HMD Global has been in India with the Nokia range of Android smartphones for over a year now, but the company is yet to taste major success. But that's going to change with its two latest smartphones- the Nokia 6.1 Plus and the Nokia 5.1 Plus. While the latter will be arriving sometime later this month, the former was made available for purchase on August 30. During its first sale, HMD sold 150 units of Nokia 6.1 Plus every second on Flipkart and the device went out of stock in three minutes. This news was posted by Ajey Mehta, Vice President at HMD India on Twitter. If we give a rough estimate of how many units did HMD sold during the first sale, it's a decent 27,000. But the number would be even more because the Tweet mentioned the company sold its highest ever from its online shop- http://nokia.com/phones.
Surely, the numbers are nowhere close to what Xiaomi or say Realme has achieved in the past, but it's an excellent number for HMD Global. Xiaomi sold 3 lakh units of Redmi Note 5 devices during the first sale, while Realme sold over 4 lakh devices in the first 45 days of Realme 1 launch. These numbers make the number achieved by HMD look like a small one, but it's a huge deal for the Finnish upstart company which is looking to gain some market share in the Indian market.
HMD Global used to price its devices marginally above the competition. And it's still doing that- the Nokia 2.1, Nokia 3.1 and Nokia 5.1 are the recent examples of how HMD is overpricing their devices. But the company changed its strategy slightly and made the Nokia 6.1 Plus and Nokia 5.1 Plus online-only smartphones, which is the reason why it achieved the Rs 15,999 price tag for Nokia 6.1 Plus.
Surely, HMD had some great smartphones under its portfolio like the Nokia 7 Plus, Nokia 1, Nokia 8 Sirocco, Nokia 6.1 and so on, but all these smartphones were priced slightly higher than what they should have been. Still, HMD is not a Samsung or Vivo to sell a Snapdragon 660 SoC device at Rs 35,000, but it's selling the Nokia 7 Plus at Rs 26,000. The Nokia 7 Plus' pricing was alright, but the Nokia 8 Sirocco's Rs 49,990 price tag was unacceptable, at least in 2018.
Several Nokia fans (including me) have been waiting for a Nokia smartphone which has everything right, including the pricing. And the Nokia 6.1 Plus is the Nokia we've been waiting for. That said, the Nokia 5.1 Plus launching this month could be priced a bit lower than the Nokia 6.1 Plus, which will also see the same success as the latter.
With the Nokia 6.1 Plus, HMD Global has not only got the pricing right as the device feels way premium than any other handsets in the price range.
Nokia 6.1 Plus Specifications and Features
The Nokia 6.1 Plus is a mid-range smartphone with a notched 5.84-inch Full HD+ display on the front. It's powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 chipset, coupled with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. The phone has a hybrid card slot allowing users to either use two nano SIM cards or a single SIM+microSD card. As for the connectivity options, the 6.1 Plus has support for Dual 4G, VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS and USB Type-C port.
The device sports dual cameras on the rear which are possibly the only letdown in the handset. Up front, there's a 16MP selfie shooter. Like other Nokia smartphones, the Nokia 6.1 Plus is also part of the Android One programme and it runs Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box. The phone is backed by a 3060mAh battery, which might last for an entire day. Thankfully, it has support for Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0.
