Nokia 7.2 Complete Walkthrough: Zeiss Optics for Under $350
HMD just announced their latest new 7 series phone: the Nokia 7.2. I was given a little time with a pre-release device so I figured, I’d try and do a complete walkthrough on it for you guys.
If you aren’t familiar, a complete walkthrough on this channel is where I try and go through as many features on a new device as I can so you guys are better prepared should you be in the market to go buy one.
Design
With that said, the Nokia 7.2 has a lot to go through so let’s get started with the design.
Firstly, it looks very much like a Nokia device.
The phone is made out of a polymer composite that Nokia claims is twice as strong as polycarbonate and half the weight of aluminum and it comes in three colors: charcoal, ice, and my favorite Cyan Green (which has a very slight diffusion effect to it).
Display
The device feels solid in the hand and has a slightly curved design (again, very Nokia-esque in my mind). On the front, we have a 6.3″ FHD+ display that Nokia has given the PureDiplay moniker to it.
As far as I can tell, PureDisplay (a trademarked name HMD acquired from Microsoft) is given to a Nokia device when it’s capable of playing back HDR content, upscaling standard content to HDR (so non-HDR things, which is most content you’ll be viewing, are given more contrast, shades of color and dynamic range), and can reach a certain brightness (in the case of the Nokia 7.2 that’s 500 nits).
Front Camera
At the top of this display, we have a teardrop notch that houses our front-facing 20MP Quad-Pixel (as far as I can tell their term for the simple fact the sensor is capable of pixel binning, or combining four pixels into one larger one–more info on how that works at this video I did a while back here) sensor with an aperture of f2.0 and Zeiss optics.
Hardware
Moving around the device we have our SIM card and MicroSD card slot on the left side along with our dedicated Google Assistant button that you can use to ask your Google Assistant things. Also, when plugged in, it’s capable of Google Assistant ambient mode which means it basically turns into a Google Home and you can ask it questions using OK, Google like you can with those devices.
On the right, we have our volume rocker and our power button that also lights up as a notification light (only in white, no various colors for different notifications).
On the top, we have a 3.5mm headphone jack.
On the bottom, we have our speaker and our USB Type-C port that is a USB 2.0 connection capable of OTG support (so you can plug in USB-C storage and transfer files to and from it) and is capable of pretty basic 5V/2A charging.
Battery
Speaking of charging, we have a 3500mah battery with a proposed standby time of 15 days. I should be getting a review unit so make sure to subscribe and turn on notifications to be notified when my real-world test of the phone goes live.
Rear Cameras
On the back of the device, we have a triple camera setup all tuned by Zeiss. We have a 48MP 1/2″ sensor with an f1.79 aperture that can use pixel binning to get a 12MP image with larger pixels and better low light.
We also have an 8MP f/2.2 wide-angle 118-degree equivalent camera to squeeze more in the frame and a 5MP depth-sensor used to help with bokeh modes.
Speaking of bokeh, the software now has three bokeh modes that are all meant to mimic real-world Zeiss lenses and their different bokeh (Zeiss Modern, Zeiss Swirl, and Zeiss Smooth).
In addition to that, it takes between 6-8 photos automatically with every shot taken (and up to 20 for low-light shots using their specific Night Mode) and combines them to have a better-exposed image. But, just like with the Nokia 9 (which you can check out my videos on here) the Nokia 7.2 automatically records depth info using Google’s GDepth standard which means that you don’t have to select a bokeh mode and can just go into Google Photos tap on edit then slide the depth option and tap on the screen to change focus and bokeh. A feature I loved about the Nokia 9 frankly.
Here are some sample shots I was able to grab from the device during the briefing but keep in mind this was not final software so be sure to check out my real-world test when I get the device for proper photos.
Specs
Under the hood, we have a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor paired with 4Gs of LPDDR4X RAM and a 128GB storage option.
For connectivity, we have Wifi802.11ac, Bluetooth 5.0 with Qualcomm AptX audio streaming, and LTE Cat 13.
Software
For software, Nokia is still using the Android One partnership thankfully. This means it’s a vanilla, Pixel phone-like experience complete with lack of bloatware and even uses the Pixel Launcher. Frankly, all good things in my book.
It seemed pretty smooth while using it even considering it was again running pre-release software and comes with their guarantee of getting OS upgrades for 2 years (and so Android 10 will be it pretty soon after it’s released).
Price and Availability
And finally, the Nokia 7.2 will launch at the end of Sept for $349 which is nuts.
And there you go, guys. Let me know what you think in the comments below and be sure to subscribe to my weekly email newsletter for more tech.
