TECH BREAK: The cheapest Nokia smartphone, is it worth it?

Nokia is making an impressive comeback in the smartphone industry with a device for just about anyone based on the price range.

I took a look at one of the cheapest Nokia smartphone money can buy, the Nokia One, and here are my two cents.

Out of the box, the Nokia One lacks any bells and whistles, the design adapts a simplistic approach. How simple? It has a pop-off back cover, removable battery and it doesn’t have those fancy sim trays we’re used to.

CAMERAS AND PROCESSOR

The chassis is made of plastic but it feels rigid, after all we are talking about Nokia, a name synonymous with reliability & quality.

The screen up front is a 4.5’’ IPS display with good enough clarity and colour accuracy for a budget phone, but the bezels on the sides are a bit wide.

The primary camera at the back is 5 MP with an LED flash while the front-facing one is a 2 MP shooter. Images from the cameras are average. Considering the price range, I wouldn’t complain.

I found the audio quality from the earpiece excellent but the loudspeaker at the back sounded flat, although it didn’t crackle at high volumes. 

The internals of the Nokia One is where I really got worried. It runs on a Quad Core Mediatek Processor clocked at 1.1 GHz with 1GB of RAM and 8GB internal storage. With such specs, expect a super slow device.

ANDROID GO

Or should you? Turns out there is method in this madness. See, the Nokia One is powered by Android 8.1 Oreo, Go Edition. Emphasis on ‘Go Edition’.

Android Go is an extremely light version of the Android Operating System aimed at low end smartphones.

This cut down version of android doesn’t have too many preinstalled applications to optimise the limited resources available on super budget phones.

It even comes with tailor made Apps like the Google Go, Maps Go, Gmail Go and even YouTube Go, which allows users to save YouTube videos for offline viewing.

These applications take up very little space and power from the device.

In contrast, the entire OS on the Nokia One takes only 2.4GB of the internal storage while my phone, which runs on conventional Android 7.0, uses over 16GB of internal storage on system alone.

This drastic diet cut adopted by the Go Edition of Android makes a great experience out of a phone that would otherwise be laggy. The removable 2150 mAh even manages to power the phone through a day of regular usage.

SPECIFICATIONS SUMMARY

• Display Size 4.5” FWVGA IPS
• MT6737M Quad Core 1.1 GHz Processor & 1 GB RAM
• Size: 133.6 x 67.78 x 9.5mm and 131g in weight
• 5 MP Primary Camera with LED flash & 2MP Front
• 8GB Internal Storage, Expandable to 128 GB
• GSM / HSPA / LTE network support
• Removable 2150 mAh battery with Up to 9 hours talk time
• Available in Warm Red, Dark Blue colours.

GOOD DEAL

So, in a nutshell, there is a lot to be criticised about this phone, it has low specs and the camera may not excite many but its redeeming feature is the operating system running it.

I loved the fact that the back cover is interchangeable (sold separately), much like what we saw on the Huawei Ideos smartphone, the first smartphone for most, me included. 

What Nokia has done with this device is offer a smartphone experience to everyone at an affordable price, a perfect entry level smartphone. The Nokia One goes for Ksh7,999.