Nokia 6 Review – The Attention Grabber

Build, Design and Display

Nokia 6 Build, Design, and Display

As told earlier HMD has done a good job designing the trio and pricing them accordingly. Nokia 6 among them sure has most sturdy and tough design with premium feel. Though it looks bulky, Nokia 6 is only 9 grams heavier than Nokia 5 probably due to curved frame of the latter.

This larger Nokia 6 also receives similar points by us for its design, as Nokia 5 did. It’s very unlikely any brand would put its mid-ranger smartphone into such a sturdy metal outfit. It’s sturdy and tough in matte finish, though the flat sides with chamfered edges are pretty helpful in handling – unlike Nokia 5 which could slip out of hands with its curved sides and corners. The plastic stripes are also managed in a better way only on the back side, goes just round the edges.

Weighing 169 grams, Nokia 6 hardly outweighs Galaxy J7 Prime or Huawei Y7 Prime, whereas the 6 stands just between the two when compared to their sizes. Sure the 6 is a lot tougher than the other two. If you put the durability, reliability and that sturdiness aside for a second, Nokia 6 also has descent looks. It’s built from a single block of aluminium and it feels much premium for the price tag it carries.

Some of you may not feel comfortable with its flat edges on your palm of hands but they are not that bad at all and not painful. Rather they give a perfect grip unlike, Nokia 5 or Nokia 3. When compared to rivals, frankly like Nokia 5, the 6 also takes more points with regard to its design and build quality than the J7 Prime, Y7 Prime or any other brand including Moto G5 which is also the most closest rival in terms of price and specs.

Chamfered edges are on each side – back and front, are left shiny without the device color which is also good in its way – but this could lead to easy start point for scratches.

The tempered blue color we have here is impressively good looking, I’ll recommend to buy this over the matte black variant. But if you prefer to have something that is less pron to scratches, go for a silver one. Well, I do not mean that it’s scratch resistant but silver will hide the scratches better than any other dark color.

2.5D curved glass is impressively smooth, just like old Nokia Lumia smartphones. It’s Gorilla Glass for sure for protection. The front glass directly meets into the metal frame where no thin plastic frame comes in between. That’s something important in comparison within this this class of smartphones and impressively Nokia 5 and Nokia 3 also has the same thing.

Controls and Components

Audio and Connectivity

Nokia 6, like most, comes with all common components and controls on board including the 3.5mm audio jack on top and a micro USB port on bottom along side the a loud speaker – like Nokia 5, the 6 also has got support with a smart amplifier, TFA9891 – the one Google Pixel XL was shipped with.

Primary mic or mouthpiece is located at the bottom as well along side the micro USB port. If you can’t see the second speaker around it – it still has dual-speakers. Nokia 6 uses the earpiece as the second loudspeaker to create stereo sound. The 6 features Dolby ATMOS certified sound after all.

Power/Volume and SIM/Memory Slots

Power button and the volume buttons are located on the right hand side of the phone to ease your thumb reach. While on the left side of the phone, there is a hybrid slot for dual-SIM cards or a single SIM + microSD card for storage expansion.

Nokia 5, in that case offers to use both SIM cards and a memory card simultaneously with two dedicated slots for each.

Antenna and Rear Profile

Antenna stripes occupy the top and bottom sides edges of the phone on its back. Shoulder-like design of the plastic stripes stay at the edge of the frame but do not cross into the frame sides. Secondary mic is also there on the back of the phone for noise cancellation and stereo audio recording – you can look above the camera module which is extruded a little bit.

In the middle portion, there’s a “Nokia” branding and some device labels on the lower portion.

Front Profile

On the front, you can see that the upper portion of the screen is printing the brand name “Nokia” on the corner more like the late Lumia designs. In the middle we have an earpiece whereas the front camera is located between the earpiece and the Nokia branding. Front-camera features screen-flash to brighten up the nearer subject for some better selfies.

Lower portion on the front side is just similar to Nokia 5’s with a capacitive “home” button in the middle. It also has an embedded fingerprint scanner. On the sides there are “back” and “recent” apps key – these are back-lit thankfully.

Nokia 6 Display

Nokia 6 features a 5.5-inch IPS display with full HD resolution of 1920×1080 pixels. It has the higher pixel density than of the basic Nokia 3 and the middle man Nokia 5. With 401 pixels per inch, you will get better and sharper display performance in reading, viewing, playing, watching etc. Glass on the 6 is also comparatively smoother and nice to touch.

With all the recent Nokia phones, HMD did good with impressive display in such a price range. It’s very bright at its maximum setting as well as colors are also pleasant. Automatic brightness control also works well to manage with the ambient light. Black levels are not that impressive, hence contrast ratio is good but not that great. Surprisingly, the 6’s display is little less brighter than Nokia 5 but HMD has intentionally stated the difference in their product specifications as 450 nits and 500 nits respectively.

In addition to laminated display, there’s sunlight visibility option that also boosts the viewing experience on the phone when you are outdoors. Checkout the following display comparison with Huawei Y7 Prime and Nokia 6. Nokia 3 is also included.

The smooth glass on Nokia 6 has the anti-glare coating (aka oleophobic coating) that helps remove the fingerprints very easily. They in fact appear very less than on the screen without coating. Difference can be seen when compared against Y7 Prime.

Continue to next page to read about software and user interface.