Nearly two years in the past, I reviewed the $200 Nokia 5.3, which was promised two years of Android OS upgrades and three years of safety updates. How has HMD Global, the corporate licensing the Nokia model, fared? It solely simply deployed Android 12 to that gadget, which is a year-old version of Google’s working system. 

That’s a giant delay, however at the very least that funds cellphone will get six extra months of safety updates earlier than its assist formally ends. Unfortunately, issues have gotten worse. Now I’ve the brand new $270 Nokia G400 5G, which is able to solely get two years of safety updates and nil dedication to Android OS upgrades. It will seemingly get Android 13, however who’s to say, since HMD just isn’t making any guarantees? This appears like a stark angle shift from an organization that prided itself on delivering quick updates and prolonged software program assist back in 2016. 

Today, most Android phone makers provide a software program dedication coverage so you have got a transparent image of how lengthy the gadget might be supported. The $250 Samsung Galaxy A13 5G, for instance, will get two OS upgrades and 4 years of safety updates. That’s wonderful, and it means you possibly can maintain on to the gadget with out worrying about it turning right into a buggy, unsecured mess after two years. It enables you to maintain on to your gadget for that lengthy if all the pieces else is in working order, lowering the necessity to spend on one other cellphone. It’s simply arduous to advocate a smartphone in 2022 when you haven’t any thought if it would get the most recent model of its working system.  

Nice Hardware

The unhappy factor is the Nokia G400 is a fairly respectable cellphone. It seems bland and dreary, coming in only a gloomy gray, and would not have a look at all like a “Nokia” cellphone. But the 6.58-inch LCD display screen is sharp, colourful, and even has a 120-Hz screen refresh rate, so it feels easy and responsive once you work together with it. 

Performance is respectable. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 480+ chipset inside reliably runs all of the apps you’d need, although you’ll have to wait right here and there for issues to load. (It’s restricted by the 4 GB of RAM.) But over the course of two weeks, I used to be ready to make use of it simply tremendous to reply to emails and messages, browse Reddit and Twitter, make cellphone calls, and even play informal video games like Alto’s Odyssey. The software program is inventory Android 12, which is sweet, so that you get little or no bloatware (any of which is detachable), and the interface seems slick. 

The 5,000-mAh battery cell has given me a day and a half of common use, and also you get all of the options you’d need in any phone in 2022, like sub-6 5G connectivity on all main US carriers (sure, together with Verizon, which many unlocked Nokia gadgets have historically been incompatible with), a headphone jack, fingerprint sensor, and a MicroSD card slot to develop on the paltry 64 GB of inner storage. I’ve used the NFC sensor to faucet and pay on the subway turnstiles right here in New York City, and also you even get a charger in the box.