Barely one third into 2018 but smartphone manufacturers have already lined up their first batch of handsets for the year. However, two smartphones that stand apart have been the talk of the market in the past few weeks. Continuing its resurgent run in recent months, Huawei launched the P20 Pro last week as the world’s first triple camera smartphone with flagship-like specifications as well. HMD Global just launched the gorgeous looking Nokia 8 Sirocco in India with a top of the class configuration to compete alongside the best flagships of recent times. Let’s see how these two fare when pitted next to each other.
Design & Display:
The newly launched Nokia 8 Sirocco comes with a 5.5-inch P-OLED display with a Resolution of a 1440 x 2560 pixels and an enhanced Pixel density of 534ppi, which is held together by a stainless steel frame and Corning Gorilla Glass 5 on both the front and read sides. The Sirocco, being a phone from 2018 still features significant sized bezels but still offers an 81.1 percent screen-to-body ratio which is impressive. The Nokia 8 device comes in a single black coloured variant which for the most part won’t reveal the smudges on the full glass panel at the back.
Huawei P20 Pro sports a larger 6.1-inch AMOLED FHD+ display with a resolution of 1080 x 2244 pixels and an aspect ratio of 18.7:9, unconventional to the rest of the tall display displays in the market. Though the P20 Pro offers a slightly better screen-to-body ratio of 81.9 percent, it loses to Nokia 8’s display with a pixel density of 408ppi. The device also features the dreaded notch on top of the display, which seems to be the trend ever since the iPhone X came to the stores.
Like the HMD-made device, the P20 Pro also comes in a metal and glass housing, but with curvier metal edges. The Huawei device comes in a bunch of colours namely: Black, Twilight, Pink Gold and Midnight Blue. The Twilight version of the Huawei P20 Pro is something that has been talked about a lot which features a dual tone finish on the back side of the glass body.
Winner: Huawei P20 Pro
Hardware:
Powered by its own high-end 8-core Hisilicon Kirin 970 chipset, the Huawei P20 Pro sports 6GB of RAM and 128GB of onboard storage as well as the Mali-G72 for graphics. Meanwhile, the Nokia 8 Sirocco gets all its power from last year’s octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Processor coupled with an Adreno 540 GPU. The Sirocco also features 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.
On the connectivity front, both devices feature a fully functional USB 3.1 Type C port for data and charging purposes in addition to NFC for contactless transactions. There’s also support for Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, WiFi Direct, GPS, and Bluetooth, though the Nokia device features the more enhanced Bluetooth v5.0.
Winner: Both are powerhouses on their own.
Software:
The Huawei P20 Pro runs on the latest Android 8.1 Oreo and we expect it to feature the next version of Android as well. Though the interface is pretty clean, there are still bits and parts of EMUI 8.1 which some won’t be fond of.
The Nokia 8 Sirocco runs on a cleaner stock-ish Android 8.0 Oreo and will be accustomed to regular OS and secret updates thanks to its Android One initiative. With less bloatware to go with, the Nokia 8 Sirocco would be the much-preferred device if you wish to have a simple user interface.
Winner: Nokia 8 Sirocco
Camera:
On Huawei’s strength area in recent times, HMD hasgone all out by furnishing the Nokia 8 Sirocco with a dual Carl Zeiss camera setup of 12MP (f/1.75, 1.4 µm, OIS) + 12 MP (f/2.6, 1.0 µm) which comes with dual pixel PDAF, an Optical Zoom of 2x and dual tone dual LED flash. The secondary camera on the Nokia smartphone is a 5MP lens with f/2.0 Aperture and a pixel size of 1.4 µm. The Nokia 8 supports video recording at 2160p and 1080p at 30fp.
But as it has done through most of last year, Huawei’s device takes the battle to another level. The Huawei P20 Pro made the news for being the first smartphone featuring a triple camera setup, which appears to be what HMD is developing on its upcoming Nokia 9 smartphone. The P20 Pro sports a 40-megapixel RGB lens with an aperture of f/1.8, 1/1.7″ and optical image stabilization, a 20-megapixel Monochrome lens with f/1.6 aperture and lastly an 8-megapixel telephoto lens that offers 3x optical zoom.
Huawei claims that its 40MP primary camera alone is capable of capturing “unparalleled sharpness, colour accuracy, focus and contrast” in a single shot and at the moment, we will take their word for it
Winner: Huawei P20 Pro
Battery:
HMD’s Nokia 8 Sirocco comes packed with a 3,260mAh battery that appears to be decent for the optimized stock user interface that Nokia provides. The device also comes with support for QuickCharge 4.0. But the P20 Pro again steals the show here by offering a larger 4,000mAh battery with fast charging.
Winner: Huawei P20 Pro
Verdict:
Both Nokia 8 Sirocco and Huawei P20 Pro are robustly built flagship devices from their respective manufacturers with top of the line specifications. Design-wise the Huawei P20 Pro might beat the Nokia 8 for the Twilight variant that is on the cards. On the hardware front, there is nothing to compare these two but Nokia offers a clear user interface in contrast to EMUI 8.1 on the P20 Pro. The Nokia 8 comes with a stunning dual camera setup but that can’t be compared to the latest in line triple camera lens on the Huawei device.
Having said all that, the battle between the two might just come down to how much they’re priced in the market. HMD Global just launched the Nokia 8 Sirocco for Rs 49,990 in India while Huawei is still to bring the P20 lineup to the country. The P20 Pro was released last week for 900 Euros which translates to Rs. 72,000 if it’s sold in India.
Nokia 8 thus offers a beautifully designed smartphone in a high-end configuration at a lower price point. But if flagships are what we’re here for, the P20 Pro is way ahead in terms of what it offers, no matter how much pricier it might be.