Nokia G20 Review; Budget segment smartphone with beefy battery and performance

Nokia, the popular smartphone manufacturing brand is known for its affordable range of smartphones. The company has recently launched the Nokia G20 smartphone in the budget segment. The handset comes with highlight features like a quad-camera setup, waterdrop notch design, bezel-less display, dedicated Google Assistant button and a lot more. Nokia launched the G20 in India at a starting price of Rs 12,999 which stood against the smartphone brands like Xiaomi, Samsung, Realme, Oppo, and more. In this price segment, there are many players in the market which might confuse you while making your purchase decision.

If you’re hunting for a budget phone and getting confused with too many offerings then you have landed on the correct page. In this review article, I have reviewed the Nokia G20 smartphone and tried answering all your questions, which might give you a clear view of the handset.

Nokia G20 design

The Nokia G20 is a tall phone with a plastic frame and back panel, but that doesn’t make the phone look cheap in quality, in fact, at the first glance I thought it's a mid-range smartphone. The Nokia G20 arrives with a grooved texture at the rear panel along with a circular camera module placed at the top centre, making it look premium.

A plastic flame is not what I usually expect from a phone manufacturer, but considering the price segment, I just have to ignore that part. Meanwhile, we can’t ignore the fact that many premium brands also feature a plastic frame with their handsets which is unfair for end customers.

Coming back to the design of the Nokia G20, the phone features a side-mounted fingerprint scanner which is embedded in the power button on the right chassis. The power button is also accompanied by the volume rocker keys. On the left chassis, it has a SIM tray and a Google Assistant button, which can trigger the AI with a simple click. At the top, the Nokia G20 has a secondary mic and a 3.5 audio jack. While the Type-C port, speaker grill, and microphone is placed at the bottom. Design-wise the handset looks premium and feels handy, it’s not like a big hefty brick that is impossible to fit in your pocket.

Nokia G20 hardware and software

The Nokia G20 is a budget-segment phone which makes use of a MediaTek G35 processor with eight Cortex A53 cores to draw power. The handset comes with an integrated IMG PowerVR GE8320 GPU for smooth graphic processing. On the connectivity part, the Nokia G20 doesn’t support dual-band Wi-Fi but it does have support for Bluetooth 5 and GPS/AGPS, GLONASS and Beidou navigation.

The budget segment smartphone bags a massive 5,050mAh battery and the company includes a 10W charging adapter with the retail box. On the software front, the Nokia G20 runs on the Android One programme, and the company promises to offer two years of a software update.

At the front, the Nokia G20 flaunts a 6.5-inch HD+ resolution LCD with a waterdrop notch design to accommodate the front camera sensor. The display also features a 60Hz refresh rate with a 20:9 aspect ratio. Overall the hardware, software, and display specifications are impressive from a budget segment phone. While using the phone I never faced any issue with the display performance, the colours are perfectly balanced with brightness and saturation and it doesn’t hurt your eyes. Let’s jump to the performance part and see how does the phone perform.

Nokia G20 performance

Nowadays smartphones are judged based on gaming performance and I also did the same thing first when I received the phone. I have downloaded a bunch of battle royale games like Battlegrounds Mobile India, Free Fire, Call of Duty: Mobile and more. I have played games on the handset for long hours and I must say that the phone never disappointed me while taking my shots on enemies. During my gameplay, I never faced any lags which have really impressed me in the first place.

While using the phone normally I do notice some minor lags which might have frustrated me, but those were also fixed by a couple of updates. The speakers of the handset are loud and I can assure you that because I play games and listen to music often on Nokia G20. The voice clarity while making callings are also crisped and I have nothing to complain about. The overall performance of the phone was impressive and I must say that the company is gradually improving the software and hardware performance of the Nokia smartphone by launching new devices.

Camera feature and performance

Cameras have become one of the important selling points of smartphones and that is why we are talking about the camera specifications of the Nokia G20. Underneath the waterdrop notch, the handset houses an 8-megapixel camera sensor for selfies and video calls. At the back, the handset features a quad camera setup with the combination of a 48-megapixel camera sensor accompanied by a 5-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, a 2-megapixel macro sensor, and a 2-megapixel depth sensor, apart from the LED flash unit.

The camera app comes with an array of modes which includes Night, Portrait, Photo, Video, Portrait, and More. The camera app looks simple and offers a user-friendly UI. I have added some of the image samples taken in different modes below hoping that will help you in judging the camera performance. For me, the camera sensors of the Nokia G20 was decent considering the price of the phone and I haven’t seen any distortion in the images which I clicked.

Battery performance

The Nokia G20 packs a massive 5,050mAh battery with a 10W standard charging adapter with the retail box. During the testing phase, I have noticed that the smartphone is capable of delivering a battery life of approximately 10 hours in an HD loop video test. I have received a decent battery life of 6-7 hours with a full charge. According to the company, the 10W charger is capable of fueling up the battery in 3 hours and 5 minutes.

Verdict

During my entire testing period, I haven’t faced any major difficulty with the phone. The Nokia G20 performs well and gets you some decent clicks thanks to the improved camera sensors. Altogether, the handset offers decent performance and considering the price point it's a good deal. The battery performance and capacity is impressive, but the down point is the 10W charger which takes a lot of time to juice up the device.