Nokia 2 review

Verdict

The concept of the Nokia 2 is great. It's a phone for people who don't want to spend hundreds on a mobile, or get locked into a long, expensive contract.

Performance is the big problem. The Nokia 2 feels slow no matter what you do. Send an email? Slow. Look at a web page? Slow.

The cameras are poor, the storage is extremely limited. But the Nokia 2 would be a perfectly acceptable low-cost phone if it wasn't for the interminably rubbish performance.

Who's this for?

The Nokia 2 is for people who want a cheap phone. That's about it, although the long battery life has a secondary appeal.

Should you buy it?

This phone is far too slow to recommend. Consider the Moto G5, Huawei P8 Lite, Honor 6A or Samsung Galaxy J3 instead. Keen on a Nokia? The Nokia 5 is a better buy, and often isn't hugely more expensive.

You can read more about some of the best alternatives below.

Moto G5

The Moto G5 has much better cameras, radically better performance and a higher-resolution screen. It’s a far superior phone. The Nokia 2 does offer much longer battery life, but the performance is far more important in this case.

• Read the full Moto G5 review

Huawei P8 Lite (2017)

The Huawei name may not have as much instant appeal as Nokia, but the Huawei P8 Lite (2017) is a better phone than the Nokia 2. It is much faster, has better cameras and even has fairly good build for the price. Its back and front are glass, the sides plastic.

• Read the full Huawei P8 Lite (2017) review

Honor 6A

Shop around and you can find the Honor 6A for roughly the same price as the Nokia 2. It has a slim metal body, double the RAM of the Nokia 2 and a chipset more than twice as powerful.

We prefer the Nokia 2’s vanilla Android software to the Honor 6A’s EMUI interface but Android runs so much better on the Honor.

• Read the full Honor 6A review

First reviewed: March 2018