HMD Global owned Nokia made a comeback last year with their first Android-based smartphone, the Nokia 6. It was first announced in China in January 2017. It was due for a replacement around now. So Nokia launched the Nokia 6 (2018). The second generation Nokia 6 or Nokia 6 (2018), is the replacement of the Nokia 6 that was launched last year. It also looks like the last generation Nokia 6 and also costs the same. Its still is made up of metal unibody and comes with sharp edges that made the original look like an unpolished prototype. HMD Global only added minor upgrades to the phone rather than redefining the phone. HMD Global is ringing youth eccentric features like Dual-Sight (and Bothie), to the masses with the new Nokia 6, to make sense for a wider audience instead of upgrading the phones.
Also Read: HMD Global launches the Nokia 6 (2018): Price, Specifications and Availability
Design: A bit of Accent equals an upgrade
The Nokia 6 (2018) is an all-metal phone with chamfered edges and curved 2.5D Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front. This is just like the original Nokia 6. The thing that's changed is the use of accented colours to highlight the device's chamfers on both the front as well as on the back. The accents being in bold colours bring life to the old design. The same accent colour is used all along the phone on the front and back. Also this year Nokia decided to move the fingerprint sensor to the back instead of the front. Last year, Nokia used capacitive buttons for navigation along with a front mounted fingerprint sensor. The new Nokia 6 uses an on-screen navigation button.
The second generation Nokia 6 comes with a Type-C charing and sync port instead of the Micro USB on the previous generation Nokia 6.
With the fingerprint sensor moved to back instead of the front and the 2017 trend being an 18:9 resolution display, the same was expected from the new Nokia 6. For reasons unknown, the new generation device still has the same 5.5-inch 1080p display with a traditional 16:9 aspect ratio as the original Nokia 6. Why no 18:9 resolution bezel-less display, it is still unknown.
Hardware: What the original Nokia 6 should have been
The original Nokia 6 sported a Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor coupled with 3GB of RAM along with 32GB of internal storage. There was also a provision for expandable memory up to 128GB via a micro-SD card slot. With the price tag of Rs 15,000 in India, its hardware was something to be desired for. It's hardware specifications didn't cope up with the build quality of the phone which Nokia is always known for.
HMD is looking to change all that with the Nokia 6 2018. It can be easily said that the new Nokia 6 is what last year's Nokia 6 should have been in the first place. The new Nokia 6 (2018), as a result, comes with a beefier 2.2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor clubbed with 4GB of RAM and up to 64GB of internal storage. The new Nokia 6 still supports expandable storage of up to 128GB via a hybrid micro-SD card slot.
The Snapdragon 630 is notably successor to the ultra-popular Snapdragon 625, and we can expect only good things from it because phones like the Moto X4 (that are based on Snapdragon 630) haven't disappointed. The GPUs are also different and the Adreno 508 found in Snapdragon 630 is said to offer up to 30 percent better performance than Adreno 506 in the Snapdragon 626/625. The Snapdragon 630, in addition, also offers more advanced connectivity options: 2X higher download speed and more advanced Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity. Lastly, Snapdragon 630 brings along Quick Charge 4 support to devices.
In essence, the Nokia 6 2018 is powered by a Snapdragon 630 processor that is a gradual upgrade of the Snapdragon 625, and therefore, the new Nokia 6 has all the ingredients to better Xiaomi's dominance in the budget smartphone segment in the country. The Nokia 6 (2018), on paper, supports Bluetooth 5.0 and fast charging (not sure whether it's Quick Charge 4 though) and comes with LPDDR4 RAM. The original Nokia 6 came with Bluetooth 4.1 and LPDDR3 RAM. There was no fast charging.
Elsewhere, the speaker setup onboard the original Nokia 6 came with dual amplifiers and support for Dolby Atmos sound technology. That is absent in the second generation Nokia 6 for reasons unknown. It's still backed by a 3,000mAh battery.
Cameras: Same old with Bothie feature
The Nokia 6 (2018) features the same hardware on the optics front as last year's Nokia 6 which means that it carries the same 16-megapixel camera on the rear with f/2.0 aperture, Phase Detection Autofocus and dual LED flash. For those concerned with selfies, it comes with an 8-megapixel camera. The only improvement is the Nokia 8's bothie feature or as Nokia calls it the Dual-Sight. Dual-Sight, to recall, is a feature that lets a user to simultaneously use both the rear and front cameras to take stills/record videos. Think of it as picture-in-picture. If that wasn't enough, the phone also allows for a live broadcast of videos shot using Dual-Sight on to social media platforms like Facebook. The second generation Nokia 6, in addition, allows a user to capture high-fidelity spatial audio.
Price and Availability
The Nokia 6 (2018) has been launched in China in two variants. One with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage for CNY 1499 (~Rs 14,600) and one with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage for CNY 1699 (~Rs 16,600). The smartphone is said to be available for sale on January 10th and is pre-orders are can be booked right now.
The original Nokia 6 was launched in India in June 2017 following a global roll-out in February 2017. We can expect HMD to launch the Nokia 6 (2018) in India soon enough but the company will have to get the pricing right on this one.
Nice post, things explained in details. Thank You.