Nearly two years in the past, I reviewed the $200 Nokia 5.3, which was promised two years of Android OS upgrades and three years of safety updates. How has HMD Global, the corporate licensing the Nokia model, fared? It solely simply deployed Android 12 to that system, which is a year-old version of Google’s working system.
That’s an enormous delay, however not less than that price range cellphone will get six extra months of safety updates earlier than its assist formally ends. Unfortunately, issues have gotten worse. Now I’ve the brand new $270 Nokia G400 5G, which can solely get two years of safety updates and 0 dedication to Android OS upgrades. It will seemingly get Android 13, however who’s to say, since HMD isn’t making any guarantees? This looks like a stark angle shift from an organization that prided itself on delivering quick updates and prolonged software program assist back in 2016.
Today, most Android phone makers provide a software program dedication coverage so you could have a transparent image of how lengthy the system might be supported. The $250 Samsung Galaxy A13 5G, for instance, will get two OS upgrades and 4 years of safety updates. That’s wonderful, and it means you possibly can maintain on to the system with out worrying about it turning right into a buggy, unsecured mess after two years. It helps you to maintain on to your system for that lengthy if every thing else is in working order, decreasing the necessity to spend on one other cellphone. It’s simply laborious to suggest a smartphone in 2022 when you don’t have any thought if it is going to get the newest model of its working system.
Nice Hardware
Photograph: Nokia
The unhappy factor is the Nokia G400 is a fairly respectable cellphone. It seems to be bland and dreary, coming in only a gloomy gray, and does not have a look at all like a “Nokia” cellphone. But the 6.58-inch LCD display screen is sharp, colourful, and even has a 120-Hz screen refresh rate, so it feels clean and responsive whenever you work together with it.
Performance is respectable. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 480+ chipset inside reliably runs all of the apps you’d need, although you’ll have to wait right here and there for issues to load. (It’s restricted by the 4 GB of RAM.) But over the course of two weeks, I used to be in a position to make use of it simply wonderful to answer emails and messages, browse Reddit and Twitter, make cellphone calls, and even play informal video games like Alto’s Odyssey. The software program is inventory Android 12, which is good, so that you get little or no bloatware (any of which is detachable), and the interface seems to be slick.
The 5,000-mAh battery cell has given me a day and a half of common use, and also you get all of the options you’d need in any phone in 2022, like sub-6 5G connectivity on all main US carriers (sure, together with Verizon, which many unlocked Nokia gadgets have historically been incompatible with), a headphone jack, fingerprint sensor, and a MicroSD card slot to increase on the paltry 64 GB of inner storage. I’ve used the NFC sensor to faucet and pay on the subway turnstiles right here in New York City, and also you even get a charger in the box.
