Nokia’s latest smartphones are coming to Malaysia next week

For all you Nokia fans out there, brand new Nokia smartphones will be gracing our shores very shortly and I think you already know which ones they are.

The company’s affordable entry-level Nokia 1 and larger Nokia 7 Plus will launch in Malaysia on the 10th of April 2018 (that’s next Tuesday!). We first saw these phones back in February when Nokia featured them during the Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona.

If you haven’t read our coverage of it, here’s a quick rundown, starting with the Nokia 1. This is designed to be the company’s most affordable smartphone yet — and it shows, but not in a bad way. Yes, the plastic body, 4.5″ FWVGA display, MediaTek MT6737 processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage looks bad. Even the 5MP main camera and 2MP selfie shooter can induce some cringe.

But the handset is running on Android Oreo Go, which is the version of Android that’s specifically tuned for low-spec smartphones. You’ll get access to all of Go’s optimisations and the whole suite of Go apps.

That should translate into a pretty smooth Android experience. Plus, those entry-level specs should also guarantee an entry-level price tag which is always a good thing.

On the other hand, the Nokia 7 isn’t designed to be super cheap, nor is it designed to be a top-of-the-line flagship smartphone. Instead, it’s entering the market in the already saturated mid-range segment.

Still, it’s got a set of pretty attractive specs. In front, it’s got a large Full HD+ IPS display pushing a resolution of 2160×1080 pixels. Inside, it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 660 processor mated to 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD). Perhaps the most interesting bit about its specs though, is the 3,800 mAh battery inside that Nokia says can give you up to 2 days of usage on a single charge.

For photography, it gets a dual-camera system with a 12MP main shooter that boasts large 1.4-micron pixels and a fast f/1.75 aperture lens. The secondary 13MP sensor has a f/2.6 aperture short telephoto lens in front of it for that extra reach. They also come with ZEISS lenses if you care about that stuff.

For more information on these smartphones, check out my hands-on posts with both of them:

Nokia 7 Plus hands-on
Nokia 1 hands-on

As with all smartphones — especially those that aren’t flagships — the most important thing is its price tag. How much will Nokia sell them for? Let me know what you think in the comments below.