Nokia 5.4 Review: For absolutely the fundamentals

The Nokia 5.4 is an iterative mid-range smartphone. You don’t discover all of the bells and whistles of high-end smartphones right here. However, some together with AI processing and comparatively advanced imaging applied sciences are a part of the Nokia 5.4. Of course, at its Dh699 price ticket, sacrifices have been made too. But are these sacrifices deal-breakers?

Design and construct high quality

Even from afar, the Nokia 5.4 maintains the corporate’s design DNA. The Nordic design appears nice with a textured look to the again of the smartphone. However, we want the feel was noticeable within the hand slightly than simply being visible. Moreover, the again has a shiny end to it, which isn’t one thing we’re an enormous fan of. As for the smartphone’s general construct high quality, it’s respectable. With our utilization, the again of the smartphone has been scratched whereas the entrance stays comparatively protected due to the out of the field display screen protector. Otherwise, the cellphone’s show doesn’t appear to have Gorilla Glass safety, with Nokia choosing one other hardened glass substitute.

Around the gadget, you discover the standard number of ports and buttons, along with one which stands out. There is a devoted Google Assistant button right here which is helpful nonetheless we might have favored it higher if it could possibly be remapped to another characteristic or utility. On the identical left edge, you additionally discover a 3-in-1 hybrid SIM tray, the place you possibly can retailer 4G dual-SIM playing cards and a microSD card concurrently.

The proper fringe of the smartphone has the quantity and energy buttons that are effectively positioned. And on the general, the smartphone at 181g and eight.7mm feels snug for prolonged use within the hand. So, kudos to Nokia for that. While the highest fringe of the Nokia 5.4 has a secondary microphone, an earpiece flanking the show and a 3.5mm headphone jack, the underside edge homes the first microphone, Type-C USB port and a speaker grill.

Rounding up on the smartphone’s design, you discover a round quad-camera bump on the again, the flash unit and a fingerprint scanner. Contrary to smartphones now extensively adopting in-screen scanners, Nokia has retained the extra conventional method. It is snug to make use of due to its place nonetheless efficiency is sort of sluggish, particularly if don’t get up the cellphone previous to utilizing the scanner. As for the digital camera bump, we’re simply glad the bump is delicate.

Display and multimedia

There are two essential features to the Nokia 5.4 on this division. Firstly, you discover a 6.39-inch IPS LCD panel right here. It is much from revolutionary nonetheless it will get the job completed. Bezels across the show are comparatively skinny and their dimension is respectable. However, with solely an HD+ decision, you shortly begin to discover imperfections. When viewing textual content, there’s a distinct haziness to the sides of the letters on display screen. This applies to any content material as effectively, on prime of the show’s beneath par distinction ranges and brightness. There can be no high-refresh price choice discovered on the Nokia 5.4 and this mix of specs simply makes for a beneath par expertise.

You can nonetheless use the show simply as you’d another panel nonetheless flaws shall be a lot simpler to level out. And with longer utilization durations, we did discover conditions the place the show grew to become unresponsive for a couple of seconds. So, for hardcore film buffs or gaming lovers, the Nokia 5.4 is likely to be a go. To prime it off, the smartphone doesn’t include any stereo speaker expertise. Audio from the one speaker sounds tinny and for those who have been to hearken to music or watch content material on the Nokia 5.4, we might advocate you utilize a pair of wired or wi-fi earphones.

User expertise and efficiency

With a mid-range smartphone, you can’t count on high-end efficiency. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 processor on the gadget can nearly sustain, registering a single-core rating of 315 and a multi-core rating of 1415 on Geekbench 5. It can deal with a couple of social media purposes, a few looking cases and one light-weight sport. But to fluidly multitask between these with 4GB of RAM is asking a bit an excessive amount of.

Taking this one step additional to gaming, the expertise will not be excellent. Lightweight video games can run positive on the smartphone however heavier titles like PUBG will battle. You could possibly get easy efficiency however this might imply a severe downgrade to visuals. When taking part in this video games, the smartphone does change into heat to the touch nonetheless it’s nothing insufferable.

Countering the {hardware} on the gadget although, the Nokia 5.4 does have an attractive Android One expertise. Currently, it has Android 10 operating with a vanilla person interface mimicking a Pixel gadget. This means no extra bloatware out of the field, which is nice for customers particularly with the smartphone’s restrictive 64GB of on-board reminiscence. Nokia does bundle in a couple of gestures of its personal to make use of on the 5.4, with us significantly having fun with interacting with the fingerprint scanner to entry notifications.

The largest promoting level of the Nokia 5.4, above all of this must be Nokia’s fixed software program assist. With the Nokia 5.4, you might be promised as much as 3 years of safety updates and a couple of main Android OS upgrades, which suggests the Nokia 5.4 is because of not solely see Android 11 but in addition the software program model after that.

Camera

We referenced the quad-camera setup earlier on within the evaluation, however it’s now time to dive a bit deeper. You discover a 48MP main digital camera on the Nokia 5.4 alongside a 5MP ultra-wide lens, a 2MP depth sensor and a 2MP macro sensor. Right off the bat, we predict the first 48MP sensor must be your go-to selection for 90 per-cent of your pictures. It can do an excellent job with element and dynamic vary if given the fitting situations. Although, footage begin to look a bit softer in direction of the sides in lower than ideally suited lighting situations. Also, you need to understand that footage when seen on the viewfinder look a lot worse than they’re after the cellphone processes them.

The 5MP ultra-wide angle lens ought to solely come into play for a extra expansive view of the scene. But due to its low megapixel rely, the element captured by it’s not probably the most spectacular. The 0.6x view is good at occasions, however provided that you additionally don’t thoughts the deviation in shade in comparison with the first lens. With this being the case, customers who wish to seamlessly swap between the vast and ultra-wide lenses will face some bother. Plus, the swap is sort of sluggish too.

When it involves the 2MP macro digital camera, it’s enjoyable to have. By no means ought to this be your main lens, as the standard simply will not be there. But in our case, taking minute particulars of the flowers seen within the image samples was an excellent comfort. We would have favored Nokia to implement the macro characteristic with the upper decision 5MP ultra-wide sensor although. Lastly, we’ve got the 2MP depth sensor, which appears to return into play for portraits. One of the night time time portraits we captured appeared to impress us and maybe within the back-end, it could be doing its work. But, it’s not very constant at delivering outcomes.

The extra we’ve got used the cameras on the Nokia 5.4, the extra we find out about its processing. It appears to lean in direction of over-sharpened pictures, particularly when utilizing its night-mode characteristic. In some case, this will appear helpful however usually, it makes the image look faux. Likewise, the entrance 16MP hole-punch selfie digital camera is analogous. For non-portrait pictures, it appears to work positive with respectable dynamic vary however with portrait mode enabled, the processing is simply too excessive. Video lovers may be happy to know that the Nokia 5.4 helps as much as 4K 30fps footage though with none optical picture stabilization, it’s not the most effective for normal use.

Battery life

Where we’ve got little doubt in regards to the Nokia 5.4 is in the case of its battery. Under the hood, there’s a 4,000mAh cell which is able to lasting as much as 2 days in accordance with Nokia. Given the smartphone’s mid-tier processor and low decision show, that is undoubtedly attainable. Stand-by occasions on the Nokia 5.4 are additionally glorious, with a full cost providing you with no less than 2-4 days of backup. This goes to indicate the cellphone is significantly optimized. If there’s something to complain about although, it’s the smartphone’s 10W charging velocity. We would have favored to see it include 25W+ charging, one thing that’s now frequently seen at this price ticket.

Conclusion

At Dh699, the Nokia 5.4 looks like a smartphone that doesn’t totally justify its buy. A number of of its digital camera options, its battery life and software program expertise is superb. However, it’s not on top of things in the case of its show or processing energy. For a smoother expertise at this value level, the Realme 6 is a viable selection however meaning having to forego a clear person expertise.

So, the selection for the Nokia 5.4 comes down to non-public choice. We suppose it could possibly be a perfect product for a school-going particular person, maybe as their first smartphone. Or even a backup second smartphone for busier professionals.