CloudStroller
Member
tl;dr: This phone is fine. If you just need the basics, and have a budget of ~R2.5k, it's a good choice.
I bought mine at Makro after my Nokia 8 died an ignominious death (possibly at the hands of a toddler, though it was giving problems for a while anyway).
Link: https://www.makro.co.za/electronics...nokia-2-3-cyan-green-/p/000000000000394951_EA
The good:
Overall, I am happy with the purchase. I'm as much of a gadget nerd as the next man, but finances being what they are lately, I figured it wasn't justifiable to spend large amounts when a budget option would do the job just fine. It does have some compromises, but none of them are deal-breakers for me. It does its job of being a communication device, an e-reader and occasional camera very well. I don't watch movies or use it as a music player (I just never have used a phone for this really) but if you do, it could do the job well. Just budget for a nicer set of headphones if you don't already have some.
I bought mine at Makro after my Nokia 8 died an ignominious death (possibly at the hands of a toddler, though it was giving problems for a while anyway).
Link: https://www.makro.co.za/electronics...nokia-2-3-cyan-green-/p/000000000000394951_EA
The good:
- Up-to-date software with Android 10. No bloatware (except if you count a small "My Phone" app pre-installed by HMD Global). Everything stock Android.
- Screen bright and crisp, with good colours. Though it's only a 720p screen, I can't discern individual pixels. I'm sure if I had a higher-res phone in the other hand to compare, I'd notice, but I don't, and this one seems more than good enough for me.
- Cameras (both front and rear) are also surprisingly good. No Zeiss optics, but the pictures are decent so far.
- 4000 mAh battery seems to hold up pretty well. I could probably squeeze two days without a charge, but in current work-from-home situation, this hasn't been necessary so far. So I let it stay between 30% and 80% to increase its service life.
- Has a 3.5mm headphone jack!
- The phone isn't fast. Booting takes a while, and I sometimes do wait a little while for heavier apps, but this is more the exception than the rule. It's not as smooth as my Nokia 8 with the high-end Snapdragon 835 in it, but it's also not slow enough to be frustrating. I'd say "adequate". Don't expect high-end games. Calls, messaging, basic web-browsing, emails, these all work just fine.
- Charging port is micro-USB, and since the battery is quite big, it's not fast. It's a good couple of hours to get the charge from 30% to 80%.
- Face-unlock only works some of the time. I'd say about 50% so far. A lot of the time I feel like an idiot just staring at my phone waiting for it to unlock. Sometimes it that the face unlock has failed and gives you numbers to put in a PIN, sometimes it doesn't. I haven't figured out whether there's an indication that it's trying to face-unlock or not.
- Google Assistant button on the right side of the phone. Not configurable by default. Who thought this was a good idea? I remapped it to turn the torch on and off with a third-party app. (It took a couple of attempts to find a button-remapping app that actually recognised this button but I did get it in the end.)
- No NFC. I enjoyed using tap-to-pay with my last phone, not an option anymore.
- No 5 GHz wifi, only 2.4 GHz.
- Headphones included in the box are very basic. Voice is completely audible and intelligible, but the music-listening experience is disappointing.
Overall, I am happy with the purchase. I'm as much of a gadget nerd as the next man, but finances being what they are lately, I figured it wasn't justifiable to spend large amounts when a budget option would do the job just fine. It does have some compromises, but none of them are deal-breakers for me. It does its job of being a communication device, an e-reader and occasional camera very well. I don't watch movies or use it as a music player (I just never have used a phone for this really) but if you do, it could do the job well. Just budget for a nicer set of headphones if you don't already have some.