The Nokia X20 is the company’s new ‘top’ phone, but we’re not sure the company has been keeping tabs on its rivals.
One of the most fiercely contested market segments is the ‘premium-low-end’ one, of budget phones with competitive specs that are priced on the border of the low-end and mid-range tiers. Recent entries include the Moto G9 Plus, Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro and Realme 8 Pro, all with impressive specs and features. The Nokia X20 is a new phone which fits right into this segment, as the top-end model of the six new handsets Nokia owners HMD Global unveiled in April 2021. The X line is to be Nokia’s new top-end one, sitting above its C- and G- ranges, and the X20 is, at the time of writing, the top model. It’s not clear what’s happening with the Nokia 8.3 5G in this new system, though. It doesn’t look like HMD Global was aware of how competitive this market segment was though, and the Nokia X20 flags in a few key areas compared to those aforementioned devices — its chipset is quite a bit weaker, its charging is slower, and the design feels a little more ‘budget’, compared to the aforementioned rivals. Still, there are some things going for the phone — HMD Global promises the Nokia X20 will get three years of Android updates, which is much more than we can say for many other Android phones, and its screen is nice and big too. We’ve briefly tested the Nokia X20, in time for its launch — we should point out we were provided an early unit with non-final software, so we’ll avoid touching on that subject as much as possible, and you should take this early review with a pinch of salt. The Nokia X20 goes on sale in May 2021, at least in the UK, though we know the phone will be available in the US at some point too. In the UK, the phone costs £300 for 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, which converts to about $410, AU$540. There’s also a £320 model which bumps that RAM up to 8GB, a price which converts to roughly $440, AU$580. For some context, we’ll provide the prices of those other phones we mentioned as close competitors: the Realme 8 Pro costs £279 (roughly $390, AU$500) while the Moto G9 Plus costs £250 (around $325 or AU$460), and the Redmi Note 10 Pro is $279 (around £200 / AU$360). Those are the RRP prices, at least. The Nokia X20 feels pretty big, mainly because of its large screen. It has a plastic body, and we tried out a version with a bronze hue. The rear has a circular camera bump, which has become a staple for Nokia phones, with the Zeiss logo in the middle. There’s a side-mounted fingerprint scanner embedded in the power button on the right edge, with the volume rocker just above it.
