8 SIM-Free Smartphone - Steel

Purchased this directly from Amazion in the middle of October. It was on the August security patch out of the box and since then has been updated twice to the October patch. No other android phone I have owned has received updates this quickly. The Android Oreo (8.0) update is rumoured to be imminent too. If Nokia (HMD Global) keep this up they are going to win a lot of fans - most OEM's are not even close to rolling out Oreo updates yet. What about the hardware itself? The phone has an all aluminium frame on the back and sides with Gorilla glass 5 on the front which curves gently into the frame. The shape of the back tapers towards the edges making the device feel even thinner than it actually is (and it is thin). The twin 13MP back cameras sit in an elongated glass plate (along with a flash and Zeiss branding) that only slightly protrudes from the rear. Build quality is fantastic - the phone feels premium and solid with a pleasant heft (160g). You could argue that the design is slightly behind the curve with todays near totally bezeless marvels but i will settle for solid build and no accidental screen presses. Inside, the Nokia 8 is packing this years android top end chipset of choice, the Octo-core Snapdragon 835 with Adreno 540 and 4GB of RAM. This means performance is awesome aided by what is essentially stock android this phone can handle anything you can throw at it without stutter. There is a generous 64GB of storage with an SD card slot should you need more. The dual rear and single front camera (also 13MP) produce good to excellent results - not quite as good as the very best but not far off at all. 99% of all users will be more than happy with the results. Call quality and audio is great, the single bottom firing produces clear tones (if lacking in bass somewhat). Connectivity is great with the antenna array on this latching onto and keeping signal in areas when some of my other handsets have struggled. The 5.3" 1440x2560 lcd screen (554ppi density) cranks up to more than 700 nits peak brightness which is well above average and means you should be able to see the screen on the sunniest day. Colours are well balanced and natural. Despite the screen size and high density couple with the powerful chip the Nokia 8 manages some very respectable battery times. In balanced use i am getting 2 days out of a charge (i hit the plug at 15%) with over 6 hours total screen on time. Summing up, this is a great phone for the money - remember it is £100-150 cheaper than equivalent flagships. I would not hesitate to recommend this. Excellent work Nokia and welcome back!

Bought two of these phones and this is the second of the two reviews. You will see my experience with the two phones differ dramatically. For a phone that was released back in October 2017, this is highly spec'd with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal memory. Although not necessarily comparing like-for-like this phone (at the price I paid) was a saving of approximately £500 versus the brand new iPhone XR (4GB/64GB). Based on this, this phone is superb value. One of the big pluses for me is that the Nokia 8 comes with stock Android which was quickly updated after powering on to Android Oreo. Keeping my fingers crossed that soon it will be upgraded to Android Pie. This phone replaces my old LG G4 which got amazingly hot, something that this Nokia 8 has not done - keeping cool throughout the day. Also the battery on the Nokia lasts pretty much the whole day, the LG G4 only a few short hours. The phone runs fast and smooth with apps and screens opening and switching seamlessly. Many new phone manufacturers have removed the 3.5mm jack for conventional headphones, but not Nokia and this was one of the reasons I bought this phone. Thankfully this phone has not suffered the same problem of a dreadful speaker as the other phone, though not convinced it is the best on the market. Again the charging plug supplied did not fit, not a big deal for me as I have plenty. The phone received is the TA1012. I've noticed the price of this phone is slowly increasing, possibly as it is proving so popular. Still very good value for money. Disappointed that I had to return my first Nokia 8 but I am very pleased with this one and the price I paid for it. No complaints. Edit: 24/01/2019. Now had the phone for a couple of months and just noticed that Nokia have upgraded the stock Android from version 8 (Oreo) to version 9 (Pie). Full marks to Nokia for this so this means although purchased with Version 7 (Nougat) I now have the most up to date Android version. Very happy, so far this phone still deserves the 5 star rating, in my opinion Also noticed that phone is about £60 more expensive now than when I bought it . . .

Thorough underated smartphone. I've been using this for a few weeks now as a replacement for my nexus 5x. It seems like a natural replacement for nexus devices, having pure android and mid-high end specs. I was reluctant to buy another Google or LG device due to widely reported reliability issues. The design is fantastic, looking quite utilitarian and slim, with an aluminium back. I prefer this to the gimmicky curved screen / glass back style favoured by many manufacturers, as it feels much more solid. The screen quality is superb and extremely bright. Battery life is a world away from my old nexus and it typically lasts around 2 days of heavy use. This is helped by an internal Nokia heatsink, which eliminates any overheating - something that was an issue with my old nexus. The camera received a bit of criticism in reviews. In low light it struggles a little, but is entirely usable for everyday snaps. The photos aren't oversaturated, which I like. Performance is indistinguishable from any top end device I've seen. The real selling point to me is the bloat free, pure looking android experience. Nokia are making a huge effort keeping their devices up to date and I'm not prepared to buy from manufacturers that can't do this. I've already received a number of security patches and am now running android 8 Oreo, one of the few devices that has received the update. Overall it's a great phone - the reviews on here are combined with lower end Nokia models, so don't let the average put you off!

Overall this is a great flagship phone, possibly a towards the budget end of the flagship spectrum, rather than the premium end. Main reasons for buying were cost, security updates, build quality and battery life. It ticks all those boxes. It is very quick, with no lag. Some reviews mention poor performance, but I am not convinced they were reviewing the '8'. Battery life is sitting at a little over 29 hours from full charge. This is with push email, wifi and android watch pairing switched on 24/7. Light use otherwise. Charging is fast, around 2 hours from 10% battery. Phone runs very cool, even after the migration of 100+ apps on initial set up and during charging. Previous phone (Nexus 6) used to heat up a lot when taking pictures (with HDR enabled). The camera(s) are good, but not amazing. The stock Nokia camera app is not a simple as the stock Google camera app, and the pictures are sometimes not as sharp. There are two fixes for this, one available now and one in the future. HMD (who make the phone) have said they are going to rework the camera app in the near future. My opinion is that the app wasn't optimised for the dual camera setup prior to release. The other option is to side load a reworked version of the Pixel camera app. It is much easier to snap pictures, especially in low light, the portrait effect works well, is generally stable and produces better pictures. Virtually no shutter lag, or from taking a picture to the next picture. Nexus 6 was sometimes a 10 sec wait. You need to be aware of the risks of loading apps from outside the Google Play Store. Your choice. Not normally a fan of cases for phones, but for this one I bought a gel case, because it is quite slippery. The positioning of the power and vol keys are slightly too high in my opinion. Finger print sensor is accurate enough to be generally usable. Not 100% accurate every time, but certainly good enough not to be annoying. Previously used to unlock with the android watch, but now use the home key. Awaiting the November security update and Oreo. £400 is a good price for this phone. Recent price drop may be because of a rumoured 'Nokia 9' model on the horizon.

Quick edit as several reviews seem to be for other Nokia models. This is for the Nokia 8. It is a lovely phone. I got the silver version - not that the colour can be seen, now that it's in its case. I'm not a thechy, so this review is based purely on use. I bought this from UK Supplies, through Amazon, to replace my aged, battered Google Nexus 5. My shortlist was this or the LG G6. I sought reassurance from the sellers of both, that the phones were BNIB, UK spec and were covered by their respective manufacturer's warranty. I asked as both were significantly lower in price than their MRSP. I am still waiting for the LG response... UK Supplies responded to my late evening enquiry within the hour; decision made. I ordered my phone on 31 Jan 2018, for £369 and it arrived 2nd Feb; well packaged via special delivery, so my already good impression of UK Supplies jumped up. Now to the phone. It has a great high quality, premium feel that does seem beautifully designed and made. It is SO fast compared to my old Nexus, and the facility to split the screen display is very useful. I appreciate that it comes with pure android and seems utterly free of bloatware. On first boot-up, it updated to Orio 8.0 before it ran set up. I'd synced my Nexus with Google, so setup was a breeze - Everything transferred seamlessly. I suspect that, if you're reading this, it's because you too are researching what is a considered purchase, and you've probably gone into phone performance, camera etc., in some detail. All I can add to my short review is that in my short experience of ownership, this is a first class, elegant, fast phone that exceeds my expectations. I don't think you'd regret taking the plunge - especially if you can find one at this price.

The Nokia 8 is a well specced phone for its price, having the hardware of a top-of-the-range model for a much lower price. Other people have reviewed the major features better than I could, but here are a few minor points that impressed me: - The sound quality is excellent. I use some old Sennheiser ie60 in-ear headphones, which sound near perfect on this phone, almost as good as a dedicated headphone amp like the FiiO - E10K . The last phone I used was a Moto X Play, which was so bad that I was able to hear the sound chip turning on and off because of the sudden change in background hiss, but the Nokia 8's noise floor is inaudible, and it has a neutral and clear sound that makes me very happy. - It properly supports European wifi frequencies: Many cheap phones only let you use a little bit of the 5GHz wifi spectrum, often only the channels around 36 - 48, because arcane frequency regulation reasons made it simpler that way. This resulted in that part of the spectrum being really crowded, unreliable and slow, especially if you're in a city. The Nokia 8 has decent wifi support that works outside those frequencies, allowing you to set your home router to clear and fast frequencies no-one else is using. - The satnav receiver is top notch: It can receive signals from the American GPS, the Russian GLONASS, and the Chinese Beidou satellites, resulting in quick fixes and a position accurate to 3 or 4 metres. It will apparently also use the European Galileo system at some point in the future when it actually properly exists. - The compass is functional: All phone compasses are slightly dodgy depending on the ambient magnetic field, but the sensor on the Nokia 8 does an admirable job at pointing in the right direction accurately and quickly.

After my first week with the Nokia 8 I do like it but there is room for improvement. In my opinion the actual device has a very nice high quality feel in the hand, it feels nicely balanced, weighted and solid albeit rather slippy, I can only guess if the polished versions are even slippier, I have the matte steel coloured version. Much of the early marketing hype for the Nokia 8 plays on the fact it runs a very stock, standard version of Android and this will enable quicker updates to Android Oreo. The other side to that coin is that it makes for a very bland user experience. Such that the software experience doesn't match the hardware. The Nokia 8 is missing a wide variety of enhancements, tweaks and user options found on other devices that increase the overall perception of quality and usability. An example being that the gadget media has recently reported that the Nokia 8 has an unusally blue tinted screen (I find it only subtley noticable) but unlike some other Android phones, like my previous BlackBerry Priv, the Nokia 8 has no user option to adjust the display white balance. For some bizarre reason for a higher end phone the 8 does not have a dedicated notification LED. Considering much hype was also made of the twin snesor camera with Zeiss branded lenses, the camera performance is totally average. When an old BlackBerry has a better feature set than you, Nokia/HMD have got some work to do!

I was always a Nokia fanboy. Then Microsoft bought the company and created the windows phone. I switched from Symbian to Android with Sony and found my new 'go-to' brand. When I heard Nokia were independent again and had released their own android 'flagship' model I was curious. Nokia have always been known for their style so I wasn't that impressed by the standard smartphone look on offer. Upon inspecting the specs I was surprised to see hardware performance near identical, if not better, than the Samsung S8 and Sony XZ premium. At around £800 for those models and the Nokia being priced a £350 - I was scratching my head a little. The Nokia 8 also has 3 staggeringly good 13mp cameras with a dual camara option for better colour reproduction. The aluminium casing draws heat away from the processor and, as such, the phone hardly heats up like my previous phones have when watching videos or games. Because the phone stays cool - battery life is the best I've had since the glory day of Nokia past. I've had this phone for over a year and it is still excellent. If I lose it or it dies - I'll get the same again. At the current price of £250 unlocked - that is one heck of a bargain for an overlooked high-spec marvel.