I’ve read the very positive reviews in The Guardian and also in Trusted Reviews about the new Nokia G22 mobile phone. This new device does indeed stand out of the crowd because like a Fairphone 4 you can pretty easily repair it yourself – changing its battery for instance would take mere minutes, and would require almost no special tools. I’ve looked it up, and it starts at around 180€ in the price comparison engines – far cheaper than the Fairphone.
That alone and in itself is applaudable indeed, and we all should give HMD/Nokia credits for it.
But…
Last weekend, we walked through a big chain electronics store, and when coming past the mobile phone section we saw quite a number of people standing around the Xiaomi/Redmi exhibited parts. I’ve had a short glance, and wow, these had really gorgeous displays, must have been OLED, although I didn’t really look them up until now. And they, too, were about 180€ – no wonder that people flocked around them like flies around honey.
And that is probably the Achilles heel of the new Nokia G22 – which comes with a rather huge 6,52″ IPS display with a mere 720×1200 pixels – not even Full HD! They even got it wrong on their own website, because an aspect ratio of 20:9 means that it has in fact 720×1600 pixels – but HD+ also means that for normal video content, 720×1200 is about right (should read 720×1280 for that)… come on, Nokia/HMD, even the Google Nexus 5 from 2013 did far better than that – it had an IPS display as well (OLED wasn’t really a thing in 2013 yet), but at a much cuter 4.95″ size it had Full HD, which easily beat even Apple’s SE line until today.
That Nokia G22 does everything else quite right, and it even comes with a headphone jack. It would be perfect if it wouldn’t be a) that big, and b) come with that lame excuse of a screen. It almost hurts to see a good idea ruined through corporate greed like that!
HMD Global has their phones made by Taiwanese maker Foxconn who have facilities in Vietnam and who also make Google’s and even Apple’s phones. But would customers respect that, or rather take a similarly cheap Chinese brand like the -mi ones I saw on display? That large crowd of people around their display stand wouldn’t probably have a second look onto the Nokia G22 in direct comparison, which is sad.
So my advice to HMD would be: great start, people – now make it 20$/€ (10%) more expensive, and give us a nice OLED display with at least FullHD. Oh, and making it a bit smaller, like 6″ or so, would also be nice. Thanks for your consideration.
Oh, and to the reviewers of other sites:
It also helps not only to look at the makers’ support cycles (like in this case, three years), but also to help/hints about the possibility to unlock the devices’ bootloaders, so that after the end of these support cycles, we can easily unlock the devices, and put something with longer support onto them. I’d love to read any news about that, and if the makers don’t claim anything, ask them – you’re journalists, aren’t you? And as jourmalists you should ask questions, not only repeat the maker’s ads. Thanks a lot.