Nokia G10 Review – Most Good Looking Budget Nokia Phone

Nokia G10 is an entry-level smartphone with an entry-level gaming-oriented chipset. The device from Nokia brings a lot on-board including a giant display, decent RAM, excellent battery life, and of course, a stock Android 11 out-of-the-box which is something, not all brands offer.

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Apparently, the phone was slated to launch in India on July 24th although I already have a review unit for testing. After trying it out for a week, here’s my detailed hands-on Nokia G10 Review that you should read.

Nokia hasn’t revealed the pricing on Nokia G10 for India yet. It is priced at $150 or approx Rs. 10,999/- in the U.S. although the pricing is expected to reach Rs. 12,490/- for the 3GB+32GB base variant. The pricing for higher 4GB+64GB is not available. The phone is available in two colour variants though i.e. Dusk and Night.

Before we talk in detail about Nokia G10, let’s have a quick look at the key specifications. 

• Display: 6.5-inch (16.51 cms) HD+ IPS LCD display
• Processor: Mediatek Helio G25
• Storage: 4GB/64GB
• Software: Android 11 (Go edition)
• Rear camera: 13MP + 2MP Macro + 2MP
• Selfie camera: 8MP
• Battery: 5050 mAh
• Weight: 190g
• Dimensions: 16.5 x 7.6 x 0.9 cm

Now, let’s move ahead and see what makes the Nokia G10.

Nokia G10 is surprisingly well-built. It is still using a plastic back and frame with a glass front. Talking about the display, it is wide although with sufficient bezels around the edges. Flip the phone and you get a clear backplate made up of plastic.

The back panel has a bit of texture with lines passing through the back panel diagonally. There’s a circular triple rear camera bump situated on the central axis of the back panel plus, there’s a Nokia branding. That’s all you have with the design part which is minimalistic and I loved using the phone primarily because of its design.

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The phone has a width of 9.2mm which is probably because of the beefy battery and the entry-level pricing.

There’s a bottom-firing loudspeaker, a primary mic at the bottom. There’s a power button cum fingerprint scanner on the right with a volume rocker on top. Finally, there’s a Google Assistant summon button and a SIM card slot on the left. There’s a 3.5mm headphone jack on top. That’s all about the I/O ports and buttons that you get with Nokia G10.

Nokia G10 packs in a 6.52-inch IPS LCD panel with a resolution of 720 by 1600 pixels. It’s a 20:9 aspect ratio on-board along with an 81.9% screen-to-body ratio. The display gets a V-shaped notch housing the selfie shooter. The display falls on-point with the comparison devices, however, Poco M3 which has almost the same pricing has an FHD display which means Nokia could have done better.

The display is brightly lit making it easier to view indoors and outdoors as well unless the sunlight is falling directly on the display which makes it a bit of a struggle to view. The display’s black level and contrast are good, which is a relief. I have tested the device for PWM flickering which is good, to be honest. Next up, colour reproduction on Nokia G10 is of medium category. It has a 60Hz standard refresh rate onboard.

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Talking about the form factor, the display is huge with a 20:9 aspect ratio. It has a thick chin along with sufficiently thick bezels which is something you get at this price tag. The V-shaped notch ensures that it doesn’t end up with any more screen real estate as a usual notch would do. Since U-shaped or punch-hole notches for this price segment would be equally sized, I don’t think so there’s any difference.

Nokia G10 is driven by MediaTek Helio G25 SoC fabricated on a 12nm node. It is an octa-core chipset clocked at 2.0GHz of max frequency. It is paired with a PowerVR GE8320 GPU along with 3GB/4GB of RAM and 32GB/64GB of storage with an expandable memory card slot.

Talking about the performance of the processor, it will get the job done, to be honest. The chipset is an entry-level SoC also seen with Xiaomi Redmi 9A. It is okay for everyday usage being calls, texts, browsing the internet, listening to music, watching movies, and so on. You can do it all although if you want to toggle between multiple apps, you might have to wait for a bit as the chipset cannot simply process higher demand. Since it is an Android, I would say buying a larger RAM option is the way to go as the higher the RAM, the better the performance of apps and processors onboard the device.

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You can play games as well as I had problems playing many basic and 2D or even lightweight 3D games. However, you will literally burn out on the storage and the chipset if you want to play high-graphics games like PUBG Mobile. You can play the lite version of these games but probably in short bursts since playing longer sessions would mean burning a hole in the chipset (metaphorically).

The best thing about Nokia G10 is the fact that it comes with stock Android 11 out-of-the-box. It is covered with two years of major Android OS upgrades plus three years of security patch updates which is a lot for a budget smartphone since not many OEMs offer that sort of commitment.

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When it comes to the optics, you get an 8MP shooter at the front while the rear has a triple camera array with 13MP primary wide-angle snapper with AF, a 2MP macro, and a 2MP depth sensor.

Talking about the rear camera first, the primary snapper is 13MP and it can take decent images in the daytime. In fact, some of the shots were even better than Moto G10 which has a 48MP snapper and uses pixel binning to grab 12MP shots. The colours were decent although the shots had limited details and sharpness and as you zoom in, the details fade away. The sharpness in the shots is on the low side as well. However, you need to understand that Nokia G10 uses an entry-level 13MP camera which means it has to make some cutbacks here and there.

I would say daytime shots are convincing, however, nighttime shots are equally off. Depending upon the lighting conditions, I am talking about slightly usable to not usable at all shots per se. About video recording, you can capture videos at a max 1080p@30fps resolution and the same goes for the selfie shooter.

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You have two decorative sensors i.e. the 2MP macro and 2MP depth sensor. The former can grab decent usable macro images while the latter collect depth data to apply blur effect on the shots captured by the primary camera. Overall, I would say Nokia G10 has a triple camera setup as the two mentioned above are preliminary sensors.

Talking about the 8MP selfie shooter, it has a lot of potential for daytime shots. You can click convincing selfies and groupies at day although nighttime photography isn’t its strongest (or say strong) suit.

Nokia G10 sports a 5,050 mAh Li-Po battery under the hood paired alongside 10W charging speed. I get it, the battery is huge and should let me get through the day without a hitch. Since the chipset isn’t powerful, I don’t think that you will be indulging in heavy apps most of the time which means the battery should be able to perform really well. I was able to straight through the day and charge only at night after constant texting, calling, browsing, and normal day-to-day usage. I don’t see a point where I could argue that the phone can last for half of the second day since it is subjective and depends on use cases but it is plausible.

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However, the phone comes with a 10W charging tech and yes, there’s no charger included in the retail box. This means you have to spend around 3:00 to 3:30 hours charging the phone after you are done buying the charger or using an existing one. Although it is imminent that Nokia removed the charger to save on the price tag, however, this iPhone 12-ish move may backfire. In any case, it is good that Nokia G10 uses a universal USB-C port since it is easily available.

Nokia G10 is paired with Wi-Fi 802.11n along with Bluetooth v5.0 (LE and A2DP). There are BDS, Glonass, and A-GPS navigation systems. There’s USB Type-C 2.0 port on-board for charging and data sharing.

You can use two 4G SIM cards on Nokia G10 as usual. It worked fairly average with Jio 4G and Airtel 4G and I didn’t have any connectivity issues as such.

Nokia G10 has a mono bottom-firing loudspeaker. Although it is okay, it isn’t that loud enough and suffers in low frequencies. Also, vocals and voices on Nokia G10 are very thin as well. You can use the 3.5mm jack that produces clean sound and since you aren’t paying that much, it is understandable.

Nokia G10 is equipped with both facial recognition and a side-mounted fingerprint scanner. Both are pretty fast and reliable although I bet on fingerprint scanner more than facial recognition as it is 2D software-based authentication rather than hardware-based as FPS. But you are free to choose your sides.

Pros 

• Android 11 experience
• 6.5-inch HD+ display
• 13MP triple-rear camera
• Side-mounted fingerprint sensor
• Large 5050 mAh battery

Cons 

• No fast charging option
• Meagre processor
• No dust and water resistance
• Only 720-pixel display