Nokia, the Finnish mobile company that once owned the Indian market is still out there making smartphones on the regular, just not a lot of people know about it. Nokia recently launched its latest offering in India, the Nokia G21 which comes as a budget offering from the HMD global-owned brand.
The Nokia G21 is priced at Rs 12,999 onwards in India, and is equipped with a long lasting battery, a stock Android-like experience, and more interesting things. In this article, I will tell you what I like about the Nokia G21, what I don’t like about the smartphone, and if you should spend your Rs 12,999 on the Nokia G21 smartphone.
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DESIGN
In terms of design, Nokia has kept things simple with the G21. The smartphone comes with a flat-edged design along with a patterned back panel, with the triple camera module placed at the top-left corner of the back panel. The design of the Nokia G21 is simple and the smartphone is very lightweight, which is something that goes well with almost all smartphone users. There are elements that do make the smartphone feel cheap, like the thick bezels, the water-drop notch, and the rather flimsy build quality, but overall the Nokia G21 is a well-designed smartphone.
DISPLAY
The display on the Nokia G21 is a 6.5-inch panel with a 1,600×720 pixels resolution and 90Hz refresh rate. The Nokia G21’s display is crisp and vivid. The colour accuracy is very good for this price range, and the 90Hz refresh rate is smooth. The display, however, has a lower resolution and as a result, the display is not as crisp. Watching videos on YouTube or Netflix is still good on the Nokia G21 as the screen is bright and accurate with colour, but of course, you will see slight pixelation at times due to the lower resolution of the display.
PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY
The Nokia G21 performs just like you’d expect any mid-budget Android smartphone. It is obviously not as slick as a flagship, but during my brief usage, the smartphone showed no signs of app crashes or lags, despite the rather slow loading times and animations. The best part about the Nokia G21 in terms of the smartphone’s performance and user experience is the software. The Nokia G21 offers a stock Android experience with no bloatware apps or unnecessary permissions. The smartphone is easy to set up and use, and it is a seamless user experience. The software, while being clean and easy to use, is, however, outdated. The Nokia G21 still runs on Android 11, and it is not known as to how long it will take to get Android 12. The last security update as well, has been the April 2022 Android security patch, from the same month the smartphone was launched.
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Battery is good, the smartphone easily lasts more than a day since there aren’t a lot of things going on to take up the battery. For me, the Nokia G21 easily ran for just less than 2 days on a single charge. The charging is also workable, as the smartphone takes almost 2 hours to charge from zero to 100 percent.
CAMERA
The rear camera on the Nokia G21 is a triple camera setup that includes a 50-megapixel primary shooter, a 2-megapixel depth sensor, and a 2-megapixel macro shooter. The camera quality on the Nokia G21 is rather disappointing. The images out of the camera look very low-quality and are quite hazy. In low light conditions also the camera struggles and it is very difficult to get a nice, crisp image out of the Nokia G21’s camera. There is zero to minimal post-processing on this camera, which is good, but if only the image quality does not require any processing. Not a good camera. The front camera, which is an 8-megapixel shooter, is also similar in terms of image quality.
VERDICT
The Nokia G21, priced at Rs 12,999 onwards in India, is a smartphone that a lot of people will be interested in, mainly due to the nostalgic value that the brand provides. However, the experience of using this phone turned out to be a little underwhelming as the display is not crisp and colour accurate, the camera is not good, and other factors mentioned above. Now, while it is one of the cleanest software experiences, the Nokia G21 is bad with updates as it still runs on Android 11 with the April 2022 security patch. The design on the smartphone is good and it is super lightweight, but there as well, the build quality does not feel sturdy.
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So, should you spend your Rs 12,990 on the Nokia G21? Given the choices that are available in the market, buying the Nokia G21 may not be a justified purchase decision as there are a bunch of better, more updated smartphones to look at in this price range. Nokia, on the other hand, has a lot to figure in terms of providing a premium-like experience at a non-premium price.
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