Nokia 1 review: Plans | Pricing | Specs

The Nokia 1 is a low-cost phone that's been cheaply built, but the inclusion of Android Oreo Go makes it a far more appealing prospect than it might appear at first glance.

Nokia has a long association with providing affordable phones. While HMD Global now controls the brand for mobile phone use, that association continues since its rebirth through handsets such as the Nokia 3310 3G and now the Nokia 1.

Nokia's numbering system for smartphones is quite simple, with lower number suffixes for simpler, cheaper phones. The Nokia 1 is remarkably inexpensive, and while that does bring with it some significant compromises, it's also one of the best budget handsets we've ever tested.

Design

• Compact and comfortable
• Removable battery is a welcome – and rare – touch

• Read more on the Nokia 1's design

  

  There's been a solid uptick in the design quality and look of budget phones of late, with plenty of models that don't look the part of low-cost phones.

  The Nokia 1 barely resembles its number, with a more retro-Nokia style design that can't help but look cheap, right down to the plastic rear casing and plastic side buttons. One nice design note here is that the rear casing is completely removable, and you can buy optional rear cases in a variety of shades if you fancy a splash of colour to enhance what is otherwise a rather dull-looking phone.

  Mind you, at first that design also befuddled me. I'll be completely and somewhat embarrassingly honest here...

  When I first took the Nokia 1 out of the box, I couldn't work out why it wouldn't switch on. Nothing I was doing was working, and I started to wonder if I'd been sent a faulty review unit.

  However, this was not the case. It was the much simpler fact that the Nokia 1 uses a removable battery that's stored under the folding cardboard of the Nokia 1's box, which is why I didn't spot it immediately. Phones with removable batteries are definitely in the minority these days, so if you like the facility to replace batteries once they've lived out their reliable chemical life, this could be a big plus for you.

  At 133.6 x 67.8 x 9.5mm with a carrying weight of 131 grams once the battery is in place, the Nokia 1 isn't notably large in the hand, and it's not noticeably slippery in the way that so many metal and glass premium options are either. For a budget phone, that's a nice balance to have. Controls are very cheap and simple, with volume and power on the left-hand side, a top-mounted 3.5mm headphone jack and a micro USB for power and data at the bottom.

Camera

• Slow hardware that struggles with both static and moving shots
• Mediocre, even by budget standards

• Read more on the Nokia 1's camera

  

  Budget phones rarely have what you'd call great cameras, but we have seen some models with passable cameras, thanks to the steady trickle-down effect from more premium models. The Nokia 1's camera isn't great by any stretch of the imagination, and that's clear even at a specification level. It's sporting a 5MP rear and 2MP front camera that are quite low-end by today's standards.

  While Nokia's other 2018 phones have the excellent Nokia photo app with its inbuilt Pro features, the camera app on the Nokia 1 is markedly more stripped back and slow, too.

  Expect lots of blurry or smeared photos, and don't plan on capturing any fast action scenes. If there's a critical flaw in the Nokia 1's budget value compromises, it's the camera.

  Here are some sample shots:

  Nokia 1 Sample Photos

Performance

• Android Oreo Go allows the Nokia 1 to punch well above its weight
• No support for 5GHz Wi-Fi networks is a little odd

• Read more on the Nokia 1's performance

  The Nokia 1 is the first phone we've seen in Australia to be running Android Oreo Go, the specifically optimised version of Android 8.0 for budget devices. The Nokia 1's specifications are certainly low end, with a quad-core Mediatek MT6737M processor on board, matched up with just 1GB of RAM and 8GB of onboard storage.

  That's not a recipe for benchmark success, and the Nokia 1 certainly performed poorly on our standard benchmarks to arrive dead last in every benchmark it completed:

  Its 3DMark Slingshot Extreme score was notably poor, although to be fair we've tested very few budget handsets with this particular benchmark. Some lower cost handsets simply refuse to run it:

  Benchmarks can give you a comparative basis, but they're not the entire story as they don’t precisely represent the Nokia 1's performance. While it's a cheaply-built handset with low-end internal components, it runs Android Oreo Go which makes a huge difference in terms of its day-to-day performance.

  Android Oreo Go comes with specifically optimised "Go" versions of most of the standard Android Apps, specifically built to work on lower-end phones with less impact on system performance. They really do make the most out of the Nokia 1's limited grunt, letting it effectively work as though it was a much better phone than it is. Expect slow transitions and a little lag here and there because this is still a cheap phone, but it's one that runs better than it has any right to.

  If you don't like the Go versions of apps, you're not actually blocked from installing any given app from the Play store, as long as you can handle a little sluggish performance. Games predictably suffered the most in this respect, with many popular titles effectively unable to run in a satisfying way. However, it seems fair to say that this isn't the target market for the Nokia 1.

  The other big benefit with getting an Android Oreo Go phone is that, like Android One phones, the actual security and software updates are essentially handled by Google, rather than manufacturers or network partners. This puts the Nokia 1 in a unique position, as it's easily one of the cheapest Android 8 phones in Australia, as well as one of the cheapest phones guaranteed to see security updates in a timely fashion. That's a big plus given some of the large scale security issues we've seen on the Android platform in recent years.

  One oddity with the Nokia 1's performance is in its wireless performance. It will only talk to and see 2.4Ghz b/g/n networks, which threw me at first in our test environment where the network was working as a 5GHz entity at the time. 2.4Ghz is still far more common, but if you're using 5Ghz exclusively for its increased throughput, the Nokia 1 won't talk to you.

Battery life

• Capable of all-day battery life thanks to Android Oreo Go's fastidious power management
• Charging is frustratingly slow

• Read more on the Nokia 1's battery life

  The Nokia 1 is equipped with a removable 2150mAh battery, fairly low by modern standards but not a surprise given it's very much built to fit a particular price point. The underlying processor isn't all that powerful, though the Nokia 1 does a fair job of eking out a decent level of battery performance overall.

  Here's how it compared against other low-cost Android handsets using Geekbench 4's battery test:

  On an anecdotal level, the Nokia 1 is a fairly capable handset, able to last through a day as long as you're not taxing it too heavily. Android Oreo Go's very aggressive app management likely helps as it tends to kill apps if they're not in use. There is a downside there because it means you often have to restart apps afresh rather than switch to them on the go, but it does pay off in extended battery life.

  The Nokia 1 also suffers from very slow battery charging. There's no fast charging, nor is there wireless charging, not that you'd expect it at this price point. Fully topping up the battery from flat will take several hours, so it's important to remember to plug it in overnight if you want it charged for the next day's use.

Verdict

• The Nokia 1 makes an excellent case for Android Oreo Go and redefines ultra-budget smartphone capabilities

• Read our full Nokia 1 verdict

  The Nokia 1 is a low-cost phone, and that's always a story of compromises. Its camera is highly ordinary, and it's not a fast phone at a technology level, but it's saved very much by Nokia's decision to set it up as an Android Oreo Go phone.

  You're not looking at a premium device or even one that will give you mid-range capabilities. But as a secondary spare or a handset for your kids, it's got huge advantages just in terms of updates, let alone how capably it can handle apps thanks to the lower-power Go version of most popular Android apps. There's certainly lots of competition in the budget Android space, but there's no current competition for phones running Android 8, with many struggling even to get to Android 7 ("Nougat").

Pricing and availability

Nokia 1

Go, Go, Go!

The Nokia 1 proves that a cheap smartphone can still pack quite a few surprises.

Buy Now

• The Nokia 1 retails for $149 and is available from Nokia directly as well as retailers like Kogan and Harvey Norman.