If you’re looking for a relatively affordable tablet that’s just about as simple as can be – this might be your best bet.

The Nokia T20 has vanilla Android 11 inside, right out the box. Nokia’s HMD includes a guarantee of two years of major OS updates (effectively Android 12 and Android 13, if that’s what Google runs with for OS names), and three years of security updates month-by-month.

The display is 10.4-inches diagonally with 1200 x 2000-pixel resolution. There’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera on the tablet above the display landscape-style. On the back is an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash. It’s important to note, here, that Nokia’s logo on the back is placed in landscape mode. It should be clear, here, that the company expects that you’ll be using this device in such a position most of the time.

This tablet has an IP52 rating for resistance to water and dust. This means you’re most probably OK using it on the beach, so long as you don’t bury it in the sand or allow it to be fully dunked under water. A cup of water dropped on top, or a walk in the rain will be fine.

The Nokia T20 tablet is already in stores as you read this. The Nokia T20 price at launch is around R3999 for the WiFi and LTE version of the tablet in Ocean Blue.

 Dubbed as a “hero device”, the C30 comes with less spectacular features other than the screen and battery. Its main claims to fame are its Android 11 Go Edition software and a whopping 6,000 mAh battery that promises three days of battery life. It is, however, as entry-level as you can get, but, thankfully, it also comes with an entry-level price tag.

The screen comes in at a whopping huge 6.82” and is a HD+ display. At the back there is the dual 13MP camera – highest resolution on a C-series device yet. The added depth sensor will give your portraits the quality they deserve, said Nokia.

The Nokia C30 will be available in South Africa priced from R2,299 from early October in selected retail stores in either white or green.

The Nokia X20 and Nokia X10

The high end, mid-range X20 and X10 push boundaries for Nokia. Both devices are powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 5G Mobile Platform and come with Android 11 straight out of the box. There’s ZEISS Optics and AI to help power up the camera system.

The Nokia X20 comes with a 32MP front camera and 64MP quad camera on the rear. Meanwhile, the Nokia X10 features a 48MP quad-camera with Cinematic capture.

Complimenting the devices is a wide 6.67” Full HD+ punch-hole display. Both the Nokia X20 and Nokia X10 also come with a 100% compostable case in the sales box, to console you for the missing charger.

The Nokia G20 and Nokia G10

The G10 and G20 slot into HMD’s G-series of Nokia phones, with even longer battery life: up to three days, the company claims. They have side-fingerprint sensors and a 6.5-inch display. The G20 has a triple rear camera system, while the G20 steps up to a 48-megapixel main camera and OZO surround sound.

The G20 will go on sale from May while the G10 will arrive in April. HMD is yet to confirm local pricing.

The Nokia C10 and C20

Finally, the C10 and C20 are focused on the affordable end of the scale. They run Android 11 Go Edition on a 6.5-inch HD+ display, and will go on sale from June and April, respectively, pricing is yet to be confirmed too.

Today’s launch wasn’t just about handsets, though, but also a new carrier. HMD Global is launching in the UK first, from the end of April, as an MVNO relying on the EE network. As with current Nokia phones, the focus will be affordability. Local plans are yet to be announced.

The good news on the low pixel density on the display is that, combined with a 4000mAh battery, you’re going to have a LOT of battery life. The charging speed isn’t anything special at 5V/2A, but again – that battery is big for this display.

The back-facing cameras aren’t as spectacular as those presented on the Nokia 7.2, but they’re still going to produce some results at least as good, if not far better than those of other devices in this price range. They consist of 13 MP f/1.8 + 2 MP depth sensor + 5 MP ultra-wide + 2 MP Macro on the back, and there’s an 8MP f/2.0 camera up front.

You’ll be able to purchase the Nokia 5.3 in three colours: Cyan Green and Charcoal. The’ll all roll with Android 10, and “up to 3 years of software updates.” We’ll have to investigate a bit more before we’re entirely solid on what “up to” entails.

The Nokia 5.3 is already available on Takealot. This 6GB RAM and 64GB internal storage size edition will cost you R4999.

The phone offers several other great features too. Notably, the device has a built-in Google Assistant button, giving users easy access to Assistant without always having to use the “Hey, Google” wake word. We got to spend some time with it over the month of June and behold, it has lived up to Nokia mobile’s reputation of providing entry level devices that are worth every cent.

With that, here are some of the features we are loving on the Nokia 2

It has a fantastic design

The device features a small teardrop-shaped notch at the top for the front-facing camera and a chin at the bottom — but apart from that, it’s got a nice edge-to-edge display with rounded corners. The display measures in at 6.2 inches, with an IPS LCD HD+ resolution. Despite its 6.2-inch screen size, the Nokia 2.3 is usable with one hand (though I do have large hands).

Other aspects of the design look great, too. There’s no camera bump on the back, making for a much smoother look. There’s a beautiful effect that plays upon the rear when it catches the light, which gives the back an appearance of having ridges, especially on the Cyan Green colour, where the Nokia 2.3 looks more sophisticated. It also comes in Charcoal, but Cyan Green is the one we have for review.

Build quality is HMD Global’s strength, and it continues to deliver phones that feel like they deserve a higher price tag.

All that power

Powering the Nokia 2.3 is a Mediatek Helio A22 SoC with a PowerVR GPU and 2GB RAM. While it performs most day-to-day tasks without too much of a struggle, it does stutter here and there and also freezes occasionally (particularly when switching apps). Do not expect apps to launch at rocket speed or games to load up and run well, either.

If you’re not a power user, you only use a handful of apps, and you don’t play demanding games, the Nokia 2.3 will be sufficient.

As is the case with most Nokia mobile phones, the Nokia 2.3 is a part of the Android One program. That means you get a promise of three years of security updates and two operating system upgrades. We touch a bit more on that later on in this piece.

The Nokia 2.3 will get you through a full workday with medium use and a full day with light use with its 4000mAh battery. I often arrived home around 6pm with 40% remaining. Battery anxiety starts to creep in whenever I decided to extend my night out, though — around 9pm it hit 20%.

AI features in the camera

Nokia mobile focused a little on improving camera quality, ensuring that you’ll get decent shots even in an affordable phone. In the Nokia 2.3, you’ll get a Portrait Mode that blurs out the background of your photos, making for a more professional-looking photo. The phone features a dual 13-megapixel and 2-megapixel camera. It also adds features like image fusion technology that allows the phone to combine details from multiple photos — making for a more vibrant image overall.

Given the market placement of the device, it can take adequate photos during the day, with decent detail, though colours can look a bit muted at times. Problems start to creep in as the day goes on. The phone can barely take solid low-light photos, but it’s not consistent. You need to stay as still as possible because there is no optical image stabilization. Any movement will result in a blurry photo. It does not help that the phone isn’t the fastest to snap photos.

Android 10 for the win

The device comes with Android 10, which is the latest and greatest version of Android. Further, Nokia mobile says that the phone is guaranteed to get monthly security updates for three years, and full operating system for two years — so the device should get both Android 11 and Android 12 when they’re released and become available.

The phone comes with Android One, so Android, in general, it is relatively clean, and updates should be available quickly after they are released. It is one of the first things you’ll notice once you power on the device and start browsing.

In conclusion

The Nokia 2.3 is great build quality with a nice design, a strong screen experience, along with decent performance and battery life. Its camera system is solid. Perhaps the best thing about the phone is the price — you can purchase the Nokia 2.3 from R1999.

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Now along comes HMD Global and its mission to corner all the corners of the market on all tiers, announcing the Nokia C2 as the newest and so far the only new Android Go phone in the market.

Android Go, more formally “Android (Go Edition)”, isn’t exactly a flavor of Android and more a set of default configurations and apps to make the platform more usable on hardware-constrained devices. It was Google’s attempt to wean users away from “feature phones” and onto Android and the rest of its ecosystem. After a brief period of hype, that seems to have gone silent.

Part of that may be from the lack of appeal, as the Nokia C2 exemplifies. Android Go phones are pretty much your run-of-the-mill cookie-cutter entry-level phones. This one, for example, has a relatively lesser-known Unisoc processor with 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of memory. Forget all the talk about cameras too, as it only has a single 5 megapixel camera on its back and 5 megapixels on its front.

Its main appeal, of course, is the budget price, coming in at R1 499, that comes with a lite Android experience. Strangely enough, the phone is launching with Android 9 Pie (Go Edition). The latest, of course, is Android 10.

To be fair, comparing the Nokia C2 to even mid-range phones is apples to grapes as the core focus of Android Go phones is to get people online and on Google in the cheapest way possible. That price is still unknown but it is even more unknown whether Android Go has any appeal left at all. It comes in charcoal and cyan green.

Officially dubbed the Nokia C1, it seems that the biggest selling point of this phone is its support for Android Go and the lightweight apps that come along with it.

Specifically, the Nokia C1 will be running Android 9 Pie (Go Edition) out of the box, which means that it’s compatible with apps like YouTube Go and Google Maps Go. The phone has been outfitted with a FWVGA+ IPS display that clocks in at 5.45-inches, with 1GB of RAM and an unnamed quad-core 1.3Ghz processor running the show.

Storage comes in at 16GB, though Nokia prefers to describe it in terms of how many songs or hours of video you can store on the phone, something we haven’t seen for quite some time. “Store up to 24 hours of video or up to 3000 songs thanks to lighter apps taking up less space on your phone,” the company writes on the C1’s press release. If 16GB isn’t enough storage, you can use a microSD card to expand on it further, but the C1 only supports cards up to 64GB.

The rear and front-facing cameras both use 5MP lenses, so you’re not going to be taking a lot of stellar shots with this phone. Nokia says that the C1’s 2,500mAh battery is capable of lasting all day, and with the rest of these specifications in mind, we believe it. The battery is even removable, which is a rare sight among phones these days, so the C1 certainly wins some bonus points for that.

In the end, these specifications are more or less what we’d expect from an Android Go phone. What matters most, however, is pricing and availability. You can grab the C1 in either black or red from select retailers supporting the MTN network at a retail price of R999.

Those with less constrained resources will naturally feel a bit left out but, fortunately for them, smartphone hardware is getting cheaper as well too. At least that seems to be what HMD Global is trying to sell with the Nokia 2.3, perhaps one of few if not first entry-level Android phones to claim AI-powered features, particularly in the camera.

HMD definitely paints an enticing picture of an AI-rich budget smartphone. These days, AI on mobile is used for things like scene recognition and automatic settings in cameras, assistants like Google Assistant, and even down to intelligent battery management. Those are exactly the things that the Nokia 2.3 is advertised to bring but sounds too good to be true considering the hardware the phone actually has.

The Nokia 2.3 is powered by a MediaTek Helio A22, a year-old chip comparable to the Snapdragon 450, with 2 GB of RAM that may call into question how much processing an AI can really do on it. No AI, however, will be able to magically create spectacular photos from a 13 megapixel camera with a 2 megapixel depth sensor. A 6.2-inch HD+ 19:9 display, 32 GB of storage, and an admittedly large 4,000 mAh battery round up the core specs of the phone.

That said, there are definitely a few things going for the Nokia 2.3, primarily the more or less vanilla Android 10 experience. Then there’s the promise of two years of OS updates and three years of security updates. Usually.

Available in Cyan Green, and Charcoal and sporting an odd 3D nano-textured cover that gives the back an appearance of having ridges, the Nokia 2.3 is available at select retailers for R1 999.