The latest Nokia-branded smartphones from HMD Global are now available for sale in the country. Well, at least some of them since the best one, yet, the updated Nokia 8, dubbed Nokia 8 Sirocco, is a no-show.
At a small media briefing this morning, HMD Global’s Sub-Saharan Africa team led by Joseph Umunakwe, the General Manager for the WECA (West, East and Central Africa) region, showed off the Nokia 7 Plus, the Nokia 6 (2018) and the Nokia 1.
The Nokia 1 went on sale in the country last week. The Nokia 7 Plus and new Nokia 6 follow it into the market and will be available through the same retail channels as older HMD Global devices.
The Nokia 7 Plus is HMD Global’s first and only (so far) smartphone with an 18:9 display aspect ratio and it features the hyped 6-layer ceramic coating at the back, akin to what can be found on Google’s Pixel smartphones whose approach to quick updates both major and the monthly security patches HMD Global has adopted and made part of its culture; a culture that we wish every Android device maker would adopt. If wishes were horses…
The other standout feature of the Nokia 7 Plus as far as design goes is the copper accents around the frame and the camera module.
The colour buffs will have to turn to the low-cost Nokia 1, a member of the Android Go program that complements the Android One program that both the Nokia 7 Plus and the Nokia 6.1 (the other name for that device) belong to. The Nokia 1 has interchangeable back shells that HMD Global calls Xpress-on covers.
Both the Nokia 7 Plus and the Nokia 6 (2018) are certified by Google for use at the workplace or other enterprise environments which is to mean that they play nicely with any company’s in-house mobile device management software and such.
The Nokia 6 (2018) is an upgrade to the lacklustre offering from last year that stood out for its impeccable design and not much else. The good thing is that HMD Global has managed to keep the new Nokia 6 within the price range of the old model’s maxed out variant at Kshs 29,000.
While it’s understandable why one would be left drooling after seeing the Nokia 7 Plus in person and checking out its impressive spec sheet, the price is a little on the higher side, though not as high as Samsung’s crazily-priced upper mid-ranger. For the Kshs 46,000 that HMD Global is asking for for the 7 Plus, you can bargain your way to last year’s Nokia 8, a good device in its own right that just didn’t connect with the consumer market because the competition matched it up and even beat it at its own game.
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