Nokia G21 price in India
nokia g21 The base variant of the with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB storage starts at a price of Rs 12,999. Its second variant comes with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB storage, which costs Rs 14,999. The company has introduced it in two finishes – Nordic Blue and Dusk.
Design of Nokia G21
Where most smartphones try to come with a glossy finish in the budget segment, the Nokia G21 looks a bit out of date here. It has a textured back panel which is made of plastic like the rest of the phone. But it prevents fingerprints. Along with the phone, the company also provides a case in the box. In the back panel, a square camera module has been given in the top left corner, which does not feel too protruding.
In line with the recent design trends, the Nokia G21 sports flat sides. The corners are rounded, so it doesn’t prick the hand while holding it. The phone has a side mounted fingerprint scanner which is given in the power button. There is a volume button slightly above on this side.
Dedicated Google Assistant button has been given on the other side and the SIM tray has been given place. Its 3.5mm audio jack is given on the top of the phone, while the USB Type C port and speaker are given in the bottom. The Nokia G21 has a 6.5-inch display with an aspect ratio of 20:9, and it has an HD Plus resolution. It comes with dewdrop notch which is common for phones in this price range. The display has a heavy chin at the bottom. Overall the phone seems to be quite strong.
Specifications and software of Nokia G21
The specifications of the phone are quite simple. It is powered by Unisoc T606 SoC which is an entry-level octa-core chipset. It has two ARM Cortex-A75 performance cores and 6 ARM Cortex-A55 efficiency cores. All are clocked at 1.6GHz. The Nokia G21 features an HD+ display with a refresh rate of 90Hz and a maximum brightness of 400 nits. To increase the storage, a dedicated microSD card slot has also been given in it.
For connectivity, this smartphone has Bluetooth 5, dual band Wi-Fi ac, NFC and three satellite navigation systems. The battery capacity is 5,050mAh with support for 18W fast charging. The company provides a 10W charger with the phone.
The Nokia G21 runs on Android 11 and comes with the Android One program. This means you will get the stock Android experience and Android OS updates for two years. The absence of Android 12 hurts here as most phone makers are now offering Android 12 devices only. My unit had the May 2022 Android security patch. The UI is clean but I still found apps like ExpressVPN, LinkedIn, Netflix and Spotify pre-installed. These can also be removed.
Many gesture features are available in the phone, due to which some work is done with firecrackers. For example, double tap to wake the screen, flip the phone to reject a call, double tap the power button to turn on the camera. Apart from this, many other gestures have been given. It also has stock Android features like Digital Wellbeing that lets you track your usage habits.
Nokia G21 performance and battery life
Nokia G21 performs well according to the price. It handles casual games and apps without any hiccups. However, more heavy games and apps take time to load. Some multitasking can be done with the 6 GB RAM variant, but it does not get the RAM extension feature which can be useful in the 4 GB variant. The side mounted fingerprint scanner is quick to unlock the phone. The quality of the HD+ display is average. FullHD Plus displays are now coming in this segment, so some people may be disappointed.
The benchmark scores of the phone will give you an indication of the usage experience. The phone scored 198,068 points on AnTuTu. In Geekbench 5’s single and multi core test, it scored 306 and 1221 points respectively. It scored 34fps and 8.8fps in GFXBench’s T-Rex and Car Chase tests. These score like budget smartphones redmi 10 prime And Samsung Galaxy F22 Which fall in the same price range.
Talking about gaming, the phone performed very average in games like Call of Duty: Mobile. By default it was on low and medium frame rate settings. The game took a while to load and I also noticed some issues with the rendering of things inside the game. I played 15 minutes of gaming and the battery only went down by 2 percent, which is great. By the time the game session was over, the phone got slightly warm.
Nokia G21 went a long way in terms of battery level. Thanks to the affordable processor and large battery, the phone lasted for two days in my moderate usage. The phone ran for 20 hours 4 minutes in the HD video loop test, which is a good time. It charges very slowly with the 10W charger and only managed to charge 23 percent in half an hour. It charged 45 percent in an hour. It took 2 hours to fully charge. Getting an 18W charger would be beneficial here.
Camera of Nokia G21
Nokia G21 has triple rear camera setup. It has a 50-megapixel primary camera, a 2-megapixel macro camera, and a 2-megapixel depth camera. It has an 8 megapixel shooter for selfie. The camera app is very basic and you can choose between different shooting modes. The 50-megapixel primary camera clicks photos at 12.5-megapixel by default.
The primary camera takes decent pictures in daylight which look good on the phone’s display. Details get reduced on zooming. In landscape mode, a watercolor-like effect was being seen on the photo. When there is more brightness, the phone quickly enables HDR mode, which improves the dynamic range.
Close-up shots of the phone camera came out quite well. Photos in portrait mode were not good. Here the camera was taking 5 seconds with each photo, so it was difficult to capture the photos of the pets. Photos with average details came from its macro camera.
The camera performs average in low-light. Objects were recognizable but details were missing in the dark parts of the frame. Night mode did improve somewhat but it was taking 6 seconds to capture a photo, requiring me to stand still to prevent blur.
Selfies taken in daylight and low-light from the selfie camera were good. Edge detection was good in portrait mode and blur in the background was also managed well.
Talking about video recording, Nokia G21 can capture 1080p videos from the rear camera. There is no stabilization in it, due to which the footage is recorded shaking. Overall its camera performance is average. Had there been a wideangle camera, a lot could have been done with it.
our decision
The Nokia G21 is an Android One smartphone that offers a stock Android experience, with the promise of software updates for two years. Its build quality and battery life are both good. It will be liked by the average user who wants a simple and clean Android interface. Power users probably won’t be impressed by its low power. Camera performance was also less according to me.
If you ignore some of its flaws, the Nokia G21 is a reliable device for general use, which is not seen much in this price range. If you want more performance in this price then Realme 9i Or Moto G51 can see. If you are going towards its 6GB variant then Redmi Note 10T 5G can also see.