Nokia 7 Plus, a stylish, top quality phone at a nice price

Noel Campion says the solid build and great features of the Nokia 7 Plus make it an easy phone to recommend.

The new Nokia 7 Plus offers performance and features at a price that makes it an easy smartphone to recommend to the masses.

In general, a lot of people choose to go with either the top-of-the-range offerings from Apple, Samsung or Huawei, while others will dive into the budget market.

Mid-range phones have too often offered mediocre performance with out-of-date hardware and so-so build quality.

There have been exceptions like the Huawei P Smart, Sony Xperia XA2 and iPhone SE, to mention just a few.

My initial impressions of the overall build quality and design of the Nokia 7 Plus were positive — I really love the look with the metal copper gold finish unibody design. All of the buttons on the edges have a slightly lighter colour which is a nice subtle touch.

This copper gold is tastefully accented as a thin border around the screen, circular fingerprint reader located on the back and around the rear dual cameras. It’s also used as the colour of the distinctive Nokia logo on the back as well as the Zeiss logo that sits between the two of the rear camera array.

The matte black finish on the back looks fantastic and makes it less likely to slip out of your hand. However, it does easily pick up the naturally occurring oils from your hands.

The front glass is super slick and has an incredible oleophobic coating that’s resistant to fingerprints.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that the 7 Plus comes with a softshell case in the box — super handy. And yes, the Nokia 7 Plus has a 3.5mm jack, if that’s something you care about in 2018, but some people may not like that it is located on the top edge.

You also get a decent pair of in-ear headphones that sound better than most stock ones in this price range.

The 6-inch LCD screen has an IPS FHD+ resolution (1080 x 2160), a pixel density of 403 PPI and a 18:9 aspect ratio. Although not OLED, the display does a great job of rendering colours and although not super bright, I didn’t have too much trouble using it in sunny weather.

Viewing angles are also good with little or no colour shifting but contrast levels are not as good as you’ll get from OLED displays.

The engine of the 7 Plus is the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 SoC running on 4GB RAM and a generous 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 256GB via microSD card.

The 660 CPU is coupled with the Adreno 540 GPU and although benchmarking software showed this as a step below flagship devices, it feels just as fast and fluid as the best of them out there in everyday use.

It didn’t struggle to cope with anything I ran on it from photo and video editing to 3D intensive games.

Other hardware specifications include, 4G, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS and NFC. You also get a USB Type-C port at the bottom for fast charging (50% in 30 minutes) but no wireless charging.

You get two cameras on the rear, which includes a 12MP sensor with a f/1.7 aperture along with a second 13MP with f/2.0 aperture and ZEISS optics and 2 x optical zoom.

The front-facing camera features a 16 MP sensor with ZEISS optics. At the start of my time reviewing this phone it was running Android 8.0, but in the last week I got an update to 8.1.

This came with some tweaks and improvements but the most notable was in the camera software, which got a major overall to looks and features.

I’m a fan of manual modes in camera phones and the Pro camera mode on the 7 Plus is easy to use, allowing those who want to explore their creative side produce impressive results. Standard mode includes HDR on/off or auto for greater dynamic range in difficult lighting conditions.

However, the 7 Plus struggled a little at times by crushing shadows and overexposing highlights.

Like all dual camera phones you have a Portrait mode that’s hit or miss here, but looks great when it works. Portrait mode on the front facing camera is better with good detail and nice bokeh backgrounds.

With an f/1.7 aperture I wasn’t surprised at how well the 7 Plus performed in low light environments.

The 2x optical zoom is a great feature and works well in good lighting conditions.

Although I was really impressed with the camera for stills for a mid-range phone, video isn’t as impressive but capable nonetheless. You can record up to 4K video on the rear and up to Full HD on the front snapper.

Nokia is one of the brands under the Android One program, offering a near stock Android experience and faster updates to the latest Android software.

The 3,800mAh battery offers excellent longevity that had no problem getting me through a day of heavy use. With light use, I could stretch it to two days from a single charge.

For the price, €320 PAYG, the Nokia 7 Plus isn’t just reasonable priced — it looks great, performs above its weight and works hard, all day long.