Nokia 8: The rise of the next flagship contender

• New flagship Nokia 8 boasts high-end specs at fraction of the price

• Zeiss Optics enhance new dual camera’s capabilities

The new Nokia 8

HMD Global the makers of the Nokia phones has revealed that they have a new flagship smartphone in the form of the Nokia 8. This handset will be the highest spec and priced Nokia smartphone under the relaunched Nokia brand.

On the outside, the phone features a premium looking machined aluminium unibody that manages to keep a slim 4.6mm thin at the edge and just 7.3mm slim on the average. HMD Global has not pushed the Nokia 8’s size up to a phablet but keeps it at a manageable 5.3-inch  Quad HD (2,560 x 1,440 pixels) IPS display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protecting it.

One other noticeable inclusion in this new addition to the Nokia family of phones is the Nokia 8’s dual rear cameras that feature a 13-Megapixel dual image-fusion and an equal 13-Megapixel front camera featuring Zeiss optics as we reported earlier.

Nokia is doing something different with its dual cameras capitalising on its front and rear camera to capture a “bothie”, a newly coined term, that shows both sides of a photo.

You also get up to 4K resolution video recording quality. Adding to that Nokia 8 has OZo audio which gives it spatial 360-degree built-in audio recording capabilities to capture everything that is going on around you.

Adding to that there is a Dual-Sight video feature that allows users to live stream videos to social feeds as Facebook and YouTube.

This latest contender for the flagship smartphone crown bears similarities to other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and One Plus 5 especially in terms of spec. It sporting a super fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa core processor, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 256GB with a microSD card.

In terms of the software experience, Nokia is sticking to its guns by offering a near stock Android experience running on Android 7.1.1 Nougat, which goes to say that there shouldn’t be any bloatware and a clutter-free experience.

It has a fairly beefy 3,090mAh battery that by Nokia’s estimates should be good for all day use. With Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0 the Nokia 8 should be able to get back up on its feet in no time.

Expect the Nokia 8 to come in four colour variations: polished blue, tempered blue, steel and polished copper.

A leak from a Nokia store stated that the Nokia 8 will be priced at RM2,299 which makes it highly affordable especially in terms of specifications when compared to other smartphones of its class.

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