The Nokia 4.2 Is A Compact, Entry Level Phone With Android 9.0 At An Affordable Price

When we tested out the Nokia 6.1 Plus last year, the one thing that we really appreciated was its compact dimensions ¨C especially its one-handed usability. Unlike unwieldy phones with large screens, it came as a breath of fresh air with its pocket friendly footprint.

This year HMD Global is back with a new phone that sports pretty much similar dimensions but at a lower asking price ¨C the new Nokia 4.2 has been launched at Rs 10,990.

The device is targeted at the lower end of the market and hence unlike the glass-metal sandwich construction that we have been accustomed to on the Nokia 6.1 Plus, there¡¯s a glass and plastic one here. Even the buttons on the phone are plastic. Then there¡¯s the regular micro-USB instead of USB Type C for charging and data transfer duties. All in a bid to cut costs.

The phone is compact in size and stock Android UI is a joy to use. Abhishek Saksena/Indiatimes

But it¡¯s not all doom and gloom here. HMD Global has finally moved away from the wide rectangular notch to a water-drop variety. And the immediately apparent advantage is the availability of more usable space for icons in the notification bar. Also, the battery percentage is now being displayed outside the battery icon and is readable without causing a squint in your eyes. Funnily enough, bezels on the phone are of three different widths! The side bezels are the slimmest. The top bezel is a bit wider in order to fit the light and proximity sensors next to the speaker grille. The bottom bezel is the widest and makes for a good place to hold the phone when watching videos. But it looks comically large especially when you notice how slim the phone is. Well, you win some, you lose some.

The 5.71-inch screen has a resolution of 1520 x 720 pixel, which works around to a 19:9 ratio. Do the math and you¡¯ll know that the pixel density of about 290 ppi. In the real world, the small-ish screen does well enough to reproduce sharp text and videos. There¡¯s no HDR 10 capability like other Nokias but saturation levels are pretty good though it can do with some more contrast. We wish the screen was brighter too, especially outdoors. In direct sunlight, on full brightness, the display could have done with a bit more punch. Indoors however you won¡¯t be left wanting.

Where you will be left wanting is storage space. The example we tested came with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage and there¡¯s a more affordable Nokia 4.2 variant with 2 GB RAM variant with 16 GB of storage on sale as well. You¡¯ll be running out of space pretty quickly if you store a lot of songs and videos or just install a lot of heavy games. I did neither of those things yet when I backed up my Whatsapp data and installed a couple of apps I was already using 45% storage. Thankfully there¡¯s a dedicated SD card slot in the SIM tray that also holds two nano SIMs.

There are also some nifty features you¡¯ll appreciate. A dedicated button on the left triggers Google Assistant, even from the lock screen! If you¡¯re a fan of the Assistant, you¡¯ll love the ease of the push-button access. You can turn it off, but can¡¯t reassign to open another app unfortunately. Then there¡¯s the power button on the right which has a white ring around it. While we missed it at first, it was one of those unsolicited spam SMS that triggered the pulsating notification LED built into it! This too can be turned off if required.

Note the LED in power button. Abhishek Saksena/Indiatimes

Picture and video shooting duties on the Nokia 4.2 are being handled by 13 MP and 2 MP cameras at the back and 8 MP unit in the front. No Zeiss glass around; HMD usually reserves it for more premium phones.

Image quality is average without much to complain about. Colours are neutral, leaning slightly towards a cooler white balance. Surprisingly though there¡¯s the option to shoot RAW files in Pro mode, something that even the Nokia 8.1 doesn¡¯t have yet. You get 25 MB RAW files in Photoshop¡¯s native DNG format and as you can see in the poorly edited image below, there¡¯s quite a bit of detail that can be extracted. The shutter speed in Pro mode has been limited to a maximum of 1/ 2 second compared to 4 seconds on the 8.1.

Surprisingly you can game on the Nokia 4.2 too. The Snapdragon 439 powering the phone comes with the Adreno 505 GPU and the overall experience killing time in the name of testing a phone is well spent. We didn¡¯t try anything too fancy but the phone did get a bit hot after a while. Qualcomm claims the 439 has ¡®25% improvement in power usage¡¯ and we managed a screen-on-time of over 3 hours from 100% to 15% battery on a regular basis.

Impressive battery life for light usage. Sadly, HMD Global has packed a 5 volt 1 amp charger in the box! Fast charger it isn¡¯t by any stretch of imagination. It has been plugged in for an hour and forty-five minutes and has reached 74% charge as I write this. It will be a long wait every time you plug this thing in.

Abhishek Saksena/Indiatimes

You get the usual goodies like pure Android 9 Pie and two year¡¯s worth of OS updates. There¡¯s a fingerprint scanner at the back and face unlock too. The former is snappy enough, though face unlock has a momentary delay before unlocking the phone. But then it takes you directly from the lock screen to the home screen without the extra step of swiping up on the screen.

So at Rs 10,990, does the Nokia 4.2 have enough to make you spend your hard earned cash on it? If one-handed use and affordable pricing are your priorities, go right ahead. If you expect a lot from the cameras, prefer a bigger screen and stock UI doesn¡¯t do it for you, this isn¡¯t the one.

Abhishek Saksena/Indiatimes