Nokia 2: Here is how the budget-smartphone stacks up against its competition

HMD Global, the company that holds the exclusive rights to make Nokia-branded smartphones has launched its latest smartphone — the Nokia 2 — across the world.

Image credit: HMD Global

Nokia 2 joins the line up of HMD Global's Android-powered Nokia handsets and it plans to aim at the budget and entry-level Android devices as competition. The company has priced the device at €99 which is about around Rs 8,000 at the time of writing.

HMD Global has not announced the pricing and availability details for the Indian market. The device comes with a 6000-series aluminium frame with diamond-cut beveled edges. The phone comes with IP 52 certification making it splash-proof and it will be available in Pewter - Black, Pewter - White, and Copper - Black colours.

The device is powered by Qualcomm’s Quad-core Snapdragon 212 processor clocked at 1.3 GHz along with 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM. HMD Global has added a 5-inch HD LTPS LCD display panel with 1280x720 image resolution, 1:1300 contrast ration and Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection. The device comes with 8 GB internal storage that can be expanded using a microSD card up to 128 GB internal storage. Moving to the camera, the device is equipped with 8 MP camera module with autofocus and LED flash on the back of the device and a 5 MP camera module on the front of the device.

Image credit: HMD Global

Nokia 2 offers LTE Cat 4, VoLTE, 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth v4.2, GPS with AGPS, GLONASS, Beidou, and FM Radio in terms of connectivity options. The device also packs a microUSB 2.0 port and a 3.5-mm headphone jack on the bottom and the top of the device along with a dual SIM support. The company has added an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor, Accelerometer and E-compass to increase the feature-set of the device. Last but not the least, Nokia 2 will run Android Nougat 7.1.1 out of the box with the promise of Android Oreo update and a 4,100 non-removable battery to power the device.

Image credit: HMD Global

With the launch of Nokia 2, we thought that it is a good time to pit the device against its competition. So, we selected Nokia 2, Xiaomi Redmi 4A, Moto C Plus, Micromax Canvas Infinity and Redmi 4. The reason we selected these smartphones is that most of these devices run Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 series (or the custom-made equivalents) and are in the same price bracket.

All these smartphones are considered mid-range devices from competing smartphone makers. Bear in mind that we're still not done testing some of these smartphones, so we're currently comparing them going only by their specifications on paper. A real-world test should follow soon.