now while there’s been an absolute onslaught of budget-friendly smartphones in 2020 thus far it’s still pretty damn rare to find one that creeps in under that 100 pound price point but hmd has managed it with its latest nokia 2.4 you’ve got a mighty 6.5 inch hd plus screen you’ve got a dual lens rear camera you’ve got that lovely stock version of android and the promise of two years of android upgrades on top of that but is the nokia 2.4 actually any good or is it essentially just a 99 pound paperweight well gonna whip it on out of the box take you on a full-on tour of the hardware and the software and also really test out the performance with a bit of gaming and that camera tech too and for the latest greatest tag please do plug subscribe and ding that notifications bell cheers all right there’s the nokia 2.4 what else do you get in the box a bit of pokey pin action notch an entire tree’s worth of get started guides in basically every language known to man you’ve got your dinky wii adapter in my case it’s a european one because it’s the european review model and you’ve got your usb charging cable as well my old nemesis micro usb uh i thought you’d been vanquished mate anyhow that’s everything in the nokia 2.4 box so now let’s actually check out the phone i gotta say i’m a little bit gutted because it is unfortunately the charcoal gray version of the nokia 2.4 whereas on the box they’re actually teasing you with a lovely vibrant purple version you can actually pick up the nokia 2.4 in a trio of colors you’ve got that pinky purpley version you’ve got this grey model otherwise you’ve got a blue option as well or as hmd have labeled them dusk charcoal and the rather charmingly titled fjord here in blighty unfortunately the only available color option is the dull and dutiful charcoal which to be fair is pretty fitting for 2020 anyway and it is a plastic finish as you would expect for under 100 bob but seems pretty solidly constructed to be absolutely fair it’s got this lightly textured sort of finish to the surface in it as well which should just aired with grip and at least the nokia 2.4 matte finish means that it won’t pick up greasy smudgy prints the way the glossy smartphones do and the nokia 2.4 also has very basic ipx 2 splash resistance as well so it’ll be fine for you know taking out on a bit of a rainstorm something like that as for the rest of the design well you’ve got your power button and your volume
rocker over there on the right edge if you twist over to the left edge you’ve actually got a dedicated google assistant button on there as well which seems to be cropping up on a lot of budget friendly stock android phones and then around back you’ve got that dual lens rear camera which only jumps very very slightly from the rear surface which is nice to see and of course a rear mounted physical fingerprint sensor too now let’s get the bugger open and see what we’re dealing with as far as the sim slots go and it’s good use there because not only do you have two sim slots but you’ve also got a completely separate slot for your micro sd memory card so you can expand the onboard storage by up to a further 512 gigabytes so the nokia 2.4 is all set up and ready for action and what you get here is the older android 10 out of the box unfortunately it’s not the freshest android 11 uh which you get in the likes of the pixel phones but apparently it is android 11 ready so hopefully should be coming really soon and as the nokia 2.4 is an android one device that means it’s basically stock android there’s been very little tinkering at all going on here you’ve got those two guaranteed years of android updates as well which apparently according to the small print is from the global launch date of the nokia 2.4 and as i mentioned before we’ve got a google assistant button of course as well so a quick push of that and eventually up it springs uh although i’m not really sure what the point of having a dedicated google assistant button is because of course you can just swipe from either bottom corner and again google assistant
you can even add an app icon to your desktop if you want to access it that way so yeah loads of different options and of course to actually unlock the smartphone you’ve got that rear mounted fingerprint sensor and it doesn’t seem like the most responsive scanner around but you know what it does the job absolutely fine and that is actually backed by a nice bit of face unlock action as well just tap that power button springs to life hopefully we’ll recognize my face maybe the lighting wasn’t quite right in that bit let’s try it here next to the window yep there we go so it seems easily thrown off if the lightning isn’t quite right but at least there’s an alternative to the fingerprint sensor and you’ve also got nfc support on here with full google pay action so you can get your contactless pin and something good because the nokia 2.4 is a bit of a beast at 6.5 inches which means that one-handed use is quite cumbersome especially when you factor in like this chunky bezel down beneath the display i can just about sort of stretch to just be on the halfway point of this screen there’s no proper one-handed mode for shrinking down the screen and you can’t drag down that notifications bar from anywhere on the display either although you do at least get a fingerprint sensor gesture swipe your finger down the fingerprint sensor as you can see that then pulls the notifications panel into viewer
though it’s not the most responsive sometimes it takes a couple of swipes to actually get it to work still at least the phone sort of reasonably comfortable to clutch helped along by the rounded corners and everything too but what about that actual 6.5 inch display well as you’d expect for 99 quid it is a rather basic ips panel the top brightness for instance is the first thing that hits you it’s really not that awe-inspiring at all so you will struggle to see this thing in very strong daylight and also when you’re watching movies on the likes of netflix or disney plus the hd plus resolution again raw the basic 1600 by 720 so it does look a little bit grainy but if you just want to occasionally kick back with uh you know a little bit of youtube or a short short something like that it’ll do the job just fine as for your audio well it’s a single speaker set up here on the nokia 2.4 again not too surprisingly just mounted here on the bottom end so let’s uh give it a bit of a test see what we got or of course you could always treat yourself to a snazzy new mobile because 2020 has actually been a pretty great year for budget blowers although admittedly not for much else and yeah it’s basically again what you would expect from
a 100 pound smartphone not the loudest on that top volume but it’ll be all right as long as you’re not in too noisy an environment and the clarity is absolutely fine but what you’ll want to do if you are enjoying a short or a bit of music or something is definitely get yourself a proper pair of headphones plugged in because you do actually get a headphone jack up top something which is missing from most premium smartphones these days otherwise you’ve also got a good bit of bluetooth 5.0 support on this thing now providing the grunt here on the nokia 2.4 is the basic mediatek helio p22 processor and it’s backed here just by two gigs of ram which is a rather meager amount indeed so unsurprisingly the geekbench scores are less than impressive shall we say very basic one three seven single core and five or five multi-core which is the lost i’ve seen in quite some time and you can grab a three gigabyte model of the nokia 2.4 but unfortunately it’s not available here in blighty just yet uh and it’s only available again select markets and yeah i have noticed in my little bit of time with the nokia 2.
4 it can be a little bit lethargic at times for sure sometimes flicking through the menus can be a bit stuttery uh but you know absolutely without too much of a grumble and if all you want is something you know to do basic message checking web browser and all that sort of thing uh it’ll do the job again absolutely fine and it is also worth mentioning that with this two gigabytes of ram model you also only get 32 gigabytes of onboard storage
which as you can see i’ve already half filled up just by installing a couple of my own apps but at least you do have that expandable storage and when it comes to the performance one of the key questions i always get asked is can you actually do any gaming on it and with the nokia 2.4 i’m going to remain rather pessimistic but i will give call of duty mobile ago and see if it’s actually playable yeah please be patient is definitely a good slogan for the nokia 2.4 that’s for sure so i tried a bit of call of duty mobile action and it wasn’t the smoothest most satisfying gaming experience in the world ever that’s official the frame rate wasn’t actually too bad did they get a little bit choppy even on those little detail settings and a couple of times that did mean that unfortunately i didn’t see my opponent until he’d already started blasting me in the face with his machine gun but the main problem with gaming on the nokia 2.4 is the screen responsiveness which is kind of to be expected sometimes your ports and swipes just take a little while to register before they finally actually happen in game by which point again you’re basically dead in one of these competitive online games weirdly and what matcha did actually manage to come top of my team for a number of kills not really sure how that happened as i wasn’t performing particularly well but i’d say if you want to do some gaming on the nokia 2.4 stick to your basic single player offline titles rather than the competitive stuff as for the
battery well it’s a 4 500 milliamp cell stuffed here on the nokia 2.4 so that should keep you going easily through a full day probably well into a second date as well depending on obviously how much you’re hammering it certainly when i was playing call of duty uh a single match lasted about five minutes only took it down about sort of two percent although yes it is the dreaded micro usb when it comes to recharging and let’s finish up this unboxing of the nokia 2.4 by checking out that dual lens rear camera and what you get here is a 13 megapixel primary sensor backed by a simple basic 2 megapixel depth sensor and again as with most aspects of the nokia 2.4 i think as long as you temper your expectations this should be absolutely fine for your everyday snaps just for quick simple shareable shots on the likes of facebook and stuff like that so let’s try getting a good shot of mr monkey dude and yeah it’s not exactly packed with fine detail the results in photo though the conditions are quite ambient here in the studio so i’ll forgive it that and the colors seem so reasonably accurately reproduced though you’ve got the usual bonus camera modes that you’d expect on here as well so for instance good bit of portrait action uh so you just gotta get a bucket style background effect on the go and you can choose between a variety of different effects including stars hearts butterflies snowflakes you can change how extreme that bokeh style effect is as well
and my testing seems absolutely fine the edge detection is on point helped along by that depth sensor of course you’ve also got a nice mode that you can employ uh when conditions are a bit more tricky uh so if you give that a tap as you can see it takes lots of different shots of different exposure levels takes a little while now so slightly over saturated uh mr monkey in this case those colors are looking a little bit washed out we do have a lot more background detail than before and then when it comes to video i believe you can shoot just up to full hd resolution video yep those are your choices 720p or 1080p and again i wouldn’t expect too much uh from that video more just fine for your basic simple home movie efforts and then finally if you flip to that front facing camera it’s a 5 megapixel effort with fixed focus as well so very very basic indeed so i certainly wouldn’t expect much out of that at all if you’re a bit of a selfie fan maybe uh try elsewhere i mean look at that i look almost as white as the walls and i know i’m not exactly super bronzed at the moment but geysers and that in a nutshell is the nokia 2.4 an extreme budget smartphone just 99 quid here in blighty it should be absolutely fine if you just want something to browse the web check your messages check your social medias all that kind of shenanigans a bit more limited when it comes to gaming uh for instance the camera tech is uh or all the basic at best but if you don’t expect too much quite a loveable little device what do you think of the nokia 2.4 are you tempted definitely be great are your thoughts down in the comments below if you’ve actually been using the 2.4 as well be great to hear your own mini review and please do put subscribe and ding that notifications bell for more on the latest and greatest tech cheers everyone love you
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