Soldato
Also ordered mine from German Rainforest (dual sim is a must). The outgoing phone Nokia 7 Plus is replacing in my hand is Honor 8, which over the last 18 months lost 50% of its battery capacity and started malfunctioning hardware wise (finger print reader no longer works, people complain about microphone performance of late, I can't hear people clearly through earpiece, though speaker is fine, bluetooth is crackling). So - first impressions of Nokia 7 Plus and comparison to a Chinese Huawei clone.
The good:
- excellent call quality, volume of earpiece and speaker. A few youtubers complained about speaker volume, they don't know what they talk about, it offers the loudest satnav performance via built in speaker I've encountered for years.
- good, fast performance (in most, but not all areas)
- decent camera, nothing ground breaking, but it's ok.
- proper hybrid dual sim - obviously you still loose memory slot for the second sim but both sims can do 4G, both sims can be enabled for data. Remember that mine is European version from German Rainforest
- rSAP. First time I paired it with my car, it asked if I want to enable premium bluetooth and *tada* - magic I haven't seen for 8 years - aerial on the roof handles calls, car reads SMSes, you can dictate replies and everything. If it's your thing and you missed your wired nokia in-car cradle - this phone does it wirelessly.
- bloatware free - literally a single support app and that's it
- mine arrived with screen protector and a clear case, not one I would use, but thanks - either Nokia or Rainforest shop - nice touch. Charger also included. Small things but...
The meh and moan:
- It's big. Weird big. Tall, unshapely. Unnecessarily so. No benefit to this shape whatsoever.
- The screen is good, sharp, nice but has tinge - whites are yellow, compared to Honor, and because of it - it looks dated in comparison with 2 year old £250 Chinese phone.
- Androidone Oreo is so clunky compared to EMUI it's not even funny. Everything takes five-seven more steps than needed. Everything. The way you dial, the way you text, the way you search apps, the way you close all open apps. The way you try to flick that stupid swipe up to answer again and again and folk all happens. Also - stock stuff is just fugly. So darn fugly. Pink backgrounds in diallers, orange backgrounds in text. Violets. Radioactive greens. Glaring, unsociable. So microsoft, so eighties. (vomits inside mouth) And everything is surrounded by fields of empty white spaces the size of Arctic circle. As they say "you don't know how good something is till it's gone". EMUI - you will be missed. Don't get me wrong - I'm prepared for it, I already installed Nova Laucher to cure some of the clunkiness and ugliness, but man - each version of android is just competing more and more with IOS for waste of time and space (and amount of white backgrounds everywhere).
- How the **** is migration from android to android still such a mess? You still need to use twenty different programs with the weirdest possible paths and various online drives to transfer text history, call logs, pictures and apps and even then it's a complete mess - you open Waze and it still doesn't have your destination history from previous phone, you open an app and it still asks for login and password - are you forking spooning me? At the end of the second decade of 21st century - a cloud data backup still doesn't do proper restore? Get the funk out.
The weird and bad:
- Apps crash. Randomly. I know it's going to be cured (the whole androidone label), but it's like working with beta stages of OS. I thought androidone was more of a "always latest stable, always patched".
- Fingerprint scanner doesn't have gestures. I didn't know this was even a thing. Yet it doesn't do anything else than reading your finger. No swipe down for menu, no hold for torch. So disappointed.
- Flash led is yellow. Therefore torch is yellow. Whaaaat? Why? Weird.
- No notification LED.
In general - good phone, but not earth stopping. If it was a tad smaller and had all mod cons (fingerprint scanner gestures, dude...) - it would be top 3 contender. But as is - somewhere at the end of top 10. I don't regret buying it, it's good value for money, it's a keeper - I like it but I don't love it. Whereas I loved my Honor 8. It was the best £250 I have ever spent on a phone. Didn't buy Honor 9 because a) scanner on the front and I don't do front scanners b) I think even those bald Russians that sell Sammsong, Aplee and GL branded phones at local boot fair have more frequent updates and better software support than Huawei group.
The good:
- excellent call quality, volume of earpiece and speaker. A few youtubers complained about speaker volume, they don't know what they talk about, it offers the loudest satnav performance via built in speaker I've encountered for years.
- good, fast performance (in most, but not all areas)
- decent camera, nothing ground breaking, but it's ok.
- proper hybrid dual sim - obviously you still loose memory slot for the second sim but both sims can do 4G, both sims can be enabled for data. Remember that mine is European version from German Rainforest
- rSAP. First time I paired it with my car, it asked if I want to enable premium bluetooth and *tada* - magic I haven't seen for 8 years - aerial on the roof handles calls, car reads SMSes, you can dictate replies and everything. If it's your thing and you missed your wired nokia in-car cradle - this phone does it wirelessly.
- bloatware free - literally a single support app and that's it
- mine arrived with screen protector and a clear case, not one I would use, but thanks - either Nokia or Rainforest shop - nice touch. Charger also included. Small things but...
The meh and moan:
- It's big. Weird big. Tall, unshapely. Unnecessarily so. No benefit to this shape whatsoever.
- The screen is good, sharp, nice but has tinge - whites are yellow, compared to Honor, and because of it - it looks dated in comparison with 2 year old £250 Chinese phone.
- Androidone Oreo is so clunky compared to EMUI it's not even funny. Everything takes five-seven more steps than needed. Everything. The way you dial, the way you text, the way you search apps, the way you close all open apps. The way you try to flick that stupid swipe up to answer again and again and folk all happens. Also - stock stuff is just fugly. So darn fugly. Pink backgrounds in diallers, orange backgrounds in text. Violets. Radioactive greens. Glaring, unsociable. So microsoft, so eighties. (vomits inside mouth) And everything is surrounded by fields of empty white spaces the size of Arctic circle. As they say "you don't know how good something is till it's gone". EMUI - you will be missed. Don't get me wrong - I'm prepared for it, I already installed Nova Laucher to cure some of the clunkiness and ugliness, but man - each version of android is just competing more and more with IOS for waste of time and space (and amount of white backgrounds everywhere).
- How the **** is migration from android to android still such a mess? You still need to use twenty different programs with the weirdest possible paths and various online drives to transfer text history, call logs, pictures and apps and even then it's a complete mess - you open Waze and it still doesn't have your destination history from previous phone, you open an app and it still asks for login and password - are you forking spooning me? At the end of the second decade of 21st century - a cloud data backup still doesn't do proper restore? Get the funk out.
The weird and bad:
- Apps crash. Randomly. I know it's going to be cured (the whole androidone label), but it's like working with beta stages of OS. I thought androidone was more of a "always latest stable, always patched".
- Fingerprint scanner doesn't have gestures. I didn't know this was even a thing. Yet it doesn't do anything else than reading your finger. No swipe down for menu, no hold for torch. So disappointed.
- Flash led is yellow. Therefore torch is yellow. Whaaaat? Why? Weird.
- No notification LED.
In general - good phone, but not earth stopping. If it was a tad smaller and had all mod cons (fingerprint scanner gestures, dude...) - it would be top 3 contender. But as is - somewhere at the end of top 10. I don't regret buying it, it's good value for money, it's a keeper - I like it but I don't love it. Whereas I loved my Honor 8. It was the best £250 I have ever spent on a phone. Didn't buy Honor 9 because a) scanner on the front and I don't do front scanners b) I think even those bald Russians that sell Sammsong, Aplee and GL branded phones at local boot fair have more frequent updates and better software support than Huawei group.
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