Well, HMD Global has just made the Nokia 7 official in China and is quickly filling every price bracket with its smartphones. The Nokia 7, for now, will be available in China itself and might make it to other markets in the near future. Having said that, Nokia fans will be delighted with this mid-range Nokia smartphone as they were disappointed with the poor hardware used in the Nokia 6, considering the price point.
HMD Global has priced the Nokia 7 at Yuan 2499 for the 4GB RAM+64GB storage variant and Yuan 2699 for the 6GB RAM+128GB storage option. It also draws some features from the flagship smartphone Nokia 8 such as Bothie mode and premium design.
Diving into the specifications of the smartphone, the Nokia 7 features a 5.2-inch Full HD display and features a glass back. It is also the company's first smartphone to feature a fingerprint sensor at the back and it's also the first smartphone to sport a glass back. Like earlier Nokia devices, the Nokia 7 looks gorgeous and the metal frame is built out of 7000 series aluminium with diamond cut bevelled edges.
We're at the end of 2017 and the Nokia 7 still has bezels on top and bottom. Surely, HMD could have addressed this issue by opting bezel-less design. The Nokia 7 packs a punch in terms of hardware as well. The rare mid-range Snapdragon 630 powers the device, which works in tandem with 4GB/6GB of RAM and 64GB/128GB storage. There' support for microSD card as well for storage expansion.
Optics wise, the Nokia 7 offers a 16MP camera at the back with 1.12um pixels, f/1.8 aperture, and dual LED flash. The larger aperture helps to capture more light in the images. HMD has added a 5MP front-facing camera that has f/2.0 aperture, 1.4um pixels, and 84-degree field-of-view. The smartphone also offers 'Bothie' mode, which uses both front and rear camera at the same time. This feature is present in the flagship smartphone Nokia 8 as well.
Sadly, the Nokia 7 still boots Android 7.1 Nougat out of the box, but HMD is promising Android Oreo update very soon. With the increase in the product lineup, it's interesting to see how HMD delivers the software updates going forward.
Connectivity options in the device include 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone jack (thankfully), NFC, and GPS. The Nokia 7 comes with on-screen navigation keys, unlike the earlier Nokia devices which arrived with hardware capacitive keys. This entire package is backed by a 3000mAh battery, which also has fast charging support.
The Nokia 7 will be first sold in China starting October 24, and it comes in two colours- Gloss Black and Matt White. There's no news on international availability of other smartphones.
