Following their flurry of devices released since CES 2019, Nokia has launched a new premium mid-ranger which offers an improved design but lesser processor than its smaller sibling.
Leaks of Nokia's upgrade premium mid-ranger first appeared a few months ago, and finally now the company has gone live with the device; the Chinese variant anyway; the Nokia X71. For reference, the phone's smaller sibling was the Nokia 8.1, which we have previewed, whose Chinese variant was known as the X70.
Featuring a small ‘punch-hole' selfie camera cutout in its 1080 x 2316p 19.3:9 IPS ‘PureDisplay', as well as a triple camera system on the rear in a beautiful glass-sandwich chassis with eye-catching copper trims, the Nokia X71 is certainly a stunning piece of hardware though it surprisingly echoes more of Nokia's 6.1 than 8.1 in copper trim placement.
The odd part comes in when you look at the internal specifications, where the phone packs 6GB of RAM, 128GB of ROM + microSD slot… and the two-year-old Snapdragon 660 processor. A puzzling decision as it is a step down from the 8.1/X70's more recent, powerful and efficient Snapdragon 710, and at the price this phone is likely to go for it will be positively underpowered.
In all other ways though, the Nokia X71 looks to be a very good handset as it builds on the 8.1's excellent base, however with such an outdated processor I'm really not sure I could ever recommend it to anyone even over Nokia's own other devices; it really is a bummer.
Based on the company's history, when the global variant 8.1 Plus is launched it will differ in many ways from the Chinese version, likely including the removal of one rear camera, less RAM (4GB vs 6GB), and some smaller tweaks, however I doubt Nokia would switch out the processor as much as I hope they do.
We'll have to wait and see as far as the 8.1 Plus goes, however its launch is probably mere weeks away.
Source: Nokia
