Nokia 6

If we hand you the Nokia 6 and ask you to guess its cost, then we can bet that you’d peg it upwards of Rs 40k. Yes,  the handset looks and feels so good. Constructed from a singular slab of series 6000 aluminium, the device sports an upmarket look that’s also really sturdy.

The common expectation from most Android-based smartphones is the presence of custom skins with a ton of preloaded apps and numerous features. But that's not the case with Moto smartphones, and we’re glad that Nokia is also taking that approach. Unlike the brand's earlier foray with Google’s mobile OS where it implemented forked Android for the Nokia X smartphones, the 6 ships with the latest iteration – 7.0 Nougat – that too in a vanilla form... for the most part, that is.

While cameras might have started to become the focus (pun intended) of smartphone makers these days, it was Nokia which was instrumental in bringing impressive optics on the backs of our mobiles. Its partnership with Carl Zeiss for lenses, and the Nokia 808 with world’s first 41-megapixel camera on a phone helped raise our expectations from Nokia 6’s 16MP primary shooter quite a bit. But our hopes met with just about average performance. While the images don’t miss out on any details, the colours aren’t natural and look very dull. This is especially noticeable in close-ups, where red flowers are reproduced as pink by its snapper. The dynamic range in the HDR mode works quite well sometimes, but in some cases, it fails to add contrast to the pictures. Having said that, this could surely be solved via software updates, and we really liked shooting from the Nokia 6. You can easily bring the camera to life by double-pressing the power button, and thanks to PDAF, it can lock focus on subjects in a jiffy.

This is perhaps the most controversial section for the Nokia 6. The brand’s choice of processor for its debut phone hasn’t boded well with spec nerds, as it has opted for the budget Snapdragon 430 SoC, and not the one from the SD6xx series. Not that the octa-core chip running at 1.4GHz isn’t powerful… in our time with the phone, there was nary an instance of lag. Apps opened quickly, and navigation was smooth too. Thanks to the refined software, the smartphone works well during day-to-day tasks. It’s also able to handle casual titles such as Subway Surfers and Smash Hit. Running graphic-intensive games however, is where the SD430 isn’t able to rise to the occasion. The Adreno 505 graphics chipset shows sign of frame drops or a slowdown here or there while playing Riptide GP2.

The short answer is an unequivocal yes. But if you ask us to explain, then we’d say that it all depends on you. If you’re looking for the most cutting-edge smartphone out there which doesn’t cost a bomb, then the Nokia 6 doesn’t fit the bill. Heck, it won’t even blow your mind with any single aspect, unlike many of its competitors. Even before it gets launched, the phone already faces the heat from the likes of sub-Rs 15k blockbusters – the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 (review), Honor 6X (review) and the Moto G5 Plus (review).