Nokia 8 has been launched by HMG Global and the phone will be available in India by October.
Nokia 8 flagship smartphone has been unveiled by HMD Global at an event in London. The new flagship phone will be available globally by September 2017, and is expected to retail at an average price of Euro 599, around Rs 45,000 on conversion. Nokia 8 will hit stores in India by early October, according to HMD Global’s chief product officer Juho Sarvikas.
Nokia 8 is the new flagship smartphone from the company, and sports a 5.3-inch 2K LCD IPS display with 700 nits brightness, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor coupled with 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage, which is expandable.
The phone has Gorilla Glass 5 on top and will launch with two glossy and two matte variants. The phone is launching in four colours: polished blue and copper which have a glossy finish, while there’s the tempered blue and steel phones which have a matte finish. The new flagship is not entirely water and dust resistant, though it has an IP54 rating making it splash-proof.
HMD Global will have dual-SIM and single-SIM variants of the Nokia 8 depending on the market. The dual-SIM slot is a hybrid one. HMD Global is not launching a 128GB variant of this phone for now. The battery is 3090 mAh, and there is support for USB 3.0 and fast charging with Quick Charge 3.0. With the design, Nokia 8 has a metal unibody design and muted antenna bands on top and a vertical rear camera setup.
On the software front, the company is sticking with its no-bloatware policy and the phone runs stock Android 7.1.1 version. Sarvikas said Nokia 8 would be the fastest way to get Android O. “We are in a very advanced stage in Android O development. Of course, we are still waiting for some completion from the chipset vendor side, which in our case is Qualcomm. But we’ll be one of the fastest to get Android O,” he said.
Nokia 8 comes in four colour variants. This the polished copper variant
The new Nokia 8 also comes with a dual rear camera, the first to tout the Zeiss Optics branding since the relaunch. But there’s a lot more going on here that just specifications. HMD Global has gone for a 13MP+ 13MP combination on the back with a monochrome and RGB sensor. The front camera is also 13MP with the same sensor being used as the one on the back. This one also has a Zeiss Optics branding, however, HMD Global is not revealing the actual vendor for the camera sensor. Both the front and back cameras will support 4K Video recording.
Nokia 8 has options for a dual-live stream with both the front and rear camera recording at the same time.
HMD Global has also tweaked the camera software. The rear camera supports a ‘bokeh’ mode like many of the other dual cameras in the market. But the company has also added a feature for recording live videos from the native camera app. A user can stream live videos to Facebook, YouTube from the Nokia 8’s camera app itself. There’s also the option of having a dual-stream, where the front and rear camera can both be used at the same time in the live video. However, the dual feature won’t work if you shoot the live video from the Facebook or YouTube app itself.
“Both cameras can be active at the same. A user will be able to tell both sides of the story. We also have the livestream option,” explained Sarvikas on the reasoning behind this sort of feature in the camera. The Nokia 8 also comes with Ozo Audio and has high-dynamic range microphones. Ozo is the 360-degree virtual reality camera from the original Nokia firm. The company claims the phone is capturing surround audio which is then encoded with Ozo algorithms. “We make this even more unique and meaningful for users. We are ensuring that whatever medium you get the file, even WhatsApp, you will get the surround experience of the audio when you listen to it,” said Sarvikas.
Disclaimer: The author is in London at the invite of HMD Global India, which is paying for travel and accommodation.
