Nokia 7 plus first look

Nokia 7+ hands-on: HMD’s finest attempt at a Nokia so far

Little more than a year ago HMD burst onto the scene and resurrected the iconic Nokia brand. Since then it has launched 11 phones and sold more than 70 million of them. That’s impressive stuff – especially when you consider lots of them weren’t very good.

Nokia 7+ price and release date: The Nokia 7+ will be available for €399 in April. A UK or US price has yet to be confirmed.

But I have got high-hopes the devices themselves will get much better this year. The Finnish company is launching a bunch of phones at MWC 2018 and I was most impressed with the mid-range Nokia 7+.
Hitting shelves for ‘around’ €399 in April, the 7+ is the mid-range phone Nokia was missing last year. It not only looks good, but it’s doesn’t skimp on the internals.

With Honor, OnePlus and even Huawei impressing in the sub-£450 space, it’s no-longer enough to just slap a logo on a phone and expect it to sell. The Nokia 7+ might be affordable, but you probably wouldn’t know that by looking at it.
The 7+ is constructed from a single piece of aluminium and as a result has a heft and density rarely seen at this price. The sides are straight and sharp – maybe slightly too sharp – and the back has a tough plastic feel. Apparently that ‘plastic feel’ feel is due to the six layers of ceramic paint that gives the rear its matte colour.
My only slight concern is the phone’s size. Even though the bezel is slim, the 6-inch display makes this a very long device and up there with the Note 8 in terms of size. It’s not as uncomfortable to hold as the Nokia 8 Sirocco, but you might find yourself gripping it with two hands. It would have been nice if it had a water resistance rating, too.

The 6-inch 18:9 display packs an FHD+ resolution and looks great. It’s sharp, colourful and surprisingly bright – a feature often lacking in the mid-range market. There’s some decent power inside too.  A Snapdragon 660 runs the show, paired with 4GB of RAM and there’s 64GB storage plus microSD expansion. Nokia claims you’ll get two days of use from a single charge of the 3800mAh battery – whether this claim is true remains to be seen as very few phones actually manage to go more than a single day.
 You’ll also find Android One as the operating system of choice – this is basically a stock version of Oreo 8.1 with promised updates for two years and security patches for three. There’s also no duplicate software on board, and only Google’s own apps pre-installed.


The main camera has a 12-megapixel sensor and an f/1.7 aperture, while the secondary 13-megapixel sensor has telephoto capabilities for 2x zoom. On the front there’s a 10-megapixel selfie shooter, though Nokia claims these are ‘super pixels’ which I assume means they’re slightly larger. Each camera has been made in partnership with Zeiss. I haven’t been able to properly test out the cameras here yet so you’ll have to wait for the full review for an in-depth look.

First impressions

The mid-range market is a crowded place right now and there’s plenty of fantastic options to choose from. Saying that, the Nokia 7+ has a lot going for it and I can see it being a real hit.
Clean software, a good screen, multiple cameras and a nice design are positive points and there aren’t any obvious downsides. It’ll be interesting to see how the camera performs – but I am never really expecting too much at this price.

There’s every chance this could be the first great phone of the Nokia and HMD partnership.
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