Since it began first announced the Nokia 6 way back in January this year, HMD has added models at almost every price point. The Nokia 8 is its flagship device (at least until the Nokia 9), the Nokia 5 and 6 take care of the mid-range segment, and, up until today, the Nokia 3 was its lowest-specced handset. HMD announced the Nokia 2 a few hours ago, an entry-level phone that boasts 2-days battery life.
The Nokia 2’s main claim to fame is the massive 4,100mAh battery which HMD states will keep the Nokia going for 2 days. That’s hugely impressive. Other specs include:
5.0-Inch IPS LCD 1280 x 720 (312)
Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 (Quad-core Cortex A7 up to 1.3GHz) Corning Glass 3 protection
Adreno 304
1GB RAM
8GB Internal storage with MicroSD card support
8MP Rear camera
5MP Front camera
MicroUSB
4,100mAh Built-in battery
LTE with VoLTE
Available in single and dual Nano-SIM variants
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
Dimensions: 14.05 x 71.3 x 9.30mm
Android 7.1.1 Nougat
Design-wise, the Nokia 2 has an aluminum frame with a polycarbonate (plastic) rear panel and can be had in Pewter/Black, Pewter/White, or Copper/Black colors. HMD had the courage to include a 3.5mm audio jack, and the phone has an IP52 rating which means it can handle a few drips. The Nokia 2 is already available in India and will make its way to other markets from mid-November priced around the €99 mark.
US consumers interested in purchasing the Nokia 3310 3G (a modern retake on the classic Nokia 3310 released way back in 2000) can now pre-order the phone through Best Buy. Priced at $59.99, the Nokia 3310 3G is a dual SIM handset that’s compatible with carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. It obviously doesn’t have LTE, so 3G is the best you can get out of the device in terms of cellular connectivity.
The Nokia 3310 3G offers a solid body, a small 2.4-inch screen with 240 x 320 pixels, a retro UI, and a 2 MP camera with LED flash. It comes pre-installed with the legendary Snake game, and even lets you access Facebook (though you’ll probably find the experience underwhelming). The handset also features a 3.5mm headset jack, FM radio, MP3 player, and a memory card slot supporting microSD cards up to 32 GB. As for the phone’s battery, this is a removable 1200 mAh one – good for up to 6.5 hours of talk-time, or up to 24 days of stand-by time.
The new Nokia feature phone has four color variants (azure, charcoal, warm red, and yellow), all of which can be ordered from Best Buy – check out the source links below. The handset will be shipped later this month, on October 29.
Although it may not be a phone you will ever get a chance to buy thanks to being released only in China, HMD Global has officially announced the Nokia 7smartphone. This mid-range phone is part of HMD Global’s continued resurrection of the Nokia brand and from a business standpoint, being able to offer a device in the large Chinese market is an important step.
The Nokia 7 comes equipped with a Snapdragon 630 processor and buyers can opt for either 4GB or 6GB of RAM. The Nokia 7 also gets 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded via a microSD card. For the screen, the Nokia 7 comes with a 5.2-inch IPS LCD running at 1080p HD resolution.
HMD Global has been talking up their partnership with Zeiss for photography and for the Nokia 7 they installed a 16MP f1.8 camera for the rear and a 5MP front-facing camera. Similar to some efforts we have seen in the past, the camera app on the Nokia 7 is capable of capturing images from both cameras at one time in a split screen format, which HMD Global is pushing as a “bothie.”
Some of the other hardware onboard the Nokia 7 includes a 3,000 mAh battery, a USB Type C connection, a typical array of sensors, a fingerprint scanner, and support for NFC. Like other Nokia devices, the Nokia 7gets a plain vanilla Android install with no additional skins or UI. This should help keep updates rolling in a bit faster and HMD Global has already promised the Nokia 7 will be upgraded to Android 8.0 Oreo.
The Nokia 7 will be available starting October 24th although consumers can start to place pre-orders today. The 4GB version is priced at ¥2,499 ($377 USD) and the 6GB version gets bumped up to ¥2,699 ($407 USD). Color options include a Gloss Black and Matte White.
Nokias of the past have, over the years, received an almost ridiculous amount of praise for their solid construction. But does the newly revived Nokia brand still retain the same traits now that it’s slapped onto Android smartphones? If we go by a durability test undergone by the Nokia 6, then the answer is a resounding yes.
But what about the new flagship? We’re talking about the Nokia 8, of course. To find out how durable it is, leave it to YouTube channel JerryRigEverything to perform a comprehensive torture test, as usual. Here it is, embedded below for your viewing pleasure.
In case you can’t watch the video, here are the highlights. The front glass scratches exactly as easily as you’d expect Gorilla Glass 5 to, no surprises there. Similarly, when a flame is applied to the screen the pixels it touches go black after ten seconds, but since it’s an LCD they fully recover once the flame is extinguished.
The back of the phone is aluminum, which means a razor blade will scratch and damage it. The entire back camera section (which also features the LED flash) is covered by glass, so it won’t scratch as easily as if it were plastic.
Moving on to the most important part, the Nokia 8 does not bend. Not from the front, not from the back. This despite the fact that it uses 6000 series aluminum, which Apple had to give up on and replace with a 7000 series alloy in order to not have its handsets bend. The shape of the aluminum inside the Nokia 8 contributes to its durability. So for now, Nokia’s legacy is intact – at least from this point of view.
HMD Global has confirmed that all of its Nokia-branded smartphones will be updated to Android 8.0 Oreo. Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer, HMD Global, took to Twitter to confirm the news. This means all the new Nokia-branded Android smartphones – Nokia 8, Nokia 6, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 will be upgraded to the latest Android 8.0 Oreo.
In a post on Twitter, HMD Global’s Chief Product Officer Juho Sarvikas has mentioned that all of its smartphones will be upgraded to Android 8.0 Oreo, which is the latest version of Android mobile OS. This is a good news for those who’ve recently purchased a Nokia-branded smartphone. However, the company has not mentioned the exact timeline when it plans to update all of its smartphones to Android 8.0 Oreo. We expect the actual roll-out will happen before the year ends.
The next version of Android, which was previously known as Android O, will be called as the Android 8.0 Oreo. At the moment, only a handful of Google-branded smartphones support Android 8.0 Oreo. They are Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Nexus Player and Pixel C. Android 8.0 Oreo brings faster performance, improved notifications, enhanced battery life, and number of incremental improvements.
Last month, HMD Global announced its first ever flagship smartphone – Nokia 8. The smartphone sports a 5.3-inch QHD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB internal memory, microSD card support, a dual-camera setup, and a 3090mAh battery.
While there’s no information when the company plans to bring the high-end Android phone to India, Nokia 8 is up for pre-order in the UK. According to a popular high-street retailer Carphone Warehouse, Nokia 8 will start shipping in the UK from September 13. The phone costs £499 (or approx Rs 41,499) in the UK.
This Nokia is still designed in Finland, it’s still made like a tank, but the actual firm behind it is HMD Global and all the manufacturing is in China. So take the ‘Nokia’ branding with just a pinch of salt. There’s little DNA here from the classic Nokiadesigns of the past, though some visual clues have been taken from phones such as the Nokia N9 (running Meego, so that’s the fourth OS mentioned in the last two paragraphs!), Lumia 800 and Lumia 920.
As a smartphone, the ‘6’ is well styled, I was enormously impressed by how solid it is, with slab aluminium sides and polished chamfered edges. It’s heavy too, at almost 170g, almost in phablet territory with a 5.5” screen.
The fingerprint sensor, down the bottom, is 100% accurate, but the specification here means that it takes a second from placing your thumb to the Nokia 6 being unlocked and the display powered up. Is a second too long? Not for the target market, though anyone exposed to flagships (think iPhone 7, Google Pixel) will notice a difference.
Around the perimeter is a welcome 3.5mm headphone jack, all metal volume and power buttons, a speaker aperture (of which more later) and… a microUSB charging and data port.
That’s right – microUSB on a £200 smartphone in 2017, rather than the now ubiquitous USB Type C. It feels very out of place and my theory is that the Nokia 6design was actually finalised at least 18 months ago, back at the tail end of 2015, when USB Type C was still only on flagships (the Lumia 950 and 950 XL famously launched with this, among the first smartphones with ‘C’). The delays HMD Global faced getting the Nokia 6 to market have left it with this single anachronistic spec point. Most users won’t mind, of course, microUSB jacks and chargers are everywhere still – and, to be fair, it’s just about the only major disappointment in the Nokia 6. For the price.
On the back is the reassuring ‘NOKIA’ logo, just as on the Symbian phones and Lumias of old, plus a very ‘Nokia’ vertical raised camera island. I suspect that the raising is purely cosmetic, since there’s no reason for this pretty average phone camera to need the extra thickness. I’ll come back to the camera later on.
The display is IPS LCD and 1080p resolution. With the RGB stripe (i.e. all pixels represented, unlike on AMOLED screens), the screen is extremely crisp and decently bright, though I noted that contrast levels weren’t brilliant in the sun.
The top earpiece is used as a ‘tweeter’ and piped the left channel for any stereo audio. This is – absolutely – a hack of the highest order. The results when watching Netflix or similar are a definitely imbalance in the sound, with 90% of the volume coming from the bottom firing main speaker and 10% from the earpiece. Much of the time this doesn’t really matter, but just occasionally something’s supposed to be happening in the left channel in terms of music or effects and… you can hardly hear it. With proper stereo now on the HP Elite x3 and Alcatel IDOL 4 Pro (etc.) a mainly-right-channel hack just doesn’t cut it.
Still, for sat-nav, podcast and speakerphone use, the speaker combination is absolutely fine and pretty loud. Also on the audio front is a FM radio aerial built-in, not something you get on every phone nowadays, and indicating the Nokia 6’s potential markets, in countries where data isn’t ubiquitous and where FM radio is still a major source of news and entertainment.
You also get support for 5GHz Wi-fi and for NFC, the former meaning that HMD has gone the extra mile in terms of licensing all the Snapdragon 430’s capabilities, and the latter meaning that Android Pay is a ‘go’.
Imaging was always going to be a let down after the best of Nokia cameras in the Symbian and Windows Phone worlds, of course. And it is. The 16MP f/2.0 main camera shoot in 12MP in 16:9 and results are generally OK. The Phase Detection Auto-Focus regularly got confused by some of my arty macro shots, but you’ll have no issues for regular shots. In low light, results are distinctly ‘meh’, though not overly noisy, so there’s some effective noise reduction at work, even if details are then not as clear as you’d like. Again, think of the price, though – results are inline with this. Just don’t see the word ‘NOKIA‘ and think ‘great camera’!
Although there’s no physical shutter button on the Nokia 6, a tap on the volume up button also takes the shot and you quickly get used to this arrangement. Importantly, the squared sides of the phone mean that keeping a grip while snapping is very easy.
Video capture is at 1080p but there’s no software or hardware stabilisation (OIS), so results are unremarkable. The front camera’s 8MP, by the way, and also not worth dwelling on.
The Snapdragon 430 chipset in here is paired with 3GB RAM and the Nokia 6chugs along happily in this configuration, without ever really seeming speedy. The target market won’t mind and games work just fine. 32GB of internal storage is backed by microSD support, though you do have to sacrifice the optional second (2G-only) nanoSIM slot for this – not a big deal for most users, I suspect.
The OS here is vanilla Android 7.1.1, with nothing fancy added. Because of this, I suspect, it’s trivial for Nokia to keep things up to date, with the August security updates from Google only days after the Nexus and Pixel phones, with Google Assistant available out of the box, and with the official Google Pixel launcher. If you’re thinking of switching to Android from Symbian or Windows Phone then start with something ‘stock’ like this – it’ll break you into Android very easily.
Android is an easy transition from Symbian, with many similar UI and OS concepts, though it’s unlikely anyone’s coming straight from the latter to the former – but it will still seem familiar to AAS readers who have been out of touch with the phone world recently. Android is also pretty accessible to anyone used to Windows 10 Mobile, given the latter’s UI convergence with the rest of the world recently – think hamburger and ‘…’ menus, for example.
Moving straight to this Android-powered Nokia from Windows Phone 8.1 is more of a culture shock, though at least the massively better stocked application store is a sweetener. Any application that you’ve ever heard of is available here. Every shop, every service, every bank, you hardly need to touch the Chrome web browser – though that too is excellent and arguably better than Edge on Windows 10 Mobile and certainly superior to Web on Symbian and IE on WP8.1, of course.
Battery life was good in my tests, with the 3000mAh battery working with the comparatively low end chipset to easily get through a day. In theory there’s fast charging, compatible with Quick Charge 3.0 – this comes with the Snapdragon 430, though in my tests I couldn’t get the Nokia 6 to acknowledge any of my fast chargers, so perhaps there’s a software update needed to enable this.
Overall, the Nokia 6 is an unremarkable smartphone, almost every component is a downgrade from the Lumia 950, for example, it performs and is in the same realm as the Lumia 650, though I have to give props to Nokia/HMD for the terrifically solid construction and design. It’s a phone I kept picking up, it feels like a serious tool, and it’s a damn good start to the reinvention of the Nokia brand.
HMD Global has been rolling out new Nokia devices with great regularity, but the best part seems to be their dedication to updating the phones on a reasonable time schedule. In fact, the Nokia 5 has been the first phone to get security patches for a few months now, often before Google releases them for their own devices. They’re hoping to capture a huge portion of the budget phone market too, as the upcoming Nokia 2 is slated to be budget-friendly.
Noted leaker Evan Blass has tweeted a series of press renders for the upcoming device, showing that it will be available in black and white.
Nokia 2 Specs – Rumored
4.7-inch to 5-inch 720p screen
Qualcomm Snapdragon 210 or 212
1GB of RAM
8GB storage
8MP rear camera
5MP front camera
4,000mAh battery
Given the phone’s low specs it’s likely that it will be reasonably priced and will never see the light of day in the US. That’s unfortunate, but what I think is even more unfortunate is that a budget phone like the Nokia 2 has a bigger battery than some of the most recent flagships.
Apple’s 2017 iPhones will inevitably influence the top end of the smartphone market. Here’s how it looks at the moment, with a number of key launches expected soon.
Smartphones are the focus of most people’s digital lives these days, and are likely to remain so until computing becomes truly ‘ambient’ — probably involving some seamless combination of wearables (particularly augmented reality [AR] goggles), IoT devices, cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI).
Following the launch of the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X, it’s a good time to take stock of the current state of the smartphone market by examining the vital statistics of leading vendors’ flagship handsets.
Apple‘s new iPhones, and Samsung‘s Galaxy S8/S8+ and Galaxy Note 8, show the general direction in which top-end smartphones are heading: powerful, attractive (and expensive) handsets whose user experiences increasingly leverage AI and AR, integrated with an ecosystem of add-on devices and services in various sectors including gaming, AR and VR, smart home, healthcare, shopping and office productivity.
Following last year’s well-publicised Galaxy Note 7 debacle and strong fourth-quarter performance from Apple, Samsung briefly ceded first place to its main rival in the Q4 2016 smartphone market. However, the Korean company swiftly returned to the number-one spot in 2017 (see chart). Apple‘s new iPhones face stiff competition from Samsung, Huawei and other top-five vendors, and from several manufacturers in the ‘Others’ category — including Google, HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, OnePlus and Sony — that also offer premium smartphones.
“Despite some key launches in the second quarter from some well-known players, all eyes will be on the ultra-high-end flagships set to arrive this fall,” said Anthony Scarsella, research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, when the Q2 2017 figures were released at the beginning of August. “With devices like the iPhone 8, Pixel 2, Note 8, and V30 in the pipeline, the competition will be fierce come September. We expect all the key players to promote their latest and greatest flagships with an assortment of deals, bundles, and trade-in offers across a variety of channels in most key markets,” he added.
Here’s how the flagship smartphone market looks following Apple‘s 2017 iPhone launch, presented as far as possible in graphical form. (Note: we’ll update this article as new handsets from Google, Huawei, LG and any other leading vendors are released.)
DESIGN
Screen size & Pixel density
Screen size — measured in inches across the diagonal — is a smartphone’s defining design characteristic, and the range on offer from leading vendors is now very wide. BlackBerry‘s 4.5-inch keyboard-equipped KEYone is the smallest, while Samsung‘s Galaxy Note 8 currently leads the field at 6.3 inches, with 16 out of the 25 handsets covered here falling between 5.5 and 6 inches. Display technologies are split between IPS LCD (Apple, BlackBerry, Huawei, HTC, LG [G6], Sony) and various species of OLED (Apple [iPhone X], Google, HP, Huawei [Mate 9 Pro], LG [V30], Motorola, OnePlus and Samsung).
Recent developments in smartphone displays include curved minimal-bezel screens with on-screen home buttons, 18:9 aspect ratio, Gorilla Glass 5 screen protection and — in the HTC U Ultra — a small secondary screen for notifications and other useful information (an idea recently dropped by LG when updating the V20 to the V30). Samsung‘s Note 8 is the only handset covered here that offers a stylus (the S-Pen). Apple‘s 2017 iPhones add True Tone technology (first seen in the 2016 9.7-inch iPad Pro) that automatically adjusts colour temperature and intensity to the ambient light, while the iPhone X made more space for the screen by removing the home button (and Touch ID) altogether.
The other key statistic here is pixel density, measured as pixels per inch (ppi), which factors in the display resolution. The graph below shows that Samsung (Galaxy S8) and LG (G6) lead the mainstream field with pixel densities of 567 and 564ppi respectively. The outlier is Sony‘s 5.5-inch Xperia XZ Premium, which offers a maximum 4K resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 for a massive 807ppi. This looks extremely impressive, but note that, for much of the time, the Xperia XZ Premium works at 1,080p resolution to save battery life, resulting in a much more mundane 403.5ppi.
Not everyone is comfortable with a large-screen handset, but if you want a leading-edge device, that’s increasingly what you’re being offered. If you’re happy with a large screen (>5.5in.) and also want high pixel density (>500ppi), you should be looking at Samsung‘s Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy S8+, LG‘s V30 or, if you’re happy to run Windows 10 Mobile, the HP Elite x3. If your hands are on the small side, the 5.3-inch Nokia 8 offers a good combination of moderate screen size and high resolution (550ppi).
Screen-to-body ratio & Thickness
Another key smartphone design metric is the screen-to-body ratio, which measures how much of a handset’s fascia is occupied by screen compared to non-display elements like bezels, camera lenses and control buttons.
If low screen/body ratios are ‘old-fashioned’, then Apple’s 2016 iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were showing their age at 65.5 percent and 67.5 percent respectively — and their 8 and 8 Plus successors have done nothing to change that. Apart from BlackBerry‘s KEYone, only four other handsets have sub-70 percent ratios: Google Pixel, HTC U Ultra, Nokia 8 and Sony Xperia XZ Premium. The 4.5-inch KEYone is an outlier at 55.9 percent because, of course, it has a hardware keyboard, which decreases the screen-to-body ratio (and also increases the thickness compared to touchscreen-only handsets — see below).
At the other end of the scale, Samsung‘s Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8 handsets, with their curved Infinity Display screens and on-screen home buttons, lead the field with screen/body ratios of 83-84 percent. LG‘s V30 and Apple‘s new iPhone X are the only other flagship handsets with screen/body ratios over 80 percent.
Smartphone vendors often make much of the slimness of their handsets, and it’s clear from the chart below that Huawei is particularly keen on this design feature. Conversely, Samsung and Google (and BlackBerry) deliver notably thicker handsets:
Motorola‘s modular Moto Z2 Force, at 6.1mm with no Mods fitted, is the thinnest handset here. There are trade-offs though: the camera lens housing protrudes from the rear, and the device’s body is too thin to accommodate a 3.5mm headset jack. With the increasing use of glass on both the front and back of premium handsets (to accommodate wireless charging), most people immediately put their expensive and shiny new handset in a protective case, which renders the quest for extreme slimness somewhat pointless.
Volume & Weight
As you’d expect, there’s a clear relationship between a smartphone’s physical volume and its weight, although the variation around the trendline is interesting.
For example, the handsets that are thick for their screen/body ratio — notably the HTC-designed Google Pixel and Pixel XL, HTC U Ultra and U11 — are also relatively light for their volume, suggesting that there’s plenty of room for components inside the case. Another handset that’s below the weight/volume trendline is Samsung‘s Galaxy Note 8 — evidence, perhaps, of design changes following the Note 7 debacle (especially as the Note 8 also packs a smaller-capacity 3,300mAh battery than its ill-fated predecessor, which ran on a 3500mAh unit). Conversely, it’s noteworthy how Apple‘s iPhone 8 Plus is particularly heavy (at 202g) for its volume, that the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are slightly bulkier and heavier than their predecessors, and that the 5.8-inch iPhone X is considerably lighter and more compact than Samsung’s 6.3-inch Galaxy Note 8.
Dust and water resistance
Another key smartphone design factor is resistance to the ingress of foreign matter, as commonly indicated by a two-digit IP rating: the first number describes dust resistance on a 1-6 scale, while the second describes water resistance on a 1-8 scale. The highest rating among the flagship handsets covered here is IP68, where ‘6’ indicates that the device is ‘dust tight’ and ‘8’ signifies that it can withstand immersion in water (usually at least 30 minutes to depth of at least 1m).
An IP rating of 5 for dust means the device is merely ‘dust protected’, while 7 for water means it can withstand immersion in up to 1m for 30 minutes, 4 means it can resist ‘splashing water’ and 3 means it can handle ‘spraying water’, both of the latter for at least 10 minutes.
IP ratings are not available for the BlackBerry KEYone, Huawei (and Honor) handsets, HTC U Ultra, Motorola Moto Z2 Force (although it does claim a ‘water repellent nano-coating’) and OnePlus 5. However, two of the flagship smartphones — the LG V30 and HP Elite X3 — also boast a military-grade MIL-STD 810G ruggedness certification.
Somewhat surprisingly, Apple‘s 2017 iPhones did not bump up their IP ratings from IP67 to IP68, to match Samsung‘s Galaxy S8/8+/Note 8. Looking ahead, it will be surprising if Google‘s second-generation Pixel handsets don’t move beyond IP53.
PLATFORM
Chipsets, CPU & GPU performance
A flagship smartphone should do its job — launching, running and switching between apps, and displaying on-screen content — quickly and smoothly, without any delays or glitches that would mar the user experience. It shouldn’t become uncomfortably hot in operation either — or, of course, burst into flames.
Chipsets from four main vendors power the handsets covered here:
Apple‘s 4-core A10 Fusion (iPhone 7/7 plus) and 6-core AI- and AR-optimised A11 Bionic(iPhone 8/8Plus/X)
Samsung‘s 8-core Exynos 8995 in the Galaxy S8/S8+/Note 8 (worldwide versions)
Qualcomm’s mid-range 8-core Snapdragon 625 (BlackBerry KEYone); 4-core 820 (HP Elite x3) and 821 (Google Pixel/XL, HTC U Ultra, LG G6); and top-end 8-core 835 (HTC U11, LG V30, Moto Z2 Force, OnePlus 5, Galaxy S8/S8+/Note 8 [US/China versions], Sony Xperia XZ Premium)
HiSilicon’s Kirin 960 in the Huawei and Honor handsets.
Here’s how these platforms shape up in terms of processor and graphics performance, as measured by the Primate Labs’ multi-core Geekbench 4 (Gb4) and Futuremark’s 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited (ISU) benchmarks respectively:
The top-performing chipset — on these measures at any rate — is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, with Gb4 and ISU scores of up to 6500 and 40000 respectively. Note that the Exynos 8995 versions of the Samsung S8 and S8+ deliver better CPU results but weaker GPU performance (benchmarks are currently only available for the Exynos 8995 version of the Galaxy Note 8).
Apple‘s A10 Fusion-powered iPhone 7 and 7 Plus were strong performers, with scores of around 5400 (Gb4) and 37000 (ISU), and the new A11 Bionic-powered iPhones are sure to see a significant speed bump when benchmarks appear (here’s a leaked report). At the 2017 launch, Apple claimed that the A11 Bionic’s two performance CPU cores are 25 percent faster than the A10, while its four high-efficiency cores are 70 percent faster. Apple‘s 2nd-generation performance controller is reportedly 70 percent faster for multithreaded workloads, while the A11’s GPU is 30 percent faster and delivers A10-level performance at half the power, according to Apple.
Also prominent are the Kirin 960-powered handsets from Huawei and Honor, which cluster around the 6000 (Gb4)/27000 (ISU) mark. Again, we expect to see a performance boost when the AI-optimised Kirin 970 chipset becomes available in the Huawei Mate 10 and Mate 10 Pro in October.
The remaining Snapdragon 821-powered smartphones on this chart — notably Google‘s Pixel and Pixel XL — are well behind the 2017 curve, and will certainly be updated with the 835 chipset in due course. Very much in last place in this company is BlackBerry‘s KEYone, which is powered by Qualcomm’s mid-range 8-core Snapdragon 625 SoC.
RAM & Storage
When it comes to memory, the clear leader of the pack is the OnePlus 5, which is currently unique in offering 8GB or 6GB of RAM. Next come seven flagship handsets with a maximum of 6GB, all of which bar the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 also have a 4GB variant. The most common RAM complement is 4GB, which is the only choice with 11 handsets and the maximum for BlackBerry‘s KEYone (which also comes with 3GB).
Apple has always fitted less RAM in its iPhones than the Android competition, and that hasn’t changed with its 2017 handsets: the iPhone X and 8 Plus have 3GB (like the iPhone 7 Plus), while the iPhone 8 has 2GB (like the iPhone 7).
As far as internal storage is concerned, Apple‘s 2017 iPhones stand out with their maximum complement of 256GB — a feature that betrays the company’s disdain for external storage expansion via a MicroSD card slot. Samsung‘s Galaxy Note 8 also offers a maximum of 256GB (in some territories), but has a MicroSD card slot too, making it the top choice for the data-hungry.
Google‘s Pixel handsets and the OnePlus 5 also lack MicroSD expansion and, like the previous-generation iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, provide up to 128GB rather than 256GB of internal storage.
The most common maximum internal storage complement is 128GB, which is offered by 13 of the 25 handsets covered here.
CAMERAS
Rear cameras
Cameras have become a key battleground for smartphone makers, and several approaches are currently on view among the flagship population. Although it wasn’t the first to do so, Apple kick-started a trend last year by offering dual rear cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus: a primary 12-megapixel (MP) camera with an f/1.8 wide-angle lens and optical image stabilisation (OIS), and a secondary camera with an f/2.8 telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom but no OIS.
As well as adding telephoto capability, Apple‘s dual-camera system allowed depth information to be calculated, enabling features like bokeh — sharp foreground and blurred background — to be supported on portrait shots that were previously the province of expensive digital SLR cameras with high-end optics.
Apple‘s 2017 dual-camera phones, the iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X, remain at 12MP but the sensors are bigger, faster and deliver better low-light performance, according to Apple. The iPhone 8 Plus has the same basic lens specs as the 7 Plus (f/1.8 wa + OIS, f/2.8 tele), while the iPhone X has an f/2.4 aperture on the telephoto lens and implements OIS on both cameras. Apple also takes advantage of A11 Bionic chip’s machine-learning optimisation and custom ISP to deliver a (beta) Portrait Mode feature called Portrait Lighting: here, depth sensing and facial mapping are combined to deliver real-time analysis of the light on a subject’s face and provide alternative lighting schemes — either pre- or post-capture.
For dual-camera handsets, the top bar is the wide angle or colour camera, while the bottom bar is the telephoto or black-and-white camera.
Huawei‘s Leica-branded camera system pairs 12MP RGB and 20MP monochrome sensors with 27mm f/2.2 lenses (f/1.8 in the P10 Plus), supporting OIS on the primary colour camera. As well as enabling true monochrome shooting and adding detail to blended RGB/mono shots, the 20MP secondary camera supplies depth information for bokeh-style images. The Honor 8 Pro has a similar (non-Leica-branded) system, but the secondary mono camera is 12MP rather than 20MP and there’s no support for OIS.
LG uses two 13MP sensors on the G6, one coupled with an f/1.8 autofocus lens with OIS and the other with an f/2.4 wide-angle lens lacking both OIS and autofocus. The LG V30 takes a similar approach, but uses a 16MP primary sensor with an f/1.6 lens (with AF and OIS) and a 13MP secondary sensor with an f/1.9 lens (no AF or OIS).
Both Motorola and Nokia take the Huawei approach, with colour and monochrome cameras: the Nokia 8’s Zeiss-branded system supports OIS on the colour camera, but the Moto Z2 Force does not offer OIS on either.
OnePlus and Samsung (Galaxy Note 8) go for the wide-angle/telephoto dual camera design, OnePlus with 16MP (wa) and 20MP (tele) cameras and electronic image stabilisation (EIS) rather than OIS, and Samsung with two 12MP cameras, both with OIS. Samsung also introduces a couple of neat dual-camera features: Live Focus lets you adjust the bokeh effect pre- and post-capture, while Dual Capture simultaneously captures photos from both the wide-angle and telephoto cameras.
Single rear cameras are an increasing rarity among the flagship population, but are headed (in resolution terms) by Sony and HP, with 19MP and 16MP units in the Xperia XZ Premium and Elite x3 respectively.
Front cameras
The fashion for ‘selfies’ and authentication via face recognition means that front-facing cameras, once something of an afterthought with a nod to video calls, have seen significant recent evolution.
Samsung, for example, offers both face recognition and iris scanning on its Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8 handsets, as well as a capable 8MP camera, while the Nokia 8’s Dual Capture feature lets you take pictures with the front and rear camera simultaneously (a.k.a. ‘Bothies’). Even more recently Apple more than matched Samsung’s functionality with the front-facing TrueDepth camera system and Face ID on the new iPhone X:
Apple’s True Depth camera system occupies a notch at the top of the iPhone X’s OLED screen.
To analyse your physiognomy, the flood illuminator detects your face, the infrared camera takes an IR image, and the dot projector places than 30,000 IR dots on your face. These data are fed into a neural network (in the A11 Bionic chip) to create a mathematical model of your face, which is then checked against the stored model on the handset — all in real time. The True Depth camera also enables Portrait Mode selfies with Portrait Lighting, and animated emoji called ‘Animoji’.
Here are the front camera megapixel counts for the 25 handsets under consideration, 12 of which are 8MP units:
Video
Video capture is becoming an increasingly important smartphone camera feature — witness the fact that all bar one of the handsets covered here can record 4k (2160p) video with at least a frame rate of 30fps. The exception is BlackBerry‘s KEYone, which doesn’t support 4k video capture at any frame rate. Apple‘s new iPhones just upped the ante by supporting 4k video at 60fps, which will doubtless kick off another round of feature catch-up.
Slow-motion video is another popular feature, and Sony‘s Xperia XZ Premium leads the field here, supporting HD (720p) video capture at a startling ‘super-slo-mo’ 960fps. The current ‘standard’ for slo-mo video is 720p at 240fps, although Apple has again pushed the boundary by supporting full HD (1080p) video at 240fps in the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X.
As resolutions and frame rates rise, image stabilisation — either optical or electronic — will become ever more important. It’s noticeably absent from Motorola‘s Moto Z2 Force, for example.
BATTERY
Battery capacity
As flagship smartphones pack in faster processors, more memory, larger and higher-resolution screens, and ever more functions, so the toll on the handset’s battery increases. There are multiple trade-offs here: no smartphone user wants to have to recharge during a typical day’s usage, but manufacturers cannot simply fit ever higher-capacity batteries into designs that need to be as lightweight and elegant as possible in order to keep buyers interested. Get it wrong and a vendor can have a Galaxy Note 7-style debacle on its hands.
The state of the art in smartphone batteries is currently around 4,000mAh, while 14 of the 22 handsets charted here have battery capacities between 3,000 and 4,000mAh. Apple has not divulged the battery specs for the iPhone 8, 8 Plus and X, and we’re awaiting the teardown analyses that will supply them.
Battery life
A bigger battery obviously means longer battery life, as the chart below clearly shows. But given that design and safety constraints preclude the shoehorning of big batteries into tight-fitting cases, manufacturers also need to make it as convenient as possible for users — especially ‘power’ users who subject their devices to heavy workloads — to recharge their handsets.
Following LG‘s decision to drop the removable battery when updating the V20 to the V30, this feature is now absent from all of the top-end smartphones covered here. Fast charging is supported on all but the now-outdated iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, while wireless charging is available on Apple‘s new iPhones (8, 8 Plus and X), HP‘s Elite x3, the LG G6 and V30, and Samsung‘s Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8.
PRICES
High-end smartphones are never going to be cheap, but Apple‘s newly launched iPhone X has broken new ground — the combination of Apple‘s historically high margins and a significant amount of new technology have seen to that. The entry-level 64GB iPhone X configuration costs $999, and if you must have the top-end 256GB model, be prepared to part with a princely $1,149 (and the same figure in UK pounds).
That’s a record for a mainstream flagship handset, although you can spend even sillier money on specialist secure/luxury devices like Sirin Labs’ Solarin if you really want to (although, as it turned out, few did).
Here are the list prices in US dollars for most of the premium handsets covered in this feature:
Notes: the LG V30 prices are converted from Korean won; the Nokia 8 price is converted from euros. The following handsets are not officially available in the US: Honor 8 Pro, Huawei Mate 9 Pro, Huawei P10 and P10 Plus. Where available, prices for entry-level and top-end configurations are shown.
Outlook
Recent launches from Samsung and Apple have highlighted the increasing importance of artificial intelligence and augmented reality in high-end smartphones, with the underlying chipsets and developer resources evolving appropriately. At least for now, the smartphone will remain the portable hub for your digital life, and the flow of new devices will continue apace.
We aim to keep this roundup updated as new products, specification details and benchmarks appear. The next big launches expected are Google‘s second-generation Pixel handsets, Huawei‘s Mate 10 and 10 Pro, and LG‘s G7. Check back for updated information on these and other devices.
HMD Global has confirmed that all of its Nokia-branded smartphones will be updated to Android 8.0 Oreo. Juho Sarvikas, Chief Product Officer, HMD Global, took to Twitter to confirm the news. This means all the new Nokia-branded Android smartphones – Nokia 8, Nokia 6, Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 will be upgraded to the latest Android 8.0 Oreo.
In a post on Twitter, HMD Global’s Chief Product Officer Juho Sarvikas has mentioned that all of its smartphones will be upgraded to Android 8.0 Oreo, which is the latest version of Android mobile OS. This is a good news for those who’ve recently purchased a Nokia-branded smartphone. However, the company has not mentioned the exact timeline when it plans to update all of its smartphones to Android 8.0 Oreo. We expect the actual roll-out will happen before the year ends.
The next version of Android, which was previously known as Android O, will be called as the Android 8.0 Oreo. At the moment, only a handful of Google-branded smartphones support Android 8.0 Oreo. They are Pixel, Pixel XL, Nexus 6P, Nexus 5X, Nexus Player and Pixel C. Android 8.0 Oreo brings faster performance, improved notifications, enhanced battery life, and number of incremental improvements.
Last month, HMD Global announced its first ever flagship smartphone – Nokia 8. The smartphone sports a 5.3-inch QHD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, 4GB RAM, 64GB internal memory, microSD card support, a dual-camera setup, and a 3090mAh battery.
While there’s no information when the company plans to bring the high-end Android phone to India, Nokia 8 is up for pre-order in the UK. According to a popular high-street retailer Carphone Warehouse, Nokia 8 will start shipping in the UK from September 13. The phone costs £499 (or approx Rs 41,499) in the UK.
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