2017 has been an excellent year for smartphones so far with the release of solid devices across all price ranges. Much to the delight of enthusiasts and fans alike, Nokia made a comeback into the smartphone arena with their new range of devices. The Nokia 8 was HMD Globals high-end smartphone, with top-of-the-line features and …
2017 has been an excellent year for smartphones so far with the release of solid devices across all price ranges. Much to the delight of enthusiasts and fans alike, Nokia made a comeback into the smartphone arena with their new range of devices. The Nokia 8 was HMD Globals high-end smartphone, with top-of-the-line features and all the bells and whistles one would find in a flagship. One can even go as far say stating that it gave the reigning flagship killer, the OnePlus 5, a run for its money.
The OnePlus 5T is little more than an incremental upgrade to the OnePlus 5, with most features remaining identical and a few tweaks here and there, the most notable ones being a better camera subsystem and a larger 6-inch screen with an 18:9 aspect ratio. Does the Nokia 8 still have what it takes to take on OnePlus’ latest gizmo, let’s find out?
The Nokia 8 features a 5.3-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 1440×2560 with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 554ppi pixel density. The OnePlus 5T, on the other hand, features a 6-inch optic AMOLED panel with a resolution of 1080×2160 with an 18:9 aspect ratio and 401ppi pixel density. The OnePlus 5T gets the edge here, as AMOLED panels are inherently better than IPS LCD panels, with a wider colour gamut and better colour depth. The Nokia 8 still wins in terms of screen resolution and the pixel density, though.
This is the most closely matched segment, as both the devices feature Qualcomm’s best Snapdragon 835 SoC clocked at around the 2.5GHz mark and an Adreno 540 GPU. The ROM: RAM ratio is higher for the OnePlus 5T, with the 64GB variant featuring 6GB of RAM and the 128GB variant featuring 8GB of RAM, whereas the 64GB variant of the Nokia 6 features 4GB of RAM and the 128GB variant has 6GB of RAM. To be honest, it’s a complete non-factor as a device seldom uses that much memory, even with the most intensive applications. It really boils down to the day-to-day performance of the devices, type of use and a lot of variables, which cannot realistically be recreated. So I’d peg this section as a tied all the way down the middle. That being said, some synthetic benchmarks should shed more light on to both devices, and we’ll keep you updated on that.
Here’s the most widely anticipated segment of them all; the cameras. The OnePlus 5T features a dual 20+16-megapixels camera with dual-tone LED flash, phase detection autofocus, a f/1.7 aperture lens, HDR, panorama and can record 4k videos at 30fps. The secondary camera is 16-megapixels with a f/2.0 lens and can record 1080p videos at 30 fps. Both cameras employ EIS(electronic image stabilization) to reduce image quality loss resulting from a shaky hand or surface. Moving on to the Nokia 8, the primary camera is a dual 13+13-megapixels with Laser Detection Autofocus(LDAF), Phase Detection Autofocus(PDAF), dual-tone LED flash, HDR, panorama and can record 4K videos at 30 fps. The secondary camera is 13-megapixels with a f/2.0 lens, PDAF and can record 4k videos at 30 fps too. The Nokia 8 gets the lead here, despite lesser megapixels on the camera, as it employs OIS(optical image stabilization), which is vastly superior to the EIS employed by the OnePlus 5T.
Both the devices have power-packed features and are excellent value for money. Hence stating that one is better than the other is an exercise in futility to a certain extent. While the Nokia 8 has the better camera, the OnePlus 5T has a better display. The OnePlus 5T gets a slight edge when it comes to battery life, as it is 3,300mAh compared to the 3,000mAh unit on the Nokia 8. It really boils down to personal preference, with Stock Android aficionados such as myself rooting for the Nokia 8 and long-time OnePlus opting for the OnePlus 5T. Personally, I’d still recommend the Nokia 8 because it’s a device built from scratch, whereas the OnePlus 5T is merely the OnePlus 5 with a few things moved around.
