The Nokia 8 Sirocco is beautifully crafted

HMD’s device doesn’t have spectacular features to stand out from the crowd

HMD Global’s Nokia 8 Sirocco is a much-improved version of last year’s Nokia 8 with pure Android One operating system.

The big advantage is that the company has guaranteed that it will get two-year Android OS support which means that this device will get Android Q OS. Right now we are in Android O (Oreo).

The glossy back is a fingerprint magnet and slippery but HMD has added a silicon cover to protect the back. The 5.5 device with Quad HD pOLED panel (2560 x 1440 pixels and 538 pixels per inch density) with Gorilla Glass 5 is powered by last year’s Snapdragon 835 chip set with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage capacity. It is a single SIM device with expandable microSD card support. It has an aspect ratio of 16:9 and weighs 174 grams.

The display is very bright with colours popping out with details but the green and red colours look oversaturated.

The device has a fingerprint sensor below the rear camera and it is fast and accurate but not the fastest in the market.

Coming to cameras, the back has dual Zeiss optics — a wide-angle 12MP sensor with a f/1.7 aperture and a second 13MP telephoto lens with a f/2.6 aperture — with dual pixel phase detection autofocus, dual-LED dual-tone flash, 2x optical zoom and 10x digital zoom.

The device takes excellent shots in well-light conditions

but it lacks optical image stabilisation, only EIS. In lowlight conditions, the device takes decent shots but lacks details and has a visible noise.

The Live Bokeh mode, to adjust the level of blur in real time, works very well but it does not say indicate if the subject is too far or too close. It has the usual shooting modes like beautification, panorama and pro.

With 2x zoom feature, the shots are mediocre as there is no OIS. It can record 2160p and 1080p at 30 frames per second. The 5MP front-facing camera does not offer anything spectacular and takes decent selfies in well-lighted conditions but are soft and noisy in lowlight conditions. It can record 1080p.

The Nokia 8 Sirocco houses a 3,260mAh battery but the display drains the battery a bit faster. Despite this, it gives one full day of use for moderate users.

Moreover, it has a quick charge support and Qi wireless charging support to power the battery from zero to full in just over 90 minutes. It is priced at Dh2,399.