HMD Global overnight announced the addition of the Nokia 8 to their growing range of new Nokia smartphones, following up the global announcement with a media launch here in Sydney this morning letting us get our hands on the device.
If the company’s Android offerings haven’t quite piqued your interest just yet, the Nokia 8 is the phone that should make you sit up and take notice. It’s one of the first few phones to market running a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, and it comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage. The Nokia 8 is the company’s first foray into flagship territory for Android smartphones, and brings with it a few notable of technology firsts.
Physically the Nokia 8 is a little larger than (for example) a Pixel. It’s got a fairly standard top/bottom bezel, with capacitive back/apps buttons flanking a front-facing fingerprint reader. There’s a slight camera bump on the back, but it’s centrally located so it doesn’t cause the phone to rock on your desk and the main phone body is just 7.3mm thin. The rear of the phone is free of antenna lines, having moved those to the top and bottom of the device.
The phone is considered “splashproof”, with an IP54 rating. There’s a USB-C port dead centre at the bottom of the phone and a speaker port. There’s also a 3.5mm headphone jack on top. The phone also features an interesting new cooling system inside – a full-length graphite-shielded copper cooling pipe inside the phone’s body should ensure the phone runs cool even when you’re asking a lot of it.
On the camera front, you can indeed ask much of the phone. The Nokia 8 brings a few party tricks to the fore, with content creators a core market. First of all, there’s dual rear cameras, both 13MP splitting duties between colour shooting (with OIS) and monochrome. The cameras feature 1.12um pixels and an f/2.0 aperture, 76.9 degree field of view, phase detection auto-focus and a dual tone flash. We saw great results earlier this year from Huawei’s P10 with a dedicated camera module for monochrome shooting and may see similar from the Nokia 8.
Secondly, the Nokia 8 introduces “Dual Sight”, a feature that allows you to capture output from both the front and rear cameras simultaneously in the same frame, in both photo and video mode. They’re calling this “Bothie” (a play on the selfie, if you couldn’t tell).
Putting those all together, the Nokia 8’s camera software features integrated live streaming to Facebook and YouTube. You just log in to your account and a “live” button will appear in the camera UI. You can live stream the Dual Sight video output to make for some engaging live streams – you’ll be able to show viewers what’s happening and your reaction to it.
On the audio side the Nokia 8 features OZO Audio, three microphones that work together to provide 360-degree spatial audio recording. This audio can be recorded into videos as a binaural audio track for playback on other devices.
HMD hosted some Australian media on a seaplane ride around Sydney Harbour this morning to take the Nokia 8’s camera out for a spin. While I didn’t really end up using Dual Sight mode (it turns out sea planes are pretty cramped, and you could really only make out my chin), it was still a good opportunity to take the camera out for a spin.
As you’d expect from a Nokia “Pure Android” device, the Nokia 8 is running Android 7.1.1 out of the box. Our review unit is running July 2017 security patches, so it’s already more up to date than some other phones out there. HMD has committed to keep the phone up to date with monthly security patches, and has proven their commitment to updates with their lower end devices already receiving the August security update.
The Nokia 8 will be sold for $899 from JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman. Pre-orders will open at JB Hi-Fi tomorrow, with the phones expected to arrive in early September.
HMD’s been busy. Considering the company only came into being last December, getting their initial portfolio (Nokia 3, 5 and 6) to market alone was quite a feat – we saw a local launch of those devices just a month and a half ago – now, adding a flagship phone to that portfolio is an impressive accomplishment.
We’ll have a review of the Nokia 8 up in the next week or so, but if you’ve got any burning questions in the meantime feel free to ask them in the comments below.
| Key Specifications: | Nokia 8 |
|---|---|
| Release date | — |
| Screen size | 5.3-inch |
| Screen technology | IPS LCD |
| Resolution | 2,960 x 1,440 |
| PPI | 554 |
| Rear camera | 13MP+13MP |
| Front camera | 13MP |
| Chipset | Snapdragon 835 |
| Core config | Octa-Core up to 2.45GHz |
| RAM | 4GB |
| Storage | 64GB |
| MicroSD | Yes, up to 256GB |
| Battery | 3,090 mAh |
| Battery removable | — |
| Connector | USB-C |
| Headphone Port | Yes |
| Headphone Location | — |
| Speaker Configuration | — |
| NFC | Yes |
| Android OS | Android 7.1.1 |
| Vendor skin | — |
| Dimensions | 151.5 x 73.7 x 7.9mm |
| Weight | 160g |
| Colours |
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What is the warranty on it?
Apparently HMD is partnering with Vodafone according to channelnews
Will the 8 have infra red as the 6does not
Oh… and what sort of image stabilisation do each of the cameras have? Does it support all the bands for the Australian networks?
Awesome. Could be my next phone 🙂 However, a few questions:
1. Those camera aperture’s seem not to be great, so how is the low light performance?
2. Coming to carriers?
3. Daydream support?
4. Speakers are on the bottom yeah? What’s the audio like from them?
5. Why go with the capacitive back/apps buttons? Most firms seem to have moved away from them so I’m curious of HMD’s decision to use them.
Thanks for the article! Was a great first look 🙂
How is $899 a “Wallet Friendly” price?!?
When you consider most if not all other flagship phones are over $1,000, the price of the N-8 is indeed wallet friendly … sort of.
I thought that too. But I think he means versus other high end phones?
Seems to be a competitive phone, however its destined to failure if it is held back by the shackles of no carrier availability. Australia just isnt a market where customers buy phones in large numbers outright. It may find a few thousand nostalgic buyers, however it wont make enough of an impact to warrant a continued presence by HMD/Nokia.
I’m interested to see how it goes with that battery capacity and screen resolution
I’ve got to get a new mobile soon, but I’m so confused with what is out there these days there is basically too much of a choice 🙂 I need a website where you can input how much you want to spend and then it offers the best bang for buck.
If this had a rear fingerprint reader and software buttons I’d buy this without hesitation.
Fantastic to see you got direct access from HMD along with availability and pricing details!
Please look in depth as much as possible on the cameras during the review, especially start up speed and low light perf of the rear camera please.
Only 5.3 inches – how are we even expected to pick out individual words on such a small screen!
I am nostalgically/cautiously happy about a high end android Nokia though…
I like the hardware design and the promise of timely updates. But I’m concerned about those image sensors. Usually phone cameras using smaller size pixels on the sensor need extra clever software to make them shine. I guess we’ll know soon.
Definitely looks solid. For me to be interested though, I need a 5.7-6 inch screen. Couldn’t imagine going backwards on size from what I currently have. Good on HMD though.
Looks very interesting indeed, I’ll be checking it out for sure. I’m still waiting to see what happens with the essential and to a lesser extent the pixel at this stage though.
Is it coming to Telco’s or just outright for now?
Good to see Nokia doing it right