Remember those old classic Nokia phones that could even give a brick a run for its money? Those were the good times. A small form factor phone with great battery life and the most fun snake game coming pre-installed. You could say those days were Nokia’s peak. Other manufacturers just innovated better than them. With more and more slim and powerful smartphones coming out, Nokia simply couldn’t catch up with the competition. Even their recent smartphone offerings haven’t been that competitive.
Now Nokia wants to change the game using their newly announced smartphone, the XR20. Nokia says that their new phone is literally life-proof. The phone was announced after Nokia’s parent company HMD Global started a huge Nokia phone revamp earlier this year. Their XR20 is coming to the US next month and according to Nokia, it can survive extreme temperatures and even drops of up to six feet. Looks like Nokia wants to cash in on their former glory days.
The XR20 is launching on August 24th and will cost $550. Surprisingly it’s the most expensive phone Nokia is coming out with this year. According to the company, the XR20 comes with a top-of-the-line, midrange Snapdragon chip, the 480 5G with 6GB of RAM. Guess Nokia doesn’t want to enter the flagship market just yet. Especially until their new X series are properly cemented. The phone is said to come with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus screen meaning that it’s almost four times more scratch-resistant than your average smartphone.
The phone is water-resistant and can survive up to five feet in water for over an hour. Backing up their claim of the phone being life-proof, Nokia says that the XR20 has been tested to work in temperatures as high as 132 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as -4 degrees. The phone comes with a 6.67-inch 2400 x 1080 display with 128GB of storage, and a built-in microSD card slot. In the camera department, we get an 8MP hole-punch selfie camera and a 48MP main camera plus a 13MP Ultra-Wide camera. The phone also supports Nokia’s OZO spatial audio and noise cancellation.
Nokia really wants to relive its glory days. They even gave their new phone to famous soccer players, Roberto Carlos and Lisa Zimouche so that they kick, pass, drag, and flick the phone across several surfaces to showcase just how durable the phone actually is. It’s nice to see Nokia focusing on the build quality but we have yet to see if their software matches up with other competitors. A nice bonus is that the phone comes with a 3.5mm jack for wired headsets. Thank you, Nokia.
XR20 also features a USB-C port for charging plus 15-watt Qi wireless charging and a 4,630 mAh battery. The phone is also slated to get four years of monthly security patches with up to three years of software updates.