Nokia 5.1 Plus quick review: Leaving an everlasting impression

• Nokia 5.1 Plus is priced at Rs 10,999
• Nokia 5.1 Plus will go on sale exclusively on Flipkart and Nokia online store October 1 onwards
• Nokia 5.1 Plus flaunts elegant design, competitive specs and stock Android experience
• Nokia 5.1 Plus is Android Pie ready

We've seen Nokia rise from the ashes under the leadership of HMD Global and its flight has no plummeting aspirations. Joining the league of budget-friendly premium smartphone series in India is a new Nokia smartphone that will surely startle you with its design, specifications, features and pricing of course.

HMD Global revealed the pricing and availability of Nokia 5.1 Plus in India on Monday. The new Nokia smartphone will go on sale exclusively on Nokia's official online store and Flipkart starting October 1, 2018, at an attractive price point of Rs 10,999. We are currently reviewing the new smartphone in order to see how well it fairs against its budget rivals in India, but here are our first impressions of the phone for now.

Design

Nokia 5.1 Plus comes in an extremely humble box, but when you take the handset out of the box is when the real first impression is made. Finely adorned in a glass sandwich design with softly rounded corners gives a comfortable grip on the handset and looks perfect for single-hand use. The power and volume controls are on the right, a USB Type-C port along with a stereo speaker is at the bottom, a 3.5mm headphone jack sits at the top and a SIM card tray is on the left.

On the rear, we see this beautiful glossy black glass cover, dual cameras, fingerprint sensor and Nokia branding alongside Android One. Overall, Nokia 5.1 Plus looks and feels nothing like a budget smartphone in its price range.

Display

When we first powered up the phone, the edge-to-edge display measuring 5.8 inches with 19:9 aspect ratio grabs the attention. We've seen many phones with different notch styles, but Nokia plays it safe by integrating a larger notch resembling the likes of iPhone X and its successors.

At the bottom of the display, we can see quite a large chin but it has been justified by placing a Nokia logo. The display has a 1520x720 pixel resolution, which doesn't seem too bad for day-to-day use. We'll be testing the display clarity during our review under various circumstances such as gaming and streaming, but our first impression is that Nokia made a reasonably safe choice here, which could help in other aspects such as the battery.

Camera

Nokia 5.1 Plus features a dual rear camera setup, which is one of the first things you'll notch when you take the handset out of its box. There are 13MP PDAF and 5MP depth sensors on the back paired with LED flash, which looks promising. On the front is an 8MP snapper with f/2.2 aperture with 80.4-wide angle view lens.

Quick tests show that both cameras are capable of capturing detailed and natural tone photographs. Selfies have smart beautification that looks natural and the rear dual cameras deliver good-quality portraits. The photos are enhanced before saving into the photo gallery to show the best results. We'll be thoroughly testing the cameras in our detailed review, until then here are a few shots we took from Nokia 5.1 Plus this morning.

Rest of the Nokia 5.1 Plus

There are several things to be reviewed on the phone, but having spent a day with the phone is already turning out to be a great experience. The fingerprint scanner works flawlessly, the design is impressive and the battery life is impressive. We haven't experienced any lags so far, but that's natural considering we haven't had too many apps installed to start testing the phone to its full potential.

For those unaware, Nokia 5.1 Plus comes with MediaTek Helio P60 processor, paired with 3GB RAM and 32GB onboard storage. There are dual SIM card slots, one of which is a hybrid. But the best things of all, Nokia 5.1 Plus is a part of Android One family, which means users get the latest stock Android experience.

The handset currently runs Android Oreo, but it is ready for Android Pie. We are quite excited to take this budget smartphone for a spin over the next few days, in the meantime if you have any queries then write to us on Twitter or Facebook.