LAHORE - The House of Nokia Phone, HMD Global, has spearheaded the revival of Finnish brand during the past three years having stock Android software under the hood. And, its latest addition to Nokia family will surely catch your attention!
Nokia 6.1 Plus is an ideal smartphone to consider in Pakistan if you are looking for a device that delivers the smooth stock-Android experience without proprietary apps or software-based sluggishness, but a bright camera and a premium feel - within a reasonable price.
The latest 6.1 Plus is as strong as any other Nokia's famous phone yet providing a premium feel to its users. The smartphone weighs 151 gram with dimensions of 147.2 x 71 x 8 mm.
There is a 5.8-inch IPS LCD screen on the front side. On top of the screen, a notch is home to the front-facing camera and earpiece, while the bottom bezel features Nokia's visual branding.
The rear side of the phone features a super-fast and very reliable fingerprint scanner, as well as a dual 16-megapixel + 5-megapixel camera setup with a dual-tone, LED flash.
The left-hand edge is home to a Hybrid-SIM tray (which can accept two SIMs or one SIM and a microSD card), while on the opposite side you can find the power and volume rocker. On the bottom, there’s a USB Type-C port, a single speaker. The top of the device features a noise-cancelling speaker and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Display
Nokia 6.1 Plus is equipped with 5.3 inch IPS display which gives 1080 x 2280 pixels resolution and, 19:9 ratio with 2.5D curved glass at the top. The Full HD display delivers crisp visuals and excellent contrast, with a high pixel density of 432 PPI (Pixels per inch), with a sleek shape. The notched design also gives a feeling of edge-to-edge design, which is really appealing.
The display looks slightly washed off as the legibility in direct sunlight isn’t brilliant. Moreover, the display has an exceedingly cool white point, which makes the screen look incredibly blue at all the times. It is not all bad and some Androiders might find this look even appealing, but it's a bit garish according to today's standards.
Hardware
The Nokia 6.1 Plus is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 636 chipset, which is built on a 14nm manufacturing process, Octa-core 1.8 GHz Kryo 260, Adreno 509 GPU and, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal storage and 3060 mAh non-removable battery.
Camera
The smartphone has a dual-camera setup of 16 MP, f/2.0, 1.0µm, PDAF + 5 MP, f/2.4, 1.12µm, depth sensor.
The 6.1 Plus uses basic camera application and the interface is fairly simple and features toggles for HDR, Portrait Mode, and flash on the top.
The bottom includes different shooting modes like Photo, Manual, Bokeh, and Video.
Although the pro or manual mode lacks some features, it still lets you adjust the metering, autofocus distance (auto, infinity, and macro), white balance presets, and exposure compensation only.
There is no shutter speed control, no ISO or fine-grained control over the manual focusing and the white balance.
There are also AI-filters available in camera application, which also has a fairly capable portrait or Bokeh mode to make the the background blur.
The HDR mode works quite well. In most scenes, the HDR mode has helped bringing out a lot of shadowy details, bringing balance in the images quality.
In videos, you can choose to live stream directly to YouTube or Facebook from within the application. There's also a 4K time-lapse function and a slow-motion mode that records in 480p at 120fps; however, no EIS (Electronic Image Stabilization) is available in 4K video recording.
In ideal lighting conditions, the camera on the Nokia 6.1 Plus manages to take some really good portrait shots with natural looking colors. Most shots had clearly defined edges and just the right blurring. In a few cases, it overdid the blurring, though. The landscape shots were also impressive and offered accurate color reproduction and good sharpness.
Dual - Sight Mode
The 16 MP front camera takes quite good selfies and with face detection, it locks on to your face in a snap. The details are fairly impressive in good lighting conditions.
Performance and Battery Life
The SoC on the Nokia 6.1 Plus is Octa-Core Qualcomm's Snapdragon 636 chipset couples with Adreno 509.
In our review test, the smartphone is capable enough to run most mid-range games without any lag, we have tried the high-end games like PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), the game runs smoothly on the lower and medium setting but on its high resolution, the smartphone lags sometimes.
There were no visible lag or performance hits while carrying out day to day tasks like opening/closing applications and multitasking a few tasks in the background.
With a 3,060mAh battery, this phone provides a pretty decent battery life. It provides enough power to easily get through a day with moderate to heavy usage.
Operating System
The smartphone runs on the stock-Android OS that ensures the best Android experience with fast updates and a smooth user-interface and it does not come with customized UI.
The smartphone comes with Andriod 9.0 (Pie) out of the box and has some new feature like Adaptive Battery and Screen, Screen Glance (displays time and important notifications on lock screen), New System Navigation (Swipe up from anywhere to see full-screen previews of recently used apps, swipe left and right to easily navigate between them, and tap on one to jump in.), Overview Selection (Long-press to select text or image in Overview mode and see actions based on what you've selected for example, an option to route to an address with Google Maps or share for an image).
The UI experience here is overwhelmingly stock, which is good and what you expect from an Android One device. However, sometimes it feels not everything is well thought out for this particular device type.
Our Verdict
The Nokia 6.1 Plus is one of best options in the upper midrange in Pakistani smartphone market. It offers great dual-camera experience that can’t be matched by any reputable phonemaker in this price range.
The phone is pretty solid well-rounded package. The capable innards are housed in a premium metallic chassis that looks great. In the daylight, the dual cameras shine and its portraits alone merit a much higher price.
The 6.1 Plus is a very capable device as getting a stock Android experience with guaranteed updates on an essentially future-proof device just sweetens the deal.
Disclaimer: The review is based on 7 days usage. Customers may differ with our experience. Keep sharing your opinions!
