Nokia 6.1 (4GB RAM) Review: Beyond Superior Construction

Nokia's return to the smartphone market implied a lot more nostalgia than crazy expectations around performance. The undernourished hardware at a premium price, and the build quality being the only USP sums up the first batch of Nokia devices in 2017. However, they are back again, this time with much needed upgrades, and in partnership with Google for their Android One Program With a fairly decent package coupled with Nokia's trustworthy brand value, let's see if the Nokia 6.1 has what it takes to compete with the fierce competition of Xiaomi or D & D. Other well established brands.

Starting with what stands out when the device is held in hand for the first time, this incredible build quality. Nokia is known for building their phones as a tank and the 6.1 is no exception. The body is carved into a single 6000 series aluminum block with chamfered edges giving it a premium look. Even though the smartphone looks superb, the back has a very smooth matte finish that makes the camera extremely slippery in the hand, and sharp edges only add to the misery. The device just does not feel comfortable when using for long periods. Another small problem, if I have to bother myself, is the placement of the fingerprint reader, which could have been slightly above the current placement. Instead of the elongated camera module, the scanner could have been slightly raised, which would be the natural position of the finger. While we are there, the scanner itself is quite fast and accurate, but your finger has to rest entirely on the sensor, otherwise there will be an error that only a partial fingerprint has been detected.

Coming to the front of the device, the Nokia 6.1 sports a 5.5-inch IPS 1080p LCD screen with Corning's Gorilla Glass 3 curved 2.5D. Nokia went with the good old 16: 9 aspect ratio as opposed to the 18: 9 trend which gives the camera a sort of dated look. The quality of the billboard is just about the money. The colors appear vibrant, and the blacks are deep enough, the viewing angles are excellent with little or no color change, and the brightness levels are good enough for decent outdoor visibility.

The earphone on the top had no problem during the calls, but Nokia made a slight compromise here compared to the previous Nokia 6 which dubbed the earphone as a front speaker to form a stereo installation. The 6.1, however, has a single lower shooting speaker that is amply loud for media consumption. There is no distortion, even at high volume, and the audio output seems to be clear. The output of the headphone jack is decent, nothing fancy.

A 16MP camera faces the back with Zeiss optics and an 8MP shooter facing the front, both having an aperture of f / 2.0 handle the optics. There is also support for phase detection autofocus on the rear camera as well as a dual dual tone LED flash. Photos taken from the camera show to be a mixed bag. In outdoor as well as good lighting conditions, the images appear to be crisp and the colors appear vibrant and pleasing to the eye but slightly saturated with respect to real life. But, this is only one side of the story. Sometimes the images look washed out, thanks to the excessive exposure, and some areas of the image turn out to be completely dark, even when the automatic HDR mode is turned on. Inconsistent to say the least. The situation worsens when we move to low light scenarios. The sensor simply does not capture enough light, resulting in dark images with little or no detail. There is also a lot of noise captured in the background, partly because of a smaller pixel size and what appears to be poor optimization.

The situation is no different with respect to the 8MP shooter face to face. Pictures taken in good lighting scenarios have a decent amount of detail, but still tend to have some noise. The software seems to soften the details, resulting in faded images, which is evident in the pictures taken in the interior lighting. Thanks to a software update, it is now possible to support a bokeh mode, but oddly only on the front camera. The bokeh itself is strong enough and looks rather artificial, but it is there when you need it. In addition, edge detection does not seem too professional.

Note: Click here for full resolution camera samples

One aspect however, that the Nokia 6.1 has for it, is its performance. Under the hood, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 chip runs the show with 8 cores Cortex-A53 clocked at 2.2GHz coupled to the GPU Adreno 508. There are two RAM / storage configurations available with the basic variant having 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage and the variant we examined, having 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which is expandable by a hybrid SIM slot.

Specs aside, the performance on the Nokia 6.1 has been pretty solid, thanks in large part to the Android Stock experience provided by the Android One program. Daily tasks run smoothly and the user interface is fluid. Speaking of the user interface, there is absolutely no bloatware that comes preinstalled other than a few Google apps. There are some nice features, including double touch screen to wake up the device or slide a finger on the fingerprint reader to lower the notification shade, etc. Intensive tasks like the game are managed as well with little or no major delay or frame drops. After playing for about 10-15 minutes, playing common titles like Asphalt 8 and Modern Combat 5, the back of the device became slightly warm, which is expected given the metal body. There is also support for NFC for contactless payments as well as file transfer.

There is a 3000mAh battery for power, and although the number may be misleading, the Nokia 6.1 offers a good battery life for a whole day, thanks to the Snapdragon 630 chip that is manufactured with the FinFET 14nm process. Every day of my use, I ended up with about 15% juice and 5+ hours of screen time with moderate to strong use. Scroll through my Twitter feed, a little browsing, send SMS on Hangouts and WhatsApp, browsing for about 15-20 minutes, and of course, streaming the IPL qualifier on Hotstar through 4G. All this, with 5 hours and 40 minutes of screen at the time and 15% of the remaining battery at 23:35 having plugged the charger phone at 7:30 in the morning. And to top it off, the Nokia 6.1 also supports the 9V 2A fast charge, similar to Quick Charge 3.0 which charges the device from 10 to 100% in about 100 minutes, which is pretty fast.

The Nokia 6.1 is an upgrade worthy of its predecessor, the Nokia 6, which was simply bad. While it's built as a tank with a solid battery and overall performance, the cameras are where the Nokia 6.1 is lagging behind the competition. Also with the asking price of Rs. 18,999 for variant 4 + 64 GB, it is very difficult to recommend on other devices like the Redmi Note 5 Pro or the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1, which both have higher chipsets and better camera configuration, and are significantly cheaper than the Nokia 6.1. But then, you do not need to fight in flash sales or worry about after-sales service if you indeed decide to go with the Nokia 6.1.

Tell us what you think about the Nokia 6.1 and if you're really interested in choosing one yourself, considering the longevity of the device, thanks to the Android One program that ensures two years of updates Android. Better specifications or better software support? What would you choose?