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Battery life
- Massive 3,800mAh battery gives all-day stamina
- Fast charging is supported but there's no wireless charging
One of the more impressive elements of the Nokia 7 Plus is the fact that it packs 3,800mAh battery – no mean feat when you consider it boasts roughly the same footprint as the Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, and that can only muster a 3,500mAh power cell.
Whether it's the less hungry chipset, the 1080p screen or the comparative lack of bloatware apps sipping at the juice all day, the Nokia 7 Plus boasts impressive stamina for a mid-range device.
We comfortably got through an entire day of moderate usage without having to reach for the charging cable at any point, and during our battery test – where a HD video is played with full volume for 90 minutes – the 7 Plus lost 18% of its battery.
Another plus is that quick charging is supported, so you can top the phone up faster than normal. However, there's no wireless charging.
Camera
- Dual cameras on the rear for bokeh effects
- Struggles in low light
Impressively, the Nokia 7 Plus boasts similar Zeiss optics to the Nokia 8 Sirocco. The rear-facing setup consists of a wide angle 12MP camera with an f/1.75 aperture and a 13MP telephoto lens with an f/2.6 aperture.
Image quality from both is certainly a lot better than we were expecting given the price range of the phone. In good light, either camera is capable of swiftly snapping colourful and detailed shots; they're not quite up to the standard seen on some (more expensive) Android phones, but they're still more than acceptable.
There's even a 'bokeh' mode which uses the two cameras to judge distance between objects and thereby apply a blur effect on the background.
Because it's done in software – all the two-camera setup is used for is to work out what's in the foreground and what's further back – the results aren't always entirely satisfactory, but Nokia's system is, in our opinion, just as good as the one seen on the Galaxy S9 Plus or OnePlus 5T.
In fact, there were a few times during our review period when the 7 Plus deployed its bokeh effect much more convincingly than Samsung's phone – which is remarkable when you consider the gulf in price between the two.
Where the Nokia 7 Plus struggles is low light shooting, which is something that a lot of other handset makers – Samsung and Huawei in particular – have tried to improve on in their latest phones. The 7 Plus often takes a while to correctly focus in dimly-lit locations, and the resultant images feature a lot of noise.
The front-facing 16MP snapper takes incredibly detailed images and is complemented by a 'dual' photo mode, where you can capture yourself and your surroundings by including snaps from the front and rear cameras on the same image; you can even record using this split-screen system.
While we can't say it's something we'd use on a regular basis, it's an interesting approach. On the topic of video, the Nokia 7 Plus can record 4K footage as well as time-lapse and slow-motion clips.
