Nokia 8 Sirocco Smartphone Review

At a price of around $650 or so, the Nokia 8 Sirocco doesn’t quite have the price-tag of a flagship device like the iPhone X, but it's pretty close in terms of other Android offerings. Based on it’s overall performance, rather than the price-tag, the Nokia 8 Sirocco certainly does warrant to be called a fully-fledged flagship, but it would've been nice to see some camera improvement and perhaps just a slightly lower price to sweeten the deal too.
Pros
  • Feels premium
  • Very nice display
  • Wireless charging
  • Almost a pure Android experience
Cons
  • No 3.5mm headphone jack
  • No expandable storage
  • Would like to see some improvement with the camera
Final Rating
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Rating Details
Bottom Line
At a price of around $650 or so, the Nokia 8 Sirocco doesn’t quite have the price-tag of a flagship device like the iPhone X, but it's pretty close in terms of other Android offerings. Based on it’s overall performance, rather than the price-tag, the Nokia 8 Sirocco certainly does warrant to be called a fully-fledged flagship, but it would've been nice to see some camera improvement and perhaps just a slightly lower price to sweeten the deal too.
Table of Contents

Specs

  • Display: 5.5″ P-OLED 1440 x 2560 pixels (538PPI), Gorilla Glass 5
  • OS: Android One 8.0 Oreo (upgradeable to 8.1)
  • CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Octa-core (2.5GHz x 4 / 1.8GHz x 4)
  • RAM: 6GB
  • GPU: Adreno 540
  • Internal storage: 128Gb
  • Rear Camera: Dual (12MP f/1.8 + 13MP f/2.6), 2x optical zoom, 4K @ 30fps video
  • Front Camera: 5MP f/2.0, 1080p
  • Charging: Wireless
  • Waterproofing: IP67

Packaging

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The packaging for Nokia’s most recent handsets is very consistent. It gets the job done in a minimalist but refined fashion. One thing that Nokia is sure to advertise well is the fact that the Nokia 8 Sirocco, along with the Nokia 7 Plus and new Nokia 6, are all part of the Android One programme. On the rear of the box a few specs are listed such as the display size and type, how much RAM and ROM are built-in, a few camera specs, as well as the device’s wireless charging capability.

What’s in the box?

  • Nokia 8 Sirocco
  • 3.5mm in-ear headphones
  • USB-to-3.5mm converter
  • Plastic protective case
  • USB Type-C data/charging cable
  • Wall charger

Accessories

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It’s always nice when a manufacturer includes more than just the norm with their products. In the case of the Nokia 8 Sirocco we get a set of in-ear headphones, a wall-charger and a standard USB Type-C data/charging cable. But, since the Sirocco does not have a 3.5mm headphone port we also get a USB-to-3.5mm converter. I’m not sure if this converter itself houses the required DAC and amplifier circuitry, or if they’re perhaps still included within the smartphone but just cleverly routed through the Type-C port. It’s probably the former. And then lastly we get a really sturdy plastic protection case for the device. It seems really well-made, and it fits the form of the Sirocco perfectly. Just be care when trying to take it off again, as it really does sit incredibly snugly you’ll need to use your nails to pry an edge away from the device, and this could lead to your fingernail lifting.

Design

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The design of the Nokia 8 Sirocco is something totally new for Nokia. Whilst we’ve seen somewhat similar designs from other manufacturers such as Samsung, the curved display is definitely a first for Nokia.In the hand the Sirocco honestly does feel like a premium phone, and it’s well and truly worthy of being called a flagship device. But I think this feeling in the hand is also what will divide most opinions. Due to the fact that the sides taper from both the front and the rear, you end up with rather sharp angles on sides. Smartphones tend to have slightly more curved edges than this, and so when you hold the Sirocco for the first time these sharp edges can perhaps feel a bit strange.
I’ve come to quite like this though, as the edges tend to dig into my hands a bit, and so just gives a more secure feeling in the hand. This tapered front and back also gives the device the illusion of being slightly thinner than what it actually is, but it’s by no means a thick device. Measuring in at just 7.5mm thick at its maximum, the Sirocco is nearly half a millimetre thinner than the previous Nokia 8, and even slightly thinner than the iPhone X, and a full 1mm thinner than the Galaxy S9. At the very edges of the device the thickness tapers down to a mere 2mm.
And speaking of the iPhone X, the Nokia 8 Sirocco doesn’t quite have the same screen-to-body ratio, 81.1% vs 82.9%, but the Nokia does sport a considerably higher pixel density. Where the display of the iPhone X has a pixel density of 458ppi, the Nokia boasts an increase of nearly 18% at 538ppi.

One aspect that might be seen as a bit of a disadvantage to some is the lack of a headphones jack. Let’s face it folks, this is where things are headed. Thankfully the Sirocco does ship with a small Type-C to 3.5mm converter, so you can still use a wired connection if you’d like. Alternatively I highly recommend Fiio’s BTR1 Bluetooth DAC/Amp if you’d like an affordable wireless solution.

Oh, and wireless charging, yeah, that’s included too. Unfortunately you don’t get a wireless charging pad included in the box, so I just opted to use my Samsung wireless charger. Here charging wasn’t particularly fast, requiring somewhere between 4 and 5 hours. But maybe Nokia will release their own wireless charger that’ll allow you to get juiced up much faster.

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On the rear is, as you’d expect, all the camera goodies, as well as a very snappy fingerprint sensor. This is the only means of unlocking the device via “bio-metrics”, as there’s no retina or face unlocking to be found here. The camera section does bulge out a bit, which means that the very bottom edge of the camera housing will likely pickup a few wear-and-tear marks after some time. Using the included case will avoid this.

It’s not all hunky dory though, as the design team decided there’s no need for expandable storage on the Sirocco. Yes, technically you can get “unlimited” cloud storage for your photos through Google Photos, but being able to increase the amount of available offline storage is always a good thing. To make matters more confusing, even the Sirocco’s lower-priced siblings offer dual-SIM and expandable storage!
Another point to note is that the Sirocco does feature an IP67 waterproof rating which matches that of the iPhone X, but it can’t quite match the IP68 rating of other smartphones from the likes of Samsung, HTC, and LG.

The other area that seems to have gone unloved is with the curved display. Overall the curved nature of the display just seems to be a novelty. It looks pretty good (albeit with some slight distortion), but it doesn’t actually serve any purpose. There doesn’t seem to have been any attempt made to utilise this design to extend the functionality of the device in one way or another. I guess such is the limitation of sticking to vanilla Android.

Overall the Sirocco has a pretty good spec-sheet in terms of the hardware, although it does feel perhaps just a little dated with reference to not being able to install additional storage and also no means of using some kind of face unlocking feature, and in addition loses out in a waterproofing battle to other competing flagships.

Software

The software that’s loaded on the Nokia 8 Sirocco is, as you might have guess, Android. But, what’s important here is which version of Android.
If you’re unfamiliar with what Android One is, you’re hardly alone. Launched in 2014, Android One was intended to offer a somewhat watered-down version of Android for lower-cost handsets.
But back then the idea didn’t really take off too well…until now.
You see, the Android One that’s installed on Nokia’s latest smartphones can hardly be called a watered-down version of Android. In fact, it’s almost a totally vanilla version of Android Oreo – free of annoying and often heavy-skins and other bloatware. Essentially what we’re talking about here is pretty much a Google Pixel device bearing Nokia branding (and minimally so). This partnership between Google and Nokia almost seems too perfect, as both are perfectly capable of refreshing the somewhat tattered image of the other.

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This was my first experience with Android One and I have to admit that I am thoroughly impressed. Whilst you don’t get any proprietary features such as Edge screens or other fancy widgets and sorts, what you get in return is an incredibly fluid and snappy experience – what Android Is meant to be.
The thing we should keep in mind here is that Android One is less resource intensive than what a skinned version of it would be. And so, whilst you could perhaps technically then use a lower-spec’d CPU and less RAM, the fact that Nokia has still opted to use one of the latest Snapdragon processors and 6 gigs of RAM just makes the experience so much sweeter. No, the Snapdragon 835 isn’t the latest offering form Qualcomm, but it’s still no slouch at all.

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To test this, I decided to test the real-world speed of the Sirocco against an iPhone X. Synthetic benchmarks can spit all kinds of wonderful numbers at you, but the only thing that truly matters is how a device performs out in the real world, in scenarios that are realistic.
So, imagine my surprise when the Sirocco turned out the be as fast, or faster than the iPhone in most of the tests I did. Opening Facebook, starting a game, launching a music app, checking my location…..no matter which test, the Sirocco performed like an absolute champ. The only thing that slowed it down was when I was attempting to refresh a Chrome page by dragging the page down. For whatever reason, it took multiple attempts until the device registered what I was doing. But this could very well just be myself not doing properly due to how quickly I was trying to do this.

Camera

Nokia have a history with Zeiss optics that stretches waaaay back, so much so that it would almost feel a bit awkward if there wasn’t a Zeiss logo present somewhere near the camera.
I can happily report that the Sirocco’s camera performs admirably. It focuses and shoots at a really snappy rate, and captures images really well.
Although the camera app does have a Pro mode which allows you to adjust the shutter speed, ISO, focusing, and white balance, there’s unfortunately no option to take the images in RAW format. The Nokia does offer a 2x optical zoom, though, which is a feature you really don’t get too see very often on a smartphone.

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Camera performance and actual picture quality is pretty good (keep in mind that image quality was reduced in post to allow for smaller web images). I went ahead and stuck the Sirocco up against the big gun – the iPhone X. As most people simply couldn’t be bothered to get down and dirty with the more in-depth settings of the device, the following images were taken in Auto mode.

It’s difficult to say with reference to the above picture which is the technically better image. To some extent the iPhone’s image looks a bit soft, whereas the Sirocco’s image perhaps looks a little over-sharpened. It could very well be due to a slight difference in where the camera focused though. The main difference to look at here is in the white balance. The iPhone’s auto white balance is off by quite a bit here. The colour of the leaves in the picture taken by the Nokia looks pretty much spot on accurate to me.

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The next pic was just to test out the low-light performance. Both cameras have done a real good job at being able to brighten the image up, and at first glance the Nokia’s image seems a lot cleaner. But, upon closer inspection we can see that, whilst the iPhone’s image does have more apparent grain, it’s actually captured the finer details much better. The Sirocco’s image does appear to be over-sharpened, and perhaps there’s too much contrast as well.
And again we see the iPhone’s white balance is tilted quite a bit towards the warmer end of the spectrum, as the Sirocco once again captured the temperature more accurately. In low-light, my pick for getting a quality image would go to the iPhone.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a way for the user to adjust the sharpening or contrast settings, so hopefully we’ll be able to get some better performance out of the camera via a software update.

Daily Usage

Using the Nokia 8 Sirocco daily has been nothing but an absolute joy. As mentioned, thanks to Android One, the interface is super snappy and I honestly can’t say that I experienced lag of any sorts at any point (other than the Chrome refresh incident). Of course, brand new devices usually do behave this way, especially flagships, so long-term testing would be more revealing of overall performance. But, overall, I’m still really impressed nonetheless.
Battery-life has also been great so far and without any sort of battery-saving modes enabled, the Sirocco managed to chug along for 55 hours in total which included a screen on time of nearly 5 and a half hours. That’s pretty damn good.
The Sirocco has just proven to be such a reliable device. It never missed a beat whilst remaining pretty much just as snappy as I could ever ask for.
There is of course an age old Android trick you could do to speed things up even more. Enabling Developer Options and switching all animations to half speed or even completely off does give a noticeable improvement to the overall UI speed.

Value

At a price of around $650 or so, the Nokia 8 Sirocco doesn’t quite have the price-tag of a flagship device like the iPhone X, but it’s pretty close in terms of other Android offerings. Based on it’s overall performance, rather than the price-tag, the Nokia 8 Sirocco certainly does warrant to be called a fully-fledged flagship, but it would’ve been nice to see some camera improvement and perhaps just a slightly lower price to sweeten the deal too.
So far the Sirocco has probably been the most enjoyable device for me to use in 2018, so it’ll be interesting to see how it stacks up to the likes of the OnePlus 6 when it eventually becomes available.
But for now, for the price and the overall experience of the device, the Nokia 8 Sirocco would be my pick for a flagship device.