The first thing I noticed about the Nokia 7 plus when it landed in my life a few weeks ago is that the finger print scanner is positioned in a much more comfortable position. In a previous review of predecessor Nokia 6.1, I had complained that the same was a bit low and unnaturally positioned due to the long camera, bringing the scanner almost to the middle of the phone. For the Nokia 7 plus, the camera casing is shorter, allowing the fingerprint scanner to be in a perfectly natural position when one is holding the phone in their palm.
The 7 Plus is also so much less cluttered at the back. For the Nokia 6.1, I had found too much happening and almost interfering with the beauty of the phone and had mentioned as much. Not so for the 7 plus which has just a short camera, finger print scanner, the Nokia logo in a copper colour matching beautifully with the trim of the phone, and the android one logo.
I must say I was also very pleased when I opened the Nokia 7 box and found in there some really nice earplugs as compared to what I’d found and complained bitterly about in Nokia 6.1. Sounds like I was complaining the whole time with that phone huh? Far from it. 6.1 is actually a very beautiful and solid phone and you can catch my review and experience with it here.
The Nokia 7 Plus is just as beautiful, with some additional features to spice up your mobile life even further.
Design and what’s in the box
The Nokia 7 plus has a beautiful solid aluminium body with ceramic coating, and also comes with a copper trim which makes it quite eye catching. This one is wider than the 6.1 and fills out the sides of the phone more. It actually takes up the whole round of the phone including the power and volume buttons, round the camera and round the finger print scanner. I find that this makes it quite appealing. The phone has a screen size of 6” with an impressive resolution of 1080X2160p to make it quite a pleasure to use and to watch things on.
AndoidOne
AndroidOne is the way to go and Nokia 7 Plus is well taken care of in this regard. It comes with carefully curated pre-installed apps from Google and users are assured of superior Google innovations and regular security updates, plus 2 years of OS updates. Carefully curated assures no bloatware and that’s quite a win. Users also have access to unlimited photo storage for free on Google Photos.
Battery
The phone has a pretty good non removable 3800 mAh battery with super fast charge. I left it at zero to go and make a cup of tea and when I came back it was already at 25%. Suffice it to say that you’ll get 50% charge within just half an hour. The charger is Type C which means among other advantages faster data transfer, faster charging, and being reversible – it does not matter which side you plug in. Despite the advantages, one thing I’ve noticed about Type C charging devices is that the charger is not compatible with a lot of other people’s phones out there so it’s not like you can borrow a charger from a friend if you forgot yours. But it’s a technology that is matching on fast and soon we’ll probably all be on that bandwagon.
Storage
Nokia 7 plus has a good 64GB storage, enough to cover even the most ardent hoarder of photos and videos. If this is not enough, it is expandable to 256 GB via MicroSD, and also remember that Google offers unlimited photo storage under AndroidOne. With a RAM of 4GB, it is also quite fast and one can say goodbye to a slow phone and lagging appps.
Camera
As is the usual with Nokia phones, the 7 Plus comes with Zeis lenses, a household name in the world of optics and imaging. The phone comes with a 16MP front camera and dual rear cameras of 12MP/13MP. Coupled with the Zeis lenses mentioned above, pretty impressive settings like pro mode and upto 10X zoom, we have quite a winner in photography here. With zoom I’d only go as far as 4 though. Beyond that I found the photos too pixelated. I must note that for selfie lovers, the 16MP camera with Zeis optics is quite something to have.
Note
Nokia 7 Plus is dual SIM alright but if you choose to use the SD slot, you’ll have to trade in one SIM. In short you cannot have two SIM cards and a MicroSD in the tray.
Conclusion
The phone retails in the neighborhood of Ksh42,000/- which I find rather steep but as I said earlier, it is quite well build and with the right care, it will last quite long so in the end it is value for money.
Below is how the phone captures colours around and about.