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Nokia 7.1 scores big on display and camera but falls short of its competitor when it comes to performance. The design of the phone makes it a classy looking thing, but the lack of a TPU case in the box is concerning due to the all-glass construction. Its not an all-rounder, but it is great for people looking for a smartphone with a good camera in this budget.
HMD Global owned Nokia has been on a strong roll for the last year, launching one popular device after another. The company added another feather to its cap this year when they announced that Nokia devices would join the Android One program, meaning that all Nokia branded smartphones to release would run stock Android. Nokia has a pretty confusing nomenclature scheme, but that shouldn’t distract you from the real highlights of the Nokia 7.1 Sporting the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 and 4GB RAM, the main USP of the Nokia 7.1 is the HDR10 certified display. But does the display alone mean that the Nokia 7.1 is a better buy than other smartphones at the Rs 20,000 mark? We find out.
What’s in the Box
The Nokia 7.1 comes in a pretty simple, no fuss box. Inside, you will find the phone, a 10watt charger with a USB-C cable and a pair of earphones that look like what Nokia used to offer back in early 2000s. There’s also the standard SIM tray removal pin along with a few leaflets of documentation.
Nokia 7.1 Key Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 636
RAM: 4GB
Storage: 64GB (expandable)
Rear Camera: 12MP primary camera with f/1.8 aperture + 5MP secondary depth sensor
Front Camera: 8MP f/2.0
Display Resolution: 1080x2240
Display Size: 5.84-inches
HDR10 Support: Yes
Battery: 3060mAh with Fast Charge support
Build and Design
The Nokia 7.1 is the best-looking phone in its price segment and there is absolutely no doubt about it. The shell of the phone is so gorgeous that they could literally use the same design for a flagship phone costing twice as much and we would still say that its premium in every way. The flat glass sandwich design in deep blue keeps things minimal and the silver accent along with edges of the metal frame add a touch of elegance. The fingerprint sensor on the back is gently embedded into the back, with no visible capacitive ring. The camera module is aligned vertically just above the fingerprint sensor and houses the dual cameras with Zeiss branding and the LED flash. The camera module does stick out of the back quiet noticeably, so laying this phone flat on a table can be tough. This especially poses a problem when the phone is on vibrate mode. Due to the slightly raised angle, vibrations from incoming calls often caused the phone to slide on its own and had the phone been placed near the edge of the table, it would have surely fallen off. Sadly, Nokia, unlike others, does not include a TPU case in the box.
The Nokia 7.1's design makes it as good looking as a flagship
The front of the Nokia 7.1 is all glass with the display taking up most of the real-estate. The 19.5:9 display panel has fairly slim bezels, save for the bottom chin which is larger than even the Nokia branding that resides on it. On top, the notch is considerably small, housing just the front-facing camera and a tiny speaker grill. The bottom of the frame houses a USB Type-C port with the cutout of the speaker and microphones. The volume rocker and the power button are placed on the right side of the frame and carry the same colour and accent treatment as the rest of the frame.
The silver accents along the edges and buttons look good
All in all, the Nokia 7.1 could easily pass off as a smartphone that is playing in a league far above its own. The design is elegant and functional. What does keep it from being a premium build is the lack of things like an IP rating, but we are honestly not complaining. What you should genuinely be worried about, however, is the all-glass build, which is easily going to break if it makes contact with the ground from a height more than a foot and a half.
Display
The display on the Nokia 7.1 is one of the main highlights of this phone. When LG brought an HDR10 and Dolby Vision certified display to the Rs 40,000 mark, everyone thought it was a huge deal. Now Nokia has brought an HDR10 capable LCD display to the Rs 20,000 mark and that by itself is a huge deal. This means the display is capable of going up to 1000 nits by virtue of the HDR10 compliance. As of now, however, HDR playback through Netflix is not supported, but should come soon.
The display otherwise looks extremely crisp and vibrant with nice colours, but the display’s white balance is tuned slightly towards the cooler side. Unfortunately, the Nokia 7.1 does not allow the tweaking of display colours, only offering the option to turn on or off the HDR10 setting (which doesn’t do much for SDR content).
The Nokia 7.1 features an HDR10 certified display
Using the display outdoors in bright light works fine for the most part, given that it can get very bright. In our lab, we tested the Nokia 7.1’s display and found it to have a peak brightness of 550 lux for day-to-day use. This is a display that would be considered bright enough for most conditions, but what is commendable is that even when the brightness is turned up all the way to max, the colours don’t fade. The screen is a little on the reflective side and under bright light, can cause some visual distractions, but its not so bad that you won’t be able to read or watch your favourite dog (or cat) video on Instagram or YouTube.
Overall, the display on the Nokia 7.1 is impressive for its peak brightness and vibrant colours, but the lack of white balance tuning makes it less than ideal for content creation. Also, having HDR10 compliance is great, but Netflix doesn’t support streaming in HDR to the Nokia 7.1 yet, leaving you limited to YouTube HDR and other unconventional sources of HDR videos.
Performance and Software
The Nokia 7.1 sports the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor paired with 4GB of RAM on our review unit. The Snapdragon 636 is Qualcomm’s mid-tier processor sitting just below the Qualcomm Snapdragon 660. For the price, the Snapdragon 636 might feel a little underwhelming, but the promise of stock Android is that it should get the most out of whatever hardware its being run on. In order to figure out what’s going on with our review unit of the Nokia 7.1, we ran it through our standard set of benchmark tests. The review unit we received was running on Android 9.0 out of the box and at the time of writing this review, had not received any further OTA updates.
Starting off with a measure of CPU performance, the Nokia 7.1 scored 1334 and 4443 on Geekbench’s single and multi-core tests. 3DMark’s Sling Shot Extreme did stress out the graphical capabilities of the phone, giving it a score of just 935. The Redmi Note 6 Pro, which sports the same CPU scored 1474 on the same test, although the review unit in question had 6GB of RAM. In terms of benchmark numbers, the Nokia 7.1 does not climb to the top of our charts of phones with similar spec, something we were genuinely surprised to see given the stock Android configuration on this device.
