Nokia 7.2 has just the right amount of everything: Review

Nokia's rebirth has been nothing short of an example in the competitive smartphone industry. After playing the strong nostalgia cards right, Nokia delivered some good phones to consumers. Nokia 7.2 is one of them and it expands the brand's mid-range portfolio.

Nokia 7.2 made quite an impression at launch. It had a safe design that surely struck an appeal and the pricing to match the specifications. After testing the phone, here are a few things we found out about Nokia 7.2 and why it can or cannot be your next phone.

Design:

Nokia 7.2 offers premium build quality and elegant glass-back design. The front and back are made out of Gorilla Glass and the frame is a high-tech polymer which Nokia claims to be as twice as strong as polycarbonate. The back glass has a fine frosted finish that makes it feel extra smooth and feels great in hand.

The power button has a well-designed built-in LED light that pulses for notification alerts. There's a volume key above the power button and a dedicated google assistant button on the opposite side. The fingerprint sensor is neatly placed on the back of the device right below the camera ring which houses three rear-facing cameras and a flash. There's a small teardrop notch with a front-facing camera in it. On the bottom of the phone, there's a USB-C charging port and a speaker grille, on top of the phone there's a 3.5mm headphone jack. This summarizes the overall design of Nokia 7.2, which checks all the right boxes.

Overall, the Nokia 7.2 with its sturdy frame and elegant matte finish (available in charcoal, cyan green and ice colours) gives an impression of much more premium phones.

Display:

Nokia 7.2 has a 6.3-inch IPS display with 1,080 x 2,280 resolution. The Nokia 7.2 has an LCD display which supports HDR. It is crisp and colourful with great visibility but no match for OLED. The Nokia 7.2 also gives an option to enable the Dynamic mode to automatically adjust the screen's colour, contrast and white balance. With Nokia's HDR PureDisplay technology it can convert SDR videos into HDR which results in a picture that's brighter and more colourful.

Overall, at this price, the display is as good as it needs to be, and with Nokia's PureDisplay technology it gives everything you watch a more enjoyable experience.

Camera:

Nokia 7.2 has an acceptable camera setup for this price category, it houses a 48MP primary camera, an 8MP ultra-wide-angle camera and a 5MP depth sensor for portrait shots on the rear of the phone and the front-facing selfie camera works pretty decent with 20MP sensor.

The 48MP primary camera captures a lot of details which produces vibrant and sharpened images. The 5MP portrait sensor works well and also allows you to change the bokeh effect after clicking a photo.

The 118-degree ultra-wide-angle camera is not as good as expected, but it can surely fit a lot in it the frame. The final image quality is not as good as the primary camera on the phone, and wide-angle shots in low light are unacceptable as they lack detail, colour and dynamic range.

The Nokia 7.2 supports 4K on the rear camera setup and full HD on the selfie camera. The video recordings on both the front and rear camera are good, especially on the 4K settings.

Battery:

Nokia 7.2 has a 3500mAh battery which will give you easy use of a day even with heavy usage but the weak point is charging. The phone itself doesn't support fast charging. We tested and charged the phone for an hour and only brought the phone up to 65% and 15 minutes of charging brought up to 18%. It takes two hours to fully charge the phone.

Overall, the battery will get you through the day easily and if you're a heavy usage then we advise you to use adaptive battery system if you love binge-watching. But there's nothing extraordinary about the battery life as it is what can be expected from a 3,500mAh battery.

Software and Features:

Nokia 7.2 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 chipset which gives a smooth experience. The phone comes with android 9 Pie out of the box and it has a simple stock android interface, which gets a brownie point for ease of use.

We played a few games on the Nokia 7.2 including PUBG Mobile and it ran perfectly with medium graphic settings. There was no lag in the game and the network connectivity was good enough throughout the game.

The fingerprint sensor is perfectly placed and easily accessible, it's quick and also acts as a way to swipe down the notification panel. This feature is really helpful as it gets hard to reach the top of a 6.3-inch display for single-handed users to access the notification panel.

The single speaker on the Nokia 7.2 is loud and sounds decent. We tested a few songs and movies on the phone and the sound quality is acceptable, but it's best to plug in earphones for a better experience.

Verdict:

Nokia 7.2 is a good phone in a lot of ways. However, it has its pros and cons. The overall design of the phone is impressive, the primary camera on the phone is good, the battery life is decent and the performance is acceptable for day-to-day use. But things like wide-angle camera results, low-light photos and settling for a mid-range processor and lack of fast charging seems like compromises one must make with Nokia 7.2.

Nokia 7.2, despite being a decent overall package, faces stiff competition in the sub-Rs 20,000 price range from competitive brands like Xiaomi, Realme and even Samsung. But if stock UI is something you can't compromise on, Nokia has you covered.