HMD Global has been missing from the flagship category for a while now, but their budget catalog is always growing - - a sort of new-found niche. Yesterday, the company unveiled its newest affordable model, Nokia 5.4. It succeeds Nokia 5.3 that came out in Spring this year.
Nokia 5.4's is a familiar design language — donut-style camera bump, chamfered edges, and Nokia branding stamped on the phone's chin. The rear cameras have a ring around them, flanking a capacitive fingerprint scanner in the shape of a coin impression.
On the front, a single selfie camera lives inside a hole-punch. The back has a texture to resist smudges and fingerprints, available in violet and blue.
Inside the Nokia 5.4, you're looking at the Snapdragon 662 chipset (the same processor you'd find in the new POCO M3) And 4/6GB of memory that does the multitasking. You can pick from 64GB and 128GB options at affordable Nokia mobile price, both expandable up to 512GB. The battery is on the lower end. It has a 4000 mAh capacity but no fast-charging support of any kind.
HMD is lagging behind the competition to bring fast charging features to its budget phones. For context, the much-cheaper POCO M3 mentioned above has a 6000 mAh battery and 18W charging. That said, Nokia 5.4 still promises a 2-day battery life, thanks to the lower screen resolution and the clean, optimized software that powers the phone. Speaking of which, Nokia 5.4 runs on stock, bloat-free Android 10, with two years of guaranteed OS upgrades.
Similarly, the M3 has a 1080P screen, whereas the Nokia 5.4 peaks at 720P. It's a generic 6.39" IPS LCD. But the optics have improved, at least on paper. A higher-res 48MP primary camera replaces the 13MP sensor from Nokia 5.3.
The front camera resolution has been doubled to 16MP. And the 5MP wide-angle + 2MP + 2MP array is carried over wholesale. Though Nokia 5.4 starts from €189 in Europe but the prices in Asia are always a bit on the cheaper side. It is expected to arrive in Pakistan soon, carrying a retail tag of anywhere around 34,000 to 38,000.
