alternatively gifted programmers at LG have made such a shell on top of Android that the smartphone hiccups under load, like your Samsung for 15 thousand rubles or iPhone 5S on iOS 11. Nokia 8 compared to G-six is ​​a supersonic fighter! And the quality of sound recording on microphones in Nokia is higher than in LG. And operating system updates happen more often, and the system itself is not polluted with excesses. And Wi-Fi works faster and catches networks at a greater distance from them.

And yet, if it weren’t for the “lags” in the LG G6 with or without reason, one could say that it is better than Nokia in everything, and not be mistaken.

conclusions

Nokia 8 is very difficult to evaluate objectively while you have its nameplate in front of your eyes. It's like comparing the faces of Lindsay Lohan/Mickey Rourke before and now. You can answer all this “and you yourself try to go through so many difficulties that they overcame!”, But the mood will not improve from this. Everyone knows perfectly well what difficulties Nokia went through, but here we have its best mobile phone, and it is not only not up to iPhone-Samsung, but also inferior to Chinese creations. Is it really the same Nokia, the revival of which the Bolsheviks have been talking about for so long?

But it is worth covering up the famous logo - and, know criminality Well, it's a good smartphone! If ASUS, Meizu or ZTE were written on it, everyone would praise it, and they would do it right. Because almost all criticism boils down to "Nokia's flagship must be better, on par with the iPhone 7 and Galaxy S8 at least!".

But Nokia 8 is what it is. "With soul", but sloppy execution. With a cool screen, but a strange color rendition. With a small diagonal IPS-matrix in a very long and thin body. Good cameras controlled by "brainless" automation. And an abnormal battery charge even without load.

For the first (and she is the first, let's be frank) attempts to create a flagship smartphone from scratch - not bad. Because until 2016, the flagships of Huawei, if you remember, were also a pleasure “very amateur”, and now, you see, they have worked on the bugs and are breathing in the back of Samsung.

If Nokia 8 drops in price to 30-32 thousand rubles, you can take on the role of the fastest smartphone with fashionable and funny modifications in the cameras. But for 40 thousand here and now, the “Chinese premium” and cheaper flagships win compared to Nokia in almost all disciplines, except for processor performance. We hope that HMD Global will draw conclusions, work on the bugs, and by the time the new flagship Nokia 9 is released, a real Connecting people is waiting for us.

Pavel Gorodnitsky talks about how painfully long and fruitless Nokia has been working on its most ambitious project.

Nokia is the most long-suffering company of the last ten years. First, the Finns caught a powerful blow from Apple (the iPhone killed push-button phones), then they refused to release devices for Android (in vain), and after that they came under the control of Stephen Elop, the man who practically destroyed the legendary brand.

As a result, everything almost ended in disaster - Nokia came under the wing of Microsoft, and there they froze the development of smartphones. It was possible to crawl out from under the rubble only at the end of 2016 - now HMD Global Corporation is responsible for Nokia gadgets, which seems to know how to make a profitable business. The results are really good - the market share of the phones of the revived brand is growing rapidly and steadily. However, we must admit: this is no longer the Nokia that resonated with every new product and was considered the most advanced manufacturer on the planet.

In the two years since its resurrection, Nokia has made people talk about itself exactly twice. The first - when she revived the great model 3310. The second - when she released a remake of the banana phone from The Matrix. Everything else is boring, monotonous, rectangular middle-class smartphones. Their prices are slightly inflated, but the trust in the brand has not gone away, so the average buyer will choose for a long time between the fancy Xiaomi and the average from Nokia. That's how reputation works - you can't get away from it.

The most fascinating part of this story is Nokia's plans. The ambitions of the HMD Global bosses are far beyond the $150-$300 price bracket. They again want to become great, powerful, competitive and noticeable. But there is only one way to this goal - you need to release the flagship. And this is where the company's managers get into a dead end. They understand that the release of a top smartphone should become a landmark, but they don’t know how to guarantee to blow up the market.

The code name of the fateful device is Nokia 9. The first insiders about it appeared in the spring of 2017, that is, only six months after the official renaissance of the brand. Either the body of the novelty was leaked to the Network (of course, in a case), then examples of photographs, then full characteristics - in short, a standard set. But nothing happened: instead of the incredible Nokia 9, the Finns showed an ordinary Nokia 8.

This situation is repeated from month to month. Every announcement of the Finns is a meme in the spirit of "expectation/reality". People believe that the mysterious "nine" will finally debut, and instead of it, some dull Nokia 6.1 is brought out to the public. Recently, another deadline has shifted: it was planned that the premiere of the flagship would take place in the fall, but it was moved to February.

Classic. No one will be surprised if Nokia's main gadget at MWC will be another ancient phone that will be taken out of the coffin with only one purpose - to get into the headlines of IT publications.

Why is this happening? There are two versions.

brutal camera

In the best years, Nokia was turned on the cameras - perhaps the current bosses believe that it is simply incorrect to return without a killer module. Now there is not a single Finnish device at the top of the authoritative Dx0Mark rating, so there is a chance to jump over all the leaders and immediately take a place in the top.

The spy photos of the Nokia 9 camera are as mythological as the smartphone itself. From time to time, pictures of the so-called revolving module - five lenses arranged in a circle - get onto the Internet. Why such an option is needed - no one knows, but the creation of such a design obviously takes a lot of time, effort and money. It is likely that this is why the release is being pushed back.

Race for technology

Nokia 9 was supposed to be stuffed with all the latest features, but the iPhone X has clearly changed the strategy of the Finns. Firstly, I had to make a cutout - without it now there is nowhere. Secondly, invent your own face unlock system. Thirdly, to achieve complete framelessness.

But after all the missions were completed, it made sense to wait for winter. It looks reasonable: you can add support for 5G (the flagship trend for the coming years) and put the Snapdragon 855 processor (it will be the most powerful throughout 2019). In addition, an under-screen scanner, ultra-fast charging, and the purest Android 9 are expected. A normal set for a $990 projected price.

What will really happen?

Most likely, Nokia will again disrupt the debut of a grandiose smartphone, but will break out with a banal flagship in the spirit of the eighth model. There will be an OLED screen, a dual camera, a Snapdragon 845 processor and a cost in the region of 40-45 thousand rubles at the start. If this happens, waiting for a real explosion and challenge to the market from the Finns is already useless. Abandoning a big idea will only mean one thing: Nokia's DNA has finally changed, and now it's just a business project, not a company that can really change the world.

Nokia today presented its flagship - the Nokia 8. And everything seems to be as it should be: a high-resolution display, a flagship processor, a nice and uncluttered design. But there are still no impressions. There are no highlights, but the price is normal. Let's figure out what's what.

What is the current Nokia and its flagship

First of all, you need to understand how to relate to Nokia smartphones. Only one name remains from the same brand. The development and production of devices is carried out by the Chinese office HMD. I would put the current Nokia on a par with Meizu, Xiaomi, OnePlus - that is, it is Chinese, but decent. Its destiny is not super-technological smartphones of the type, but the so-called budget flagships. Nokia 8 is just that.

The flagship of the first echelon is not just top performance, but also chips and perception. When you buy the same S8, you pay for the "infinite" screen and only then for everything else. One year later , however, a phone for fifty thousand rubles starts to work like a piece ... In short, it works very badly, but that's a completely different story, which our editor-in-chief. And it's not a story for everyone.

And Nokia 8 is just a set of top-end features. And it's not bad - just take it as a fact. Of the features, it only has a design, but it does not cause a wow effect either. Good, original, but not a peach. There is also no full-fledged moisture protection - only splash protection according to the IP54 standard.

What can you get hooked on

Perhaps the killer feature of the device will be the camera. It uses a dual camera, which combines two 13-megapixel modules. One is black and white, the other is color. There is also a 13-megapixel camera on the front. And all of them are under the Zeiss brand.

The smartphone has an "amazing" feature associated with the camera. On YouTube and Facebook, you can broadcast from the main and front cameras at the same time. The screen is divided into two parts: on one - what is happening around, on the other - you. Somewhere I saw it ... Oh yes, in ours!

Another feature is called Nokia OZO Audio - it writes surround sound when shooting video.

Why do I think that you can expect something from the camera? Yes, simply because Nokia has not yet had flagships, and we do not know if it can make cool cameras or not. It is unlikely that it will compete with Samsung and Apple, but it is quite possible to gore the same Xiaomi.

The rest is like everyone else

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 is cool: a powerful chipset with plenty of power to spare. If Nokia does not screw up the software, then the phone can be safely used for two years. 4 GB of RAM will also be enough for the near future.

The device has a 5.3-inch screen - small by today's standards, but the navigation buttons are placed on the collections and do not eat up space. In the same place, by the way, there is a fingerprint scanner - it's good that they didn't remove it back. The display resolution is Quad HD (2560 x 1440). Its maximum brightness is 700 nits, so there should be no problems under the sun.

Out of the box, the smartphone will run on Android 7.1.1 Nougat, the developers promise a quick update to the eighth version. The battery capacity is again the most common 3,090 mAh.

Features Nokia 8

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor (8 Kryo 280 cores, 4 of them at 1.8 GHz, the other 4 at 2.5 GHz, 10nm process technology)
  • video chip Adreno 540
  • 4 GB LPDDR4X RAM
  • 64 GB UFS 2.1 storage dedicated for file storage, Micro SD cards supported
  • 5.3″ display, IPS, Quad HD resolution (2560 x 1440), pixel density 554 ppi
  • the matrix is ​​protected by Gorilla Glass 5
  • front camera module 13 megapixels, f / 2.0, the size of one pixel is 1.12 microns, Zeiss optics
  • rear camera of two modules of 13 megapixels: color and black and white, Zeiss optics, phase detection autofocus, the size of one pixel is 1.12 microns, f / 2.0
  • the battery has a capacity of 3,090 mAh, fast charging standard Quick Charge 3.0
  • front fingerprint scanner
  • connectors: USB Type-C (3.1), separate headphone slot
  • sensors: lighting, proximity, accelerometer, Hall, barometer, electronic compass
  • Android 7.1.1 Nougat
  • case dimensions: 151.5 x 73.7 x 7.9 mm
  • weight 160 grams

Wireless interfaces:

  • 2G, 3G, 4G
  • 2 x Nano SIM
  • Wi-Fi 802.11 (a / b / g / n / ac), Bluetooth 5.0, NFC
  • geolocation: GPS, A-GPS, GLONASS, Beidou

It is already known that the smartphone will be officially sold in Russia. It is even known at what price - 39,990 rubles. There will be four colors to choose from: copper, steel and two blue (glossy and matte). The device would be the best to compete with, only it was initially cheaper, and now it can be bought at all for 30-32 thousand. Well, maybe someone will follow the name.

HMD Global, as part of a large presentation in London (UK), officially unveiled the first flagship under the Nokia brand - Nokia 8. Most of the leaks revealed the expected novelty long before this event, but some tricks in the sleeve of the Chinese-Finnish Nokia still managed to be hidden.
Nokia 8 received a 5.3-inch display with an IPS matrix and Quad HD resolution (2560x1440 pixels). The brightness level, according to the manufacturer, is dazzling - up to 700 nits at the maximum level. The front of the smartphone is protected by Gorilla Glass 5 with 2.5D technology. The body of Nokia 8 is made of 6000-series aluminum alloy, the frame is made of metal. The thickness of the case is 7.9mm at its thickest point. There is also a basic protection against external damage according to the IP54 standard.




Zeiss engineers helped Nokia develop lenses for both the main and front cameras of the Nokia 8. The rear camera has two 13-megapixel modules (color and monochrome) with a pixel size of 1.12 microns and aperture of f/2.0. The color sensor supports optical image stabilization (OIS), while laser autofocus and dual LED flash help you capture the best shots in low light. The front camera is a single sensor with similar specifications: 13 megapixels (pixel size 1.12 microns), f / 2.0 aperture and phase detection autofocus. Directly from the standard camera app on the Nokia 8, you can live stream to Facebook and YouTube, as well as capture an image from two modules (back and front) simultaneously using the Dual-Sight function.

The second feature of Nokia 8 is 360 binaural audio recording (3D format). Exclusively developed for smartphones, OZO Audio captures high-quality audio that matches 4K video. The OZO team, a division of Nokia, was involved in designing the special microphone arrangement.

Another very interesting feature of the long-awaited flagship is the application as a standard gallery. For this, HMD Global partnered with Google. Like the flagships of the Pixel, the Nokia 8 comes with unlimited photo and video storage. Built-in memory - 64 GB. There is support for microSD cards (up to 256 GB).

As for the technical characteristics, all the leaks regarding the Nokia 8 came true:

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 mobile platform.
  • 4 GB of RAM.
  • 3,090 mAh battery, Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging support (18W, 5V/2.5A, 9V/2A, 12V/1.5A).
  • Connectors and sensors: USB Type-C (version 3.1, data transfer rate up to 5 Gb / s), 3.5 mm audio jack, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, accelerometer, electronic compass, gyroscope, Hall sensor, barometer, fingerprint scanner .
  • Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac with support for MIMO technology, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, A-GPS, BDS, GLONASS, ANT+, NFC.
  • Dimensions: 151.5x73.7x7.9 mm, weight - 160 g.

The new flagship Nokia 8 runs on a clean Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system. The upgrade to has already been announced, so the smartphone will receive it soon after the official release of the new OS version. The start of sales of Nokia 8 in Russia is scheduled for September 1 this year. The official price is 39,990 rubles. Pre-orders for the novelty open from tomorrow, August 17th.