Backyard Beauty

Hardware overview

The Nokia 8 comes in polished and matte finishes. The Polished Blue and Polished Copper models can take over 20 hours to reach their high-gloss mirror finish. Even the matte Steel and Tempered Blue versions have to go through a 40-stage process of machining and anodizing.

The phone starts life as a single block of 6000 series aluminum that reaches a final form 7.9mm thick (but with a tricky variable radius curve). We have to wonder, though, both Apple and Samsung moved to the more rigid 7000 series to keep phones from bending. Has HMD designed the metal shell well enough to prevent that? The company does claim that it took aluminum "to the next level". Were ready to give them the benefit of the doubt given the impeccable build quality the Nokia 6 has.

Nokia 8

The Nokia 8 is a beautiful phone, anyway, no question about that. Of course, the markets aesthetics preferences have shifted since the Nokia 6 (which debuted the New Nokias design language). Bezel-less phones are the new hotness while the Nokia 8 has classic looks with top and bottom bezels.

The top bezel houses the 13MP selfie camera, which has a Zeiss lens and autofocus. We mention this as often as we can - selfie cams with fixed focus are prone to blurry photos. Theres no dedicated flash on the front, but the screen could step in if more light is necessary.

The bottom one houses the fingerprint reader and capacitive keys. Gorilla Glass 5 with chamfered edges guards the screen, with the keys and cam era on the front.

Some might have hoped for OLED, but HMD stuck with IPS LCD. Its a 5.3" panel, a bit smaller than the Nokia 6s screen. It is much sharper, though, thanks to its QHD resolution (1,440 x 2,560px). And it should be much brighter, maxing out at 700 nits (vs. 450 nits for the mid-range model).

The Nokia 8 measures 7.9mm at its thickest point and curves to 4.6mm on the sides. Theres also the tiniest of camera bumps at the back - its just 0.4mm but its there. At 160g, the phone strikes a good balance between feeling sturdy and keeping weight in check.

Moving around the back, theres the dual camera and the Zeiss logo is hard to miss. But lets leave the camera details for later. For now, lets cover some internal details.

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Nokia 8 color selection

The antenna placement is similar to the Nokia 5s - theres an antenna on top and another one on the bottom. This allows the phone to adjust to your grip since you cant block both antennas simultaneously. HMD claims this improves reception and goes easy on the battery.

Nokia and Qualcomm worked together to make sure the Snapdragon 835 chipset to ensure it can handle livestreaming from two cameras simultaneously. To keep the chip in top shape, HMD used a heat pipe and a graphite shield to draw the heat away.

We do wish they upped the water resistance - IP54 (dust and splash resistance) doesnt quite feel like enough on a flagship. Not when the competition (Samsung, Apple, Sony, HTC, LG) offers IP67 and up.

We are glad to see the 3.5mm headphone jack, though. That said, the Nokia Active Wireless Headset was unveiled alongside the Nokia 8. With a matching design machined out of aluminum and with water and dust resistance, maybe youll want to forgo wires. And if not, theres also a USB-C port on the bottom (its a Gen 1 port, 5Gbps).

USB-C port on bottom • 3.5mm headphone jack on top

That USB port also delivers up to 18W of power to the battery thanks to Quick Charge 3.0. The battery has 3,090mAh capacity, not huge but not bad either.

Camera

We did say that the Nokia 8 runs mostly unmodified Android, but theres one major exception - Nokia wro te the camera app. And were glad to hear it, Google showed that sometimes an awesome app can shoot better photos than those newfangled dual cameras.

The phone does have two cameras, though. Both feature 13MP sensors seating behind Zeiss lens. One sensor shoots in black & white, the other in color (this one also has optical image stabilization).

At 1.12µm, the pixels arent the largest, and the f/2.0 aperture isnt the brightest. The Google Pixel also had an f/2.0 lens but larger pixels - 1.55µm. It lacked OIS, though, and no black & white camera to help out in the dark.

Note that the second camera will also help with bokeh effects, but does not offer zooming capabilities.

A closer look at the Zeiss-branded dual camera

As mentioned earlier, the 13MP selfie camera also has an f/2.0 Zeiss lens and same size pixels too. Treating both cameras as (near) equals has a point - Dual-Sight. This is what HMD calls the feature that combines video from the front and rear cameras in real time.

By the way, the company tried to coin the term "bothie" for a combined photo from both cameras, but were not fans of the word.

Anyway, Zeiss might be the big name in the camera business but theres an up-and-comer called OZO. Best known for Nokias insane 360° VR camera, the team knows a thing or two about sound and the Nokia 8 benefited from that.

The phone features three high dynamic range microphones and the same audio recording algorithms as the big OZO camera. The result is an engulfing 360° surround sound. Better still, special codecs are provided for binaural audio.

If youve never tried it, it creates a much more realistic sound with clear directionality. You can hear things in front, behind and to the side of you! Note that you need headphones for the best effect, but people dont need a Nokia 8 to hear the effect in the videos you record.

First impressions

HMD assured us that Nokia 8 units are already shipping to stores worldwide, which will start selling it in September. The global price is €600, on the affordable side as far as flagships go.

But we do have some bad news - it sounds like the US is getting left out of the launch, at least for now. China is getting special treatment, just what were not sure yet.

We did like hearing that "updates will be quick" since HMD didnt customize much on the Android OS. The Pixel is due for some competition and the Nokia 6 didnt quite cut it.

HMD is targeting millennial content creators with the Nokia 8, an influential group to be sure. But are they old enough to remember Nokia in its glory days? We sure do and were glad to have the brand back (less glad to have Nokia pricing back, though).