Nokia 6 (2017) review

A pure Android experience

Android purists will be happy here. The Nokia 6 runs Android 7 Nougat and… that’s it. There’s no clunky overlay, and no pre-installed bloatware. Nokia has opted to stick with the stock Android interface, and it’s a choice we’re happy with.

It makes the Nokia 6 easy to navigate and performance is smooth for most tasks, but it can slow down a little if you try and push it with intensive applications and games.

There’s a Snapdragon 430 processor under the hood along with 3GB of RAM, which provides more than enough power for general usage and the camera.

We ran the Geekbench 4 app on the Nokia 6 and it achieved an average multi-core score of 2,736, putting it above its sibling, the Nokia 3, and the Moto G5, and on par with the Nokia 5, but below the more powerful Moto G5 Plus.

We have had confirmation from HMD Global that the Nokia 6 will be updated to Android Oreo in the future, but there's no clear timeline for when you'll get the new software on your phone.

A media machine, of sorts

The internal speaker located on the base of the phone can be easily muffled by your hand, while sound quality isn’t great either. If you want decent audio we’d recommend plugging in a set of headphones or external speakers.

The Nokia 6 comes with 32GB of internal storage, of which around 22GB is actually available for you to use once you’ve taken the operating system into account. For most, that offers plenty of room for your apps, games, photos and music.

And if the 32GB of space inside the Nokia 6 isn’t enough, there’s a microSD slot in the phone which supports cards up to 128GB, giving you plenty of flexibility to add more to the handset.

The storage card can also be ‘adopted’ by the Nokia 6, which will result in the phone viewing it as internal storage, and thus making things easier to find. However, you’ll then need to format the card if you want to use it in another device.

While its screen and performance don’t put the Nokia 6 up there with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy S8 and iPhone 7 Plus, for its price point the large 5.5-inch Full HD display and reasonable power provide all you need to enjoy music and movies on the go.